The Grand Départ of the 2024 Tour de France in Florence is still eight months away but many of the main contenders are already known, with the many of the names in the sport expected to target the yellow jersey next July.
As ever, Cyclingnews has created this form ranking for the big favourites, with regular updates through the season and into the Tour de France.
We will rank the Tour de France contenders by their form and performances when the season gets going and as the countdown begins to the Grand Départ in Tuscany.
Now it’s time to run the rule over the contenders for the maillot jaune for the first time, from Jonas Vingegaard to Enric Mas.
- Team: Jumbo-Visma
- Age: 26
- Tour Experience: Winner in 2022 and 2023, runner-up in 2021
Jonas Vingegaard established himself alone at the top of the Tour de France favourites after claiming his second yellow jersey with an even more dominant performance at the 2023 edition.
He produced a time trial performance for the ages on stage 16 to distance Tadej Pogačar before removing any doubt with a brutal follow-up on the queen stage in the Alps just 24 hours later.
The Dane was at the 2024 route presentation in Paris and was excited about such a difficult route that has a brutal third week filled with altitude metres. The GC battle to play out right to the final moment. The final stage time trial from Monaco to Nice arrives after back-to-back high alpine stages which on paper look like prime Vingegaard territory.
There won’t be any challenge to his established overall leadership at Jumbo-Visma due to the departure of Primož Roglič and a team filled with super-domestiques is likely to support him in France.
Sepp Kuss will surely be back on duty as his main lieutenant in the high mountains, with Wout van Aert perhaps keeping him safe on flat stages and the contentious gravel stage.
- Team: UAE Team Emirates
- Age: 25
- Tour Experience: Winner in 2020 and 2021, runner-up in 2022 and 2023
Pogačar arrived at the 2023 race as Vingegaard’s biggest rival but the Dane’s superiority in the high mountains cemented his position as the current best Grand Tour rider in the world.
Pogačar was hampered in the lead-up to the Tour by a broken wrist at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and disrupted training but was only Vingegaard’s equal for the first two weeks of…
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