The Tour de France will today begin in Italy for the first time in history, with the Grand Départ from Florence marking the start of 21 days of tough racing over 3,497 km and more than 53,000 metres of elevation gain. As the peloton leaves Florence the riders will pass through Ponte a Ema, the birthplace of two-time Tour winner Gino Bartali. It's a highly challenging 206km-long first stage on the 111th Tour de France, with an extremely hilly parcours, including seven tough côtes with very steep gradients and more than 3,600 metres of climbing over the hills of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. It should be an interesting opportunity for the climbing breakaway specialists, whilst the GC favourites’ teams might remain relatively neutral on this type of stage, with the final climb in San Marino being just under 26km from the finish on the Adriatic and the Rimini coast. The talented quartet of Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel are the pre-race favourites, with the awesome foursome having won nine of the last 12 Grand Tours between them. Visma-Lease a Bike’s Vingegaard, winner of the last two Tours, makes a return to racing for the Grande Boucle, having been out of action since suffering a punctured lung and other injuries at Itzulia Basque Country in April. UAE Team Emirates man Pogacar - the winner of the Tour in 2020 and 2021 - has been in the form of his life so far in 2024, having a great spring and winning the Giro d’Italia by nearly 10 minutes in May. The Slovenian star is on a quest to reclaim the Yellow Jersey and become the first rider to win the Giro and Tour in the same calendar year since Marco Pantani in 1998. Soudal–Quick-Step’s Evenepoel and Bora-Hansgrohe’s Roglic also suffered injuries in the crash at the Itzulia Basque Country, returning to racing at June’s Critérium du Dauphiné, where Roglic took the overall title and two stage wins, whilst Evenepoel won the ITT. Given the characteristics of Stage 1 it might be a bit early for Mark Cavendish to become the Tour’s outright stage wins record holder with 35 victories. That is the quest of the 39 year-old Astana-Qazaqstan rider in his 15th and final Tour, but the likes of Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Jasper Philipsen and Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pedersen stand in his way, alongside their fellow sprinters Sam Bennett of Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale and Biniam Girmay of Intermarché-Wanty.
