@ASO

Key points:

Ø The start list of the 110th Tour de France is out before stage 1, Bilbao to Bilbao, 182km, Saturday 1st July. No number 61 is assigned to pay tribute to Gino Mäder.
Ø A duel between Pogacar and Vingegaard is highly awaited but there are many more sporting stakes.
Ø A majority of the 176 starters aim for a stage win. 48 riders already won a stage in the past.

MORE DANES AND MORE NORWEGIANS THAN ITALIANS ON THE START LIST

The 176 participants of the 110th Tour de France hold passports from 27 different nations. France is the most represented with 32 riders (exactly the same number as last year), followed by Belgium (21), Spain and The Netherlands (14), Australia (12), Denmark (11, one up from the start in Copenhagen and just as many as in 2021) and Norway with a record breaking number of 8 starters due to the first ever invitation issued to a Norwegian-registered team (Uno-X). Australia matches its record, set in 2012. Italy with 7 didn’t have such a low number since 1983. For the second year running, Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) is the youngest in the bunch, aged 22 years, 1 month and 23 days on the start line. The second youngest is Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers). The oldest is Dries Devenyns (Soudal-Quick Step) who will turn 40 on the penultimate stage to Le Markstein. 36 riders will take part in the Tour de France for the first time, the most famous of them being Giro d’Italia winner Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Gent-Wevelgem winner Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty). There won’t be any 61 bib number to honour the memory of Gino Mäder so the leader of Bahrain Victorious Mikel Landa will have the 62 and there’ll be a 69 carried by Fred Wright. In the UAE Team Emirates, nobody will get the number 13 and Adam Yates has the 19.

A RECORD NUMBER OF 12 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

Twelve national champions for road racing are set to line up in front of the San Mamés stadium for the start of stage 1 on Saturday: Tadej Pogacar (Slovenia), Richard Carapaz (Ecuador), Valentin Madouas (France), Emanuel Buchmann (Germany), Mattias Skjelmose (Denmark), Esteban Chaves (Colombia), Fred Wright (Great-Britain), Dylan van Baarle (The Netherlands), Alex Kirsch (Luxemburg), Alexei Lutsenko (Kazakhstan), Quinn Simmons (USA) and Gregor Mühlberger (Austria). It’s a record equalling number, on pair with 2010, 2014, 2017 and 2019. They were only five last year: Peter Sagan (Slovakia), Florian Sénéchal (France), Nils Politt (Germany), Felix Grossschartner (Austria) and Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg (South Africa). European champion Fabio Jakobsen is the thirteen man with a distinctive jersey this year.

A HIGHLY AWAITED DUEL BETWEEN JONAS VINGEGAARD AND TADEJ POGACAR

The past three editions of the Tour de France were won by Tadej Pogacar (2020, 2021) and Jonas Vingegaard (2022). Logically, they are the two main favourites this year. They are also the two most successful pro riders in the 2023 season. The Slovenian has won 14 races including Paris-Nice, the Tour of Flanders and the Flèche wallonne while the Dane claimed the Itzulia Basque Country and the Critérium du Dauphiné. The big question mark is the injury Pogacar sustained at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. “I don’t have full mobility of my wrist as of yet – 60, 70% maybe”, he said in Bilbao ahead of the Tour de France. “But these last days it hasn’t upset me while training. I feel no pain.” The leader of UAE Team Emirates took a low profile: “Jonas is obviously the main guy for this Tour. He showed his dominance in Dauphiné. The best scenario for me is getting the yellow jersey in stage 20, like three years ago. We get less pressure that way. In the first week you usually have to hold your horses, but this year there will be more action.” “It’s not only about him and me”, Vingegaard moderated. “What counts is who will have the best shape at the end of the race. People can considered that I’m chased down but I’m also on the hunt for the overall victory. It’s not very different from last year.”

