From Florence to Nice. From June 29 to July 21. The Tour wants to surprise again and shakes up its route, it becomes wilder. Forced by the Olympic Games but also with the desire to be spectacular from start to finish. The 2024 edition will not have a rest, with the nerves of the Italian walls, with high mountains already on the fourth day and with a fast ending, a time trial on the last day, something that has not happened since 1989, since the day Lemond It broke the hearts of Fignon and all of cycling France. It will be 35 km, one for each year that has passed.
For the first time the Tour de France will not end in Paris, which will be waiting for all the Olympic athletes. The 110 previous editions always had the French capital as their destination, whether in the Parc des Princes, the La Cipale velodrome in Vincennes or the Champs-Elysées. But Nice is very well connected to ASO, the top dog, which also organizes Paris-Nice in March, perhaps the most famous one-week race on the calendar. So it will be almost like being at home.
The ride of the English will crown the champion in what is expected to be the tie-breaker Tour, the moment that definitively unbalances the fight between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, with the permission of Roglic, now at Bora, and the presumed debutant Evenepoel. Both will appear at the start of Florence with two victories each. The Dane won the last two head to head (2023 and 2022) and the Slovenian won the game against Jumbo in 2021 and 2020.
Chosen, not without controversy, best cyclist of the year with the Velo d'Or, Vingegaard, in a dark suit and turtleneck sweater, did not ask for details from his seat in the Parisian Palais de Congrès, near an Arc de Triomphe that he will not see this time. At his house, Pogacar surely thought that he should go all out in the last week, with three high finishes (Superdévouly, Isola 2,000 and the Col de La Couillole) and the 35 km time trial between Monaco and Nice .
Speculating is not in his dictionary but he will surely have to go more on the attack after his rival's exhibition in the 2023 time trial in which he took the colors and almost two minutes. So there was a port. This time there will be two climbs, La Turbie and the col d'Éze, with their respective descents. How much time do you need to arrive safely? Is it worth changing your bike? Will the history of 1989 be repeated? Will the record for shortest distance between the top two on the podium be broken? 35 years have passed and it will be 35 kilometers.
Everything starts in Italy, where the Tour has prepared traps but also wanted to pay tribute to two Italian champions such as Pantani, who was born in Cesenatico, at the start of stage 2, and Coppi, whose home, Tortona, will be spent on the third day.
The fourth comes the first big test, with the Galibier. “He has never climbed so high so soon,” confirms Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour, who in the first week also included a flat time trial (25 km) and a stage through the sterrato of the Troyes vineyards.
The Alps have two visits (in addition to the finish of the Tour Femmes in the Alpe d'Huez) but the Pyrenees are not silent and will have two high finishes, with another two tough stages to St. Lary Soulan, crossing the Tourmalet, and the Plateau de Beille, where Joaquim Rodríguez (2015) and Alberto Contador (2007) raised their arms. Last summer Spain won three stages. Surely the Pello Bilbao, Ion Izagirre and Carlos Rodríguez, who have just renewed, can already imagine where they can repeat.
