Can Mark Cavendish break the stage record? Why is gravel so divisive? And what impact will the finale in Nice have on the destination of the GC? Here, we address eight of the key talking points posed by the 111th edition of the Tour de France.
With the Tour starting in Florence, Italy, on 29 June, we look at the fate of the sprinters, ponder why the white jersey competition needs a revamp and analyse Tadej Pogačar’s bold Giro and Tour-winning mission.
Before that, we’ll start with whether the ‘Big Four’ of Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel will arrive at the Grand Départ in fine fettle to give us a battle for the ages…
1. Will the ultimate showdown happen?
All the chatter at the back end of 2023 was about the prospect of the so-called ‘Big Four’ of stage racing squaring off against each other at this year’s Tour de France.
In this scenario, each of Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogačar, Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel would arrive at the Grand Départ in fine fettle and we’d see a battle for the ages play out on a level playing field. We know from experience, however, that it rarely works out like this.
While it was most unlikely that a single crash at Itzulia Basque Country in April would skittle three of them in one fell swoop, the road to July is a long one, riddled with trapdoors and booby traps as riders train and race their way to peaking at the Tour.
Only Vingegaard, with a punctured lung, suffered injuries that seriously threatened his Tour defence, but this was a timely reminder that professional cycling is too much of a tightrope walk to always get the caveat-free showdowns we crave.
2. The Olympic effect
It’s rare that the Tour de France isn’t the biggest sporting event of the year in the country – the 1924 Paris Olympics, or the 1998 football World Cup are two exceptions. And 2024 will be another, as the French capital hosts the Olympics once more, a century on from the last time.
It has consequences for the race too, some unprecedented, some that happen every four years. For the first time ever, the finish of the Tour has moved from Paris, to accommodate the huge footprint of the Olympics, which will start five days later, on 26 July.
For many, this is welcome news. Not only has the finish moved south to Nice from France’s biggest city, but the final stage will be competitive for the riders contending for the yellow jersey, which in Paris it famously isn’t (the 1989 finale excluded).
The race may also lack some key protagonists. World champion Lotte Kopecky will be a big miss to the race (the Olympic Omnium finishes the day before the women’s Tour starts).
3. Can Cav break the Tour stage win record?
Come Turin, the finish of stage 3 and the first likely opportunity of a sprint finish, all eyes will again be on Mark Cavendish and whether he can finally win his 35th stage and become the most successful stage hunter in Tour history.
You can go all the way back to the 2017 edition, the first where Cavendish, with 30 stages under his belt, had a shot at 35, to first find it as a talking point.
Since then, he’s won four – all in 2021 – and there’s been plenty of time in that period where it seemed miles off.
He’s back for another stab in 2024, buoyed by a far stronger team than in the crash-curtailed 2023 race.
It’s charitable to say he started 2024 sluggishly, but at 39 it’s more of a marathon than a sprint – and if there’s one thing we know about Cavendish, he’s a man for the big occasion.
4. Will Pogačar do the double?
The equality of the ‘Big Four’ rivarly took a hit as early as last December when Pogačar revealed his intention to target the Giro-Tour double. It’s a challenge rarely targeted – Chris Froome was the last to try in 2018 – and one that’s even more rarely achieved (Marco Pantani was the last rider to manage it in the EPO-fuelled era in 1998).
Pogačar has already secured the first part of the double, but faces far more pitfalls at the Tour de France.
Just a month separates the Giro and Tour, and it’s a period in which he’ll need to flush a Grand Tour out of his legs while his rivals fine-tune theirs.
5. Gravel adds a tasty new flavour
As with the fuss generated each time the cobbles of northern France are included on the Tour’s route, it was no surprise to see a similar level of opprobrium directed at stage 9’s gravel stage in Troyes.
Visma Lease a Bike boss Richard Plugge called the 32km of gravel roads “unnecessary” and said it “increases the chance of bad luck”.
Even Pogačar, who’s twice detonated the opposition at the calendar’s premier gravel rendezvous, Strade Bianche, told FloBikes the stage is “pretty risky” for the GC favourites, before adding that “we risk it anyway every day”.
That's really the key point in this discussion. Risk abounds in this sport. Descending mountains at 100km/h, high-speed pile-ups in a packed peloton on flat, straight roads or a touching of wheels at seemingly quiet moments of a race… event-ending incidents are present from the flag to the finish.
Counter-intuitively, such is the apprehension with which gravel is viewed, it may have a moderating effect on how it is raced.
6. White noise
Every year, it’s the polka dots of the King of the Mountains jersey that gets talked down as a flawed competition. It is, frankly. It can be won in a couple of ways, both of which do it few favours.
For the rider who’s patently not the King of the Mountains but has accumulated the most points in the shrewdest way according to the rules, it’s a deserved reward that gets few plaudits.
7. Fluorescent adolescents
Professional cycling likes to follow trends, and the flourishing of young riders over the last five years or so has shifted the thinking, for several reasons, on the peak years of a Tour de France contender.
So who might break through to wider prominence in 2024 and beyond? Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates colleague, the 21-year-old Spaniard Juan Ayuso, has a Vuelta podium to his name as a teenager and, should the Slovenian fall out of contention, will be in line to deputise.
The team have something of a monopoly on the best young stage-racing talent, with Isaac del Toro, 20 (with a contract to 2029!), and Jan Christen, 19, on their books, even if this year’s Tour comes too early.
Ineos Grenadiers have always sought to recruit the world’s best young talent and, in American Andrew August, 18, they think they’ve got a good one.
For the GC winner or contender who wins it by accident in the final mountain stages of the race, it’s nothing but an additional or unnecessary byproduct of overall race success or failure. It’s not just the KOM competition that needs a rethink, but the white jersey too.
Awarded to the highest-placed young rider (under-26) of the race, in the last five editions it has been awarded to Pogačar (4) and Egan Bernal (1) – either winners or runners-up of the race.
Such is the current dominance of youth at the race, perhaps organisers should look at reducing the upper age limit for this category (the lower age limit for entering the Tour is 18).
If you’re 25 these days, you’re an elder statesman.
8. The hardest ever Tour for sprinters?
Do you trust the opinion of a sprinter when they say the 2024 route “might be the hardest route I’ve ever seen at the Tour de France”.
That’s what Mark Cavendish told assembled media at the Tour launch in October and as one of the riders regularly bringing up the rear in the gruppetto, we tend to believe that they’re the ones who know what they’re talking about, not the GC favourites.
Sprint opportunities are few on the ground – nothing until stage 3, high mountains early doors on stage 4 and a huge number of hilly and mountainous days across the three weeks.
Notably, this year they don’t even have the carrot in the final week schlep through the Alps of a final-stage sprint finish on the Champs-Élysées, with the finish relocating as a one-off to Nice. Stage 16, to Nîmes, looks to be their final opportunity of the race.
