The Tour de France kicks off today with 2024 winner Tadej Pogacar in pole position. The 3,338-kilometre route starts in Lille and finishes on the Champs Elysées, making this the first edition since 2020 not to venture abroad.
Following starts in Florence, Bilbao and Copenhagen, every mile of this year's 21-day course is on French soil, for the first time since the pandemic-delayed edition.
"We decided to bring the Tour home, it was high time after all the foreign starts," said race director Christian Prudhomme – a former TV executive who has transformed the Tour de France into a global extravaganza broadcast in 190 countries.
Last year's winner, Team UAE's Tadej Pogacar starts as red-hot favourite with fans and bookmakers alike.
The 26-year-old Slovenian has won the Tour de France three times (in 2020, 2021 and 2024), the Giro d'Italia, the world title and nine one-day monument races, and boasts 99 professional wins overall.
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However, American former champion Greg LeMond, who won the Tour de France in 1986, 1989 and 1990, told French news agency AFP in a recent interview that it would be a close call.
"Pogacar is like the one in a million, but you can't count [Danish rider Jonas] Vingegaard out. That's what's making cycling so exciting right now."
Vingegaard's Visma team boss Grischa Niermann spoke this week of his confidence in the Dane's plan for this year's Tour, saying: "We think we can get the best possible result."
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Montmartre magic
A total of 184 riders from 23 teams will gather in Lille for the Grand Depart, with local authorities preparing for a massive influx of fans from neighbouring cycling-mad Belgium.
Belgian star Remco Evenepoel will be well supported as the first week takes in the north coast of France at Dunkirk and Caen, before shifting to another cycling heartland in Brittany with its verdant, rolling roads.
The volcanoes of the Puy de Dome will present the riders with their first mountains as late as stage 10, with two more colossal climb days in the Pyrenees before the blockbuster final week in the Alps.
But before the dash to the finish line on the Champs-Elysées there is one final twist in store. In a nod to the 2024 Olympic Games road race, which drew vast crowds to the picturesque Parisian neighbourhood of Montmartre, this year riders on the Tour will climb the Montmartre hill and pass beneath Sacré-Cœur.
Following the men's race, the women's Tour de France runs from 26 July until 3 August with nine stages covering 1,165 kilometres, in which 154 riders will push off from the western city of Vannes and finish in Châtel in the eastern Haute Savoie department.
(with AFP)