O’CONNOR, GAUDU, HINDLEY & Co BID FOR FINAL PODIUM

The fight for GC isn’t limited to the first two positions. There are many candidates for the third one who don’t say they’re racing for the Maillot Jaune. Australia’s Ben O’Connor and France’s David Gaudu have come fourth in the two previous editions and want to move one step higher. “I intend to capitalise on my second place at Paris-Nice to achieve this”, announced the climber of Groupama-FDJ. “If you try to attack Pogacar and Vingegaard, you risk to pay the price”, the AG2R-Citroën rider echoed. “It’s highly unlikely that they’ll lose their focus. Richard Carapaz, third in 2021, Romain Bardet, second in 2016 and third in 2017, Rigoberto Uran, second in 2017, and why not Thibaut Pinot, third in 2014, would love to share the honours with the victor again while Simon Yates, seventh and best young rider in 2017, Mikel Landa, fourth in 2017, and Enric Mas, fifth in 2020, also imagine themselves on the podium in Paris, but it might as well be a rookie. Jai Hindley, the 2022 Giro d’Italia winner, put his hands up: “The podium, why not, I prepared full gas, he declared. It’s the big objective of the season, the podium in Paris would be a dream come true, it’ll take a lot of pain and suffering to come to that point but I’ll never say never.”

48 PREVIOUS STAGE WINNERS… AND MANY MORE CANDIDATES!

48 out of 176 starters have already won at least one stage of the Tour de France in previous years. In each edition of the race, between six and eight stages are won from breakaways from far out. Intermarché-Circus-Wanty is the kind of team eager to try their luck this way although they also target GC with Louis Meintjes, 7th last year. They are yet to win a stage as a team but three of their recruits have done it before: Lilian Calméjane, Rui Costa and Mike Teunissen. Israel-Premier Tech wants to emulate Simon Clarke and Hugo Houle’s achievements of last year with Michael Woods whose two Grand Tour stage victories up to date took place in the Basque Country at La Vuelta (at Balcon de Bizkaia in 2018 and Villanueva de Valdegovia in 2020). Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) has made his fame at the Tour de France by wearing the Maillot Jaune in 2019 but he’s openly on the hunt for his first stage win. Breakaways for stage wins is also a French speciality at the Tour de France: newly crowned national champion Valentin Madouas and Nans Peters, a Pyrenean stage winner in 2020, are often named as candidates.

GREEN JERSEY FAVOURITES KEEP CARDS CLOSE TO THEIR CHEST

Three participants to the 110th Tour de France won the points classification in the past: Mark Cavendish (2011, 2021), Peter Sagan (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019) and Wout van Aert (2022). The Belgian is the most likely to do it again but he made it clear: “This is not my goal this year.” However, he noted: “There are many points up for grabs in the last stages.” So it’s not his goal at the beginning of the Tour but it might become one towards the end. He kind of designated his successor who was the runner-up last year: “My favourite for the green jersey is Jasper Philipsen.” The last winner on the Champs-Elysées commented: “We’ll look for stage wins and this is a good way to take points for the green jersey.” Fabio Jakobsen short-cut expectations: “The green jersey is not a big goal for me in this Tour de France. I’m targeting stage wins. I don’t have the level to compete with Van Aert in the points classification.” Dylan Groenewegen said the same thing differently: “It’s very hard for pure sprinters to win the green jersey.” Mads Pedersen and Biniam Girmay also have the credentials to win this competition.

SAFER: A NEW TOOL TO IMPROVE SAFETY

Following on from the work begun almost three years ago, the stakeholders in professional cycling, namely the UCI, the organizers, the teams and the riders’ representative bodies, have announced the creation of a structure intended to improve safety conditions in competitions. SafeR (for SafeRoadcycling) has the mission of responding to the increased number of incidents and injuries observed for several years. The first meetings made it possible to define the working methods of SafeR, an independent body whose mission will be to deepen the analysis of all the risks related to the race routes and to provide advice on safety. As president of the AIOCC (International Association of Cycling Races Organisers), Christian Prudhomme underlined the importance of the work carried out together and the desire to continue it in the future: “The birth of SafeR shows that all cycling families want to work together and this is essential. This new entity will make it possible to increase the level of competition security.” UCI president David Lappartient commented: “The safety of riders and people present in the race bubble and on the roadside is a priority for the UCI. Despite the measures put in place since the strengthening of the UCI rules on safety in 2021, it is clear that the number of incidents and injuries continues to increase. The UCI and all cycling families must unite to reverse this trend and this common desire to find solutions together has materialized in the creation of SafeR.”