We are now barely a week away from the Grand Départ of the 2024 Tour de France. Just glance at the route and start list and you’ll understand that this promises to be one of the best editions in recent memory. 

Tour de France 2024 Stages Preview

Italian dreaming – The Grand Départ

In recent years, the Tour organizers, the ASO, have made a habit of having the first few stages start outside of France. It’s a way to get neighboring countries interested and invested in promoting the event. That’s why it’s perhaps surprising that this is the first time in the Tour’s 111-year history that it will start in Italy. And not just any place in Italy. The Grand Départ takes place in Florence, the capital of Tuscany and a leading city of the Renaissance. It is also a city plagued by throngs of tourists in the summer, so we can only imagine just how crazy those few days leading up to the Tour’s first stage will be.

Always an exciting show, the Tour de France 2024 team presentations will take place on Thursday, June 27th, in front of the storied Palazzo Vecchio. Then the race gets underway officially at 12-noon on Saturday the 29th. Though the Tour de France typically starts on the first weekend in July, the organizers have moved the start date forward by a week to accommodate the Olympic Games, which start in Paris less than a month later on July 26th.

 Stage 1 is 205 km and starts in the center of Florence. It will weave the peloton east along the river Arno until the course dives into the Apennines Mountains. They’ll cut through these very difficult peaks until they reach the Adriatic coastal town of Rimini. Even if the climbing is not full-on alpine, the stage still racks up 3800 meters of elevation gain, with the final climb on the steep slopes of the Republic of San Marino that summits barely 25 km from the finish line. Who will take the stage and the first yellow jersey?  

With so much climbing, it’s not a sprinter’s stage. It could be one for the breakaway artists, except, since it is the first stage of the Tour, everyone will have fresh legs and the fight to get into the break will be intense. In fact, the struggle to establish a break may last the entire stage. But with the final climb peaking so far from the finish, it’s unlikely one of the main general classification rivals will attempt a solo attack. We can more easily imagine the winner will sprint from a small group of the strongest riders. Pogačar, Roglič, Mohorič, Lafay, Evenepoel, Teuns, Cort, can all have strong sprints after hard days in the saddle. For riders like Jonas Vingegaard, Egan Bernal, Sepp Kuss, and Juan Ayuso, it’ll be a successful stage if they don’t lose any time to the leaders. 

As exciting and full of incredible scenery as stage 1 will be, stage 2 can be seen as an even more important test for the top GC riders. It will start in Cesenatico, famous as the home of Marco Pantani, and finish in Bologna after racing twice up the incredibly picturesque and difficult climb along the arches to the San Luca Sanctuary above Bologna. This climb was memorably used for the opening stage time trial in the 2019 Giro d’Italia won by Primož Roglič. Can he repeat the success after a 200 km stage? A major difference is that the race will descend back into Bologna for the finish, which will likely be won from a small group of favorites. Or will a breakaway establish itself and steal the glory? We only have a handful of days to wait to find out.

For stage 3, the third and final full day in Italy, the peloton gets a break. It will be a mad dash across the Piemonte plains from Piacenza to Torino. It could hardly be a stage more contrasting from the two that have come before. Though the longest stage of the race at 229 km, it will climb just 1315 meters. Will this be the stage where Mark Cavendish can finally break the Eddy Merckx record for number of stage victories? His results from the Tour de Suisse indicate perhaps not. Consider too that younger, hotter sprinters like Jasper Philipsen, Biniam Girmay, Dylan Groenewegen, and Arnaud De Lie will all fancy their chances at least as much as the veteran Brit. 

Back in France and the first mountain test

Though occasionally when the Grand Tours hold their first stages outside of the home country, the first Monday of the race will be reserved as a rest day/travel day. Since Piemonte borders directly on the Hautes-Alpes region in France, the peloton can ride their bikes back over the border. The fact that this is perhaps one of the most mountainous places to cross a border in Europe, stage 4 will be a huge challenge very early in the race. In fact, it’s the earliest that the col du Galibier will have ever featured in the race. (note: weather permitting.) 

The stage will first leave Pinerolo in Italy before taking in the climb to Sestrières and the col de Montgenèvre from where they will descend into Briançon. The slog of the climb to Galibier starts almost immediately. It’s not a summit finish, however. They will instead face a high-speed descent into Valloire. At just 138 km, this stage will be must-watch-TV. Will the eventual winner of the Tour already be known? Will we see cracks forming in pre-race favorites? 

Sprint stages for the record?

The next two stages will give Cavendish and all the other sprinters a chance to stretch their legs and take aim at victory. The stage routes will course their way through gorgeous culinary regions of France, which will make for pleasant viewing. Keep in mind too that these are the types of stages that look like they could be relatively quiet where a touch of wheels or other seemingly innocuous accidents usually dents or destroys the chances of one or more of the GC riders. Always beware of complacency.

