Tour de France 2024

The Game Room
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This Saturday marks the beginning of this year’s edition of the big bicycle race in France. I haven’t been following racing as closely this year as I have in the past several since GCN+ shuttered their streaming service, but I did watch the Lanterne Rouge TdF preview on Youtube, so I feel well-qualified to pontificate on the proceedings.

Route:
The traditional outside-of-France start is this year in Italy, and unusually Stage 1 includes significant hilliness in the form of multiple Cat 2 climbs and then the freaking HC Col du Galibier already on Stage 4. Hopefully this decreases the usual twitchy crashiness as all the sprinters scramble to nab yellow for a day while GC contenders try to survive without getting caught behind a tangled mess of splintered carbon. Or maybe not, who knows? Regardless, expect serious racing right out of the gate rather than half a week of sleepy sprint stages.

Also unusually, the race will not feature the traditional processional ending on the Champs d’Elysee in Paris. Because of the Olympics, the race will instead conclude with an individual TT in Nice. I believe the last time the Tour concluded with a TT was when Lemond won the GC by 8 seconds over Fignon.

Beyond that, it’s a pretty balanced looking course that doesn’t obviously favour any of the contenders. Speaking of which…

The Contenders

Normally we’d expect defending champ Jonas Vingegaard to be the race favourite, but he crashed at crazy speeds early in the season at the Tour of the Basque Country in Spain and the TdF will be his first race back. Nobody except his own team have a clue about what his form might be like, but consensus is that he’s not likely to be at his 2022/3 peak.

That leaves former two-time winner Tadej Pogacar as the odds-on favourite. Pogacar is coming off a dominant win in the Giro d’Italia and will be mounting the first serious attempt at the Giro/Tour double since Froome failed to pull it off in 2018 (he won the Giro and finished 3rd at the Tour behind Geraint Thomas and Tom Dumoulin). In spite of the rarity of performing well at the Tour after riding the Giro, everyone seems to be expecting Pog to win the overall and half the stages with ease.

After Pog and Vingegaard, the next most likely to win is Primoz Roglic. He switched from riding for Jumbo Visma last year to Bora Hansgrohe, and unlike the past few years is now the undisputed leader on his team. And it’s a strong team. However, Roglic didn’t look great in the Dauphine, and hasn’t been quite on par with Pog and Jonas in the past few years.

The race winner will likely be one of those three, with other contenders like Rodriguez and Bernal of Team Ineos, Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep, etc, unlikely to vie for more than a spot on the podium. Surprises in this regard are always welcome.

The other major storyline of note is Mark Cavendish. Cav is back, probably for the last time, and looking for one last stage victory to bring his career total to 35 and break the record of individual TdF stage wins that he currently shares with the GOAT Eddy Merckx. The sprint field at the Tour this year is a little weaker than it has been in the recent past, but last year’s green jersey-winner Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin Deceuninck will be there and will be the favourite in any individual sprint. Dylan Groenewegen of Jayco Alula is also probably faster than Cav at the moment. But Astana has bought more support for Cav this year in the form of leadout specialist Michael Morkov, along with a rather formidable sprint train, and given Cav’s mastery of sprint positioning it’s entirely possible he will succeed in his quest. Certainly Team Astana has shown up to the race with that single goal, betting probably correctly that Cav winning one stage and breaking Merckx’s record will generate more publicity than multiple random stage wins or placing 6th in the GC.

Allez!

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Thanks for starting the thread. As in most years, I’ll probably just watch the ~30 min stage summaries.
Bummer that Sepp Kuss is out. Will Nielson Powless wear the polka-dot for a few stages again?

Article in Ars Technica (which is a bit outside their normal thing)

Brian

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Cavendish already in big trouble after the first climb, his project 35 in jeopardy. Although four team mates support him, their group is already 8 minutes behind the top and 4 minutes behind the peloton, and more mountains to follow. Could get close finishing within the time limit.

