Nothing, inside or beyond the sport of cycling, can truly compare to the Tour de France. The Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España may, like the Tour, be annual three-week races, and each year the Monuments and other one-day Classics, like the Tour, invariably spark huge interest and intrigue. But the Tour de France is simultaneously the biggest annual sporting event on the planet, a vital piece of the host country’s national heritage, and above all, a gruelling, heroic spectacle that captivates hundreds of millions of viewers across the world: as such, le Tour eclipses them all.
This year the Tour’s main narrative could hardly be more captivating: former double champion Tadej Pogačar, all-conquering in the first half of the 2023 season until a crash and broken wrist injury wrecked his final Classics race of this April, will be targeting the third maillot jaune of his career. But last year’s Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard represents a colossal obstacle for the Slovenian. And having beaten the arch-favourite Pogačar so decisively in the high mountains last July, the Danish star will surely be determined to do so again.
Beyond the GC struggle, the Tour is never lacking in subplots, and this year’s most important is without a doubt Mark Cavendish’s last battle to claim a record-breaking 35th stage win. The greatest sprinter of his generation, possibly of all time, the Briton knows he has only one Tour left to achieve this prior to imminent retirement. But at 37, Cavendish faces a host of younger, equally ambitious, fastmen – all well aware that even one stage victory at the Tour instantly etches their name in the sport’s most eminent of history books.
Yet this year’s Tour route could hardly be more daunting, either. Starting with three arduous, climb-packed stages just across the southern French border in the Basque Country, as soon as the Tour returns to more familiar terrain, the mountains kick in with a vengeance. Beginning at the Pyrenees, continuing with a rare visit to one of the Tour’s most hallowed summit finishes at Puy de Dome then finishing with a nonstop avalanche of climbs in the Alps and Vosges, the 2023 Tour winner, whoever he is, will have to master a high mountain challenge of almost unprecedented difficulty.
Present at the Tour de France for the 30th consecutive year, Cyclingnews will once again provide unparalleled in-depth reporting and round-the-clock analysis of the 21-stage, 3,404-kilometre race. Because le Tour, after…
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