Time trials are seldom popular must-watch-TV stages, but they often offer the clearest indicator of how a rider is feeling. Alone and without the support of teammates, the race against the clock leaves no prisoners. Stage 7 is exactly this type of time trial. At just over 25 km, it is long enough to see real separation between top competitors. Will Remco Evenepoel take the reins of the race here, as he did recently at the Dauphiné? As his form showed at the Dauphiné, winning the ITT is almost a forgone conclusion for the young Belgian; it’s the high mountain tests that appear to be his current kryptonite. 

Stage 8 perhaps received the most scrutiny when the ASO revealed the 2024 route back in October. It represents the farthest north that the race will get this year. It also incorporates 32 km worth of gravel roads. The stage interestingly starts and ends  in Troyes, a famous hub of the Champagne region, with origins as a Roman trade crossroads. All those wine roads give the organizers plenty of options for sending the riders off the tarmac and into the grips of the uncertainty of gravel racing. Will the GC favorites be able to handle their bikes and the stress?

Rest day and breakaway chances before the high mountains

The riders will enjoy a much needed rest day on Monday, July 8th. In fact, after a feverish start to the Tour, the second week will give riders and viewers a bit of a break. Though the stages will be beautiful, and several surprises will likely result from the racing, no obvious GC stage is on the cards until Saturday, July 13th’s monster stage to Pla d’Adet in the Pyrenees. 

It doesn’t mean week 2 will not be worth watching. It’s just that any changes to the status quo at the top of the leader board will come as a result of something super unpredictable, which arguably makes these stages even more important to watch than the obvious marquee days. 

Sunday, July 14th’s stage to Plateau de Beille will prove to be another mega test in the high mountains for all the riders. A perfect setting to celebrate Bastille Day. In just under 200 km the riders will face 4800 meters of climbing over some of the most mythical peaks of the Pyrenees including Peyresourde, col de Menté, col de Portet d’Aspet, and the Col d’Agnes. It will be a massive day in the saddle. And if cracks haven’t begun to show for one of our four major favorites (more on that below), then here is almost certainly where they will begin to buckle. 

Rest day and breakaway chances before a dramatic final three days

With the final rest day set for Monday, July 15th, the three stages that follow will offer exciting racing where breakaway specialists – those who still have the legs – will try their luck to win a stage as the race moves back east away from the Pyrenees and toward the deadline in Nice. 

That’s right. If you haven’t heard already, for the first time in its history, the Tour de France will not be finishing in Paris, but in the Mediterranean town of Nice. After stages that race into Nimes – where Cavendish will have his last chance to win a stage if he hasn’t already – and then a couple of lumpy breakaway stages, Friday, July 19th will see stage 19 finish at the top of Isola 2000. 

The 2000 indicates the fact that this summits over 2000 meters, usually the benchmark where riders start really to feel the effects of the high altitude. Since it is late July and so close to the Riviera, chances are the temperatures will be quite hot. Hot, high altitude climbing has in the past proved to be where Pogačar has really suffered. If he and Vingegaard are still close on time in the general classification, is this finally where we’ll see some separation?

Stage 20 will likely be another hot day in the Alpes-Maritimes with hardly a meter of flat road. It will be up and down all day over one category 2 climb leaving Nice, and then a series of three category 1 climbs, finishing at the top of the col de la Couillole. For many of the pro peloton who use Nice as their European home base, the climbs in the final three stages will be familiar training roads. That won’t make them any easier to scale once race day arrives. 

But as difficult as these two stages will be, it could be that we still won’t know who will win the Tour de France. That’s because the final stage is a 33.7 km time trial that races from Monaco to Nice.

Many of the climbs have been made famous from the final stage of Paris-Nice, which frequently figures high on our list of most exciting days of racing in the year. La Turbie is a category 2 climb of 8 km averaging 5.6% gradient. It will be followed by the col d’Èze, which is not actually categorized, but at just 1.6km long and an average of 8.1%, is extremely difficult. The riders will then undertake a perhaps familiar but no less death-defying descent back into Nice where the stage and the overall classification will be decided. 

This stage will make material choice extremely complicated for the riders. Do they take advantage of the aero gains a full time trial bike with disc wheels can offer, or do they opt for lighter climbing bikes? Or do they start on a lighter climbing bike and then switch bikes at the top of La Turbie, which comes in the first half of the race? 

This was a mistake Pogačar made in 2023 during the important stage 16 climbing-heavy time trial to Combloux. He switched bikes for the final ascent while Vingegaard stayed on his TT bike…and absolutely smoked Pogačar and everyone else. 

