Without Geraint Thomas, the cyclist who accompanied Vingegaard and Pogacar in Paris a year ago, and with just 22 kilometers of time trial on the route, most of the climbers in the peloton see themselves with the possibility of, this time, getting on the podium of the Elysian Fields. Although theoretically all of them fight for the third step. They are not less Enric Mas and Mikel Landa, who will have to look for dressed in white because both Movistar and Bahrain change the color of their jerseys. For the 33-year-old from Alava, it will be his sixth Tour, while the 28-year-old from the Balearic Islands will be at the start for the fifth time.
The race has turned its back on both of them, neither stage victories nor podiums, but they continue to insist, stubborn in one day taming the beast.
Twice third in the Giro, Landa was left with honey on his lips in 2020 and, above all, in 2017, when he was just a breath away, fourth. Then a second separated him from the podium. He couldn't wrest it from Bardet in the Marseille time trial.
Mas comes after his abandonment of the Tour last year when he was more than 24 minutes away. He regained confidence with his third second place in the Vuelta (2018, 2021 and 2022) and his victory over Pogacar in Emilia, but he has always stumbled in France, too timorous.
Both Landa and Mas know that their opportunities are running out because the changing of the guard is coming with the arrival of Ayuso –who will focus on the Vuelta this year– and Carlos Rodríguez, former Spanish road champion who is related to Movistar for the 2024. The stubbornness of the two climbers meets the illusion of the newcomer. Rodríguez (Ineos) makes his debut at the age of 22 in the test with which he has always dreamed.
"I don't know if I'm a Tour man," says the man from Granada with a twinkle in the eyes of the one he wants to learn from. After falling in March and having to undergo surgery, he was in good shape in the Dauphiné, better than Mas and Landa, far from Vingegaard.