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Bardet putting on a show here. He’s announced his retirement after next year’s Dauphine, so this is his last tour. I can’t remember that he’s ever worn yellow, notwithstanding his GC podium finishes and multiple stage wins, so if he hangs on here the French fans will have an early treat.

Not looking very good for him, though. 40s at 7k.

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Wow, and Bardet makes it by four seconds. 200 meters longer, and the peloton would’ve caught them.

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I thought he was doomed. Quite pleased to be wrong. I’ve been a Bardet fan for a long time, back to when he was the only guy who’d ever try anything interesting in the Froome Sky Train days.

Wout van Aert took the sprint behind, which is interesting given he’s been saying he’s never started the Tour in such bad form before (for the unaware, he was in a very bad crash back in the early Classics season). I would have picked Mads Pedersen for that sprint, though perhaps Mads didn’t fight as hard for 3rd as he would have for 1st.

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Yes, I was also surprised and delighted by his performance, because I like him as a rider. Hadn’t expected much of him. Maybe already tomorrow’s stage will tell if Vingegaard regained form as quickly as Wout.

ETA: so, flying change now to Italy-Switzerland in the Euro. Changing channels and threads. Will keep changing between the Tour and the Euro for the next two weeks…

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Just for the record, Cav made it in time. But he looked bad, he even threw up one time on a climb.

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Stage 2 featured a finishing circuit of the short, sharp San Luca climb (1.9km @ 10.6%) that’s the iconic feature of the fall classic Giro dell’Emilia, with the final summit 13km from the finish. This is Pogacar territory, and apparently Team UAE thought the same as Yates set a blistering pace the second time up San Luca and Pogi attacked hard over the top. And, Jonas was the only one who followed, and did so with apparent ease.

If Vingegaard is really back, it’s race on. We’ll know more after the Galibier on Stage 4.

ETA: Should probably mention that Roglic really shouldn’t be dropped on a climb like this, but was. And also that Remco Evenepoel took off after the Pogi/Vingegaard pair on the final 13k flat. And despite Jonas and Pogi relaying turns, Remco closed the gap to them. He’s not the world ITT champ for nothing. Early days, but tentatively moving Roglic down in my power rankings and Remco up.

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Yeah, this stage convinced me that Vingegaard is back in good shape, this was a very sharp attack by Pog, but Jonas quite easily followed. Let’s see if he’ll keep up.

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Due to the hilly early stages*, at the moment the green and polka dot leaders are the same person (Abrahamson).probably won’t last much longer but I find it interesting.

At this point Cavendish doesn’t look too promising for stage win 35. Maybe on a flatter stage?

Brian
* maybe my memory is faulty, but the early stages are significant;y hillier than in recet tours

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Today’s stage is the second flat stage just made for sprinters after stage 3, and two flat stages in the first week are quite normal. The exception this year was stage 1, which was extraordinarily hilly and tough for a first stage.

ETA: there’ll be even three flat stages in first week, another one tomorrow. Just looked up the profiles.

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And Cav does it!

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35! Will Eddy be fuming at the presentation? I’ve never got the impression that he’s particularly pleased with being surpassed.

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Nah, he can always claim that Cav is just a sprinter and that he won stages in every category.

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True, not to mention the GC a bunch of times. But I seem to recall him not being particularly gracious back when Mark got his 34th stage.

Cav’s also got to be close to holding records for longest time between first and last stage wins, and number of teams he’s won stages for.

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I obviously spoke too soon about Cavendish, but in my defense he did not look great in the early stages, and I correctly guessed he would do better in a flatter stage.
Abrahamson loses the green but holds on the the polka dot.

Brian

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With a second place today and the way he’s riding, Bini could hold green all the way to Nice.

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And he’s a relatively light-weighed sprinter and will not struggle much in the mountains.

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Yup, much more a classics fast man a la Sagan or Boonen rather than a pure sprinter. Gives him options to get points at intermediate sprints that guys like Philipsen just can’t contest. Plus Philipsen put himself in a big whole by getting relegated today.