Who will win the Tour de France 2024? Predictions

I guess if we knew that, there would be no point in watching. I remember when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to find out who would win the Tour. But it was always bittersweet once I did know since it meant summer was almost over and school would be starting again soon. I would wish we could go back to it being the beginning of June, still secure in my knowledge of who would win the Tour de France. 

At the end of 2023, when Primož Roglič officially announced his move to Bora-hansgrohe, we all of a sudden could look forward to the fantastic prospect of the four best cyclists in the world, Pogačar, Vingegaard, Roglič, and Evenepoel all on different teams racing against each other. It was going to be an epic Tour.

Then Pogačar announced he would do the Giro, and Vingegaard, Roglič, and Evenepoel all suffered a season threatening crash during stage 4 of the Tour of the Basque Country. Of the three, Roglič seemed least damaged, though the fact he narrowly won the Dauphiné after an obvious loss of form on the final stage does not bode too well for his Tour chances. Vingegaard, who has won the Tour the past two seasons and is arguably a better climber than Pogačar, came off by far the worst from that crash. Speculation has been rife about whether he will be able to make the Tour, and once there, what condition can he hope to have. (note: the Visma - Lease a Bike team announced on June 20th that he would race!)

Evenepoel’s injury has slowed his progress as well, which was clear from his performance at the Dauphiné. Can he gain the percentages, and lose the weight, he needs to before the Tour in order to be a legitimate contender? And though Pogačar seems to have dominated the Giro d’Italia with ease, what are the chances that he will still carry some unwanted fatigue into the Tour de France with barely five weeks separating the two races?

Can anyone besides these four riders hope to win the race? Well, many can hope, but how realistic is their hope? Ineos’ Egan Bernal could hope, but he no longer has the undivided attention of his team, and he has yet to come out completely from under the cloud that spread over his career after his life-threatening accident at the beginning of 2022. His Spanish teammate Carlos Rodríguez finished top-5 at the Tour last year and had a strong Dauphiné, but his generally weak time trialling skills will hamstring any real run at the overall, unless he is gifted several minutes in a freak breakaway, which is unlikely. The young Brit Tom Pidcock has emerged as more of a loose cannon in recent weeks, without the consistent results to warrant it, so it will be interesting to see how well the team gels on the road. 

What about EF Education’s Richard Carapaz? He certainly has the race craft and ambition to podium at the Tour. But he had to drop out of the Tour de Suisse and has never really shown the spark in the past two seasons that won him the Giro and the Olympic road race, among multiple Grand Tour podiums. 

If Vingegaard doesn’t race or is well below par, his young American teammate Matteo Jorgenson may be a name that stays on people’s lips deep into the race. He won Paris-Nice this year after a magnificent ride on the final stage that covered many of the same roads as the Tour’s final time trial this year. But even if Pogačar is at just 90-95% his best, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Jorgenson can better him. Of course, he nearly succeeded in snatching the race lead at the Dauphiné away from Roglič, so it would be a mistake to underestimate Jorgenson, especially if circumstances give him the full support of his team. 

Is there anyone else? Felix Gall impressed last year, first by winning a stage at the Tour de Suisse, then winning the queen stage of the Tour. But he has been off the pace this season, and his Decathlon-AG2R team will also focus more on the sprints with Sam Bennett. Enric Mas crashed out on stage 1 of the Tour last year. He is among the best climbers in the world, but his results this year have been solid if rather anonymous. 

Derek Gee from Canada made a name for himself last year at the Giro by entering in a variety of breakaways, and coming up short every time, taking four 2nd places. He had been pretty quiet ever since then, only to emerge during the 2024 Dauphiné as one of the strongest climbers in the race. He took an impressive stage win and 3rd place overall, so hopes will be high in North America for him. Whether his good showing was an indication of the relative weakness of the Dauphiné start list, or that he really has stepped up this season, will become clear once the Tour kicks off in Florence.  

Another anglophone, Adam Yates is strong, but as Pogačar’s right-hand-man, he would only ever get a real chance if something happens to take Pogačar out of the race. Same goes for the rest of the strong climber’s on Pogačar’s team, like João Almeida, who was very impressive at the Tour de Suisse, and Juan Ayuso, who crashed out of the Dauphiné which will add a question mark over his form.

Can anyone stop Pogačar? In the absence of a 100% fit Vingegaard, the Slovenian is generally considered the outright favorite. And if he does win, he will score the Giro-Tour double, which hasn’t happened since the dark days of 1998. It would definitely be an amazing accomplishment, made perhaps slightly easier by the misfortunes of his fellow top favorites. 

But considering Pogačar could be suffering from post-Giro fatigue, while Vingegaard, Roglič, and Evenepoel may be below 100% due to injury recovery, the sum result could be just as exciting a race as if all four had been totally focused on the Tour and in 100% top form. 

Who’s excited?!