Words John Whitney Photos Getty
01 29 June / 206kmFlorence Rimini
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Range finders
Today’s stage visits the Apennines, one of four mountain ranges on this year’s route (with the Alps, Pyrenees and Massif Central)
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The first act
Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) to repeat his 2023 trick and capture the opening yellow jersey
This is not a misprint. The 2024 Tour de France really is starting in Italy. After 25 starts outside France in the Tour’s 121-year history, this is the first for Italy, home of the second biggest Grand Tour of the season, the Giro d’Italia. Florence, the capital of Tuscany, and the neighbouring region of Emilia-Romagna, play host before the race works its way northwest, via Turin and Pinerolo, across the border into France.
Opening stages of the Tour are notoriously fast and twitchy, especially on flat stages where the sprinters’ teams are vying for yellow. The abundance of climbing on the menu today, however, is good news for the yellow jersey contenders, who won’t mind it one bit – they’re built for steep hills, not flat boulevards, after all. The Tour has never started with more than 3,600m of climbing before. “It’s also the first time the race has visited the home city of Gino Bartali [winner of both Tour and Giro from the 1930s],” says race director Christian Prudhomme. “The succession of hills in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna are likely to be the setting for a testing confrontation between the contenders for the title, particularly the final climb into San Marino (7.1km at 4.8%), where the race will add a 13th name to its catalogue of foreign visits.”
02 30 June / 200.8kmCesenatico Bologna
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Italian masters
There are seven Italians to win the Tour de France. The first was exactly 100 years ago - Ottavio Bottecchia
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Matej victorious?
Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) is a former winner at Milan-Sanremo and will relish the descent to the finish
We pick up in Emilia-Romagna again, in Cesenatico, where 1998 Tour winner Marco Pantani began cycling. Long before ‘Il Pirata’ came along, this coastal town on the Adriatic Sea had a close relationship with the Giro d’Italia since 1935, as does the finish line 200km away in Bologna, which hosted the finish of the first ever Giro stage in 1909. The stage starts flat with a few short, sharp climbs, but the action will be at the finale. “The passage across Emilia-Romagna is
