The 112nd edition of the Tour de France rushes on Saturday from Lille with a big favorite, Tadej Pogacar, who can win a fourth victory at only 26 years old, provided that they already survive a first week of all dangers.
After three consecutive departures from abroad and two new ones to come, in Barcelona next year and in Edinburgh in 2027, the big departure of the Tour returns to France for a 100% hexagonal edition.
Third sporting event in the world after the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup, the big loop attracts 12 million people every year to the roadside. And the atmosphere should be there during the first four stages in Hauts-de-France, a territory passionate about bicycle, for a first week that promises to be explosive.
For the first time in five years, the inaugural stage, over 185 km Saturday from Lille in Lille, is promised to sprinters despite the presence of three difficulties listed on the course.
Jasper Philipsen, Tim Merlier, Jonathan Milan, Biniam Girmay and the other fast men of the peloton should compete for the victory and the first yellow jersey of this edition.
But from the second stage, Sunday, between Lauwin-Planque and Boulogne-sur-Mer, we will have a summary of what the organizers wanted to set up for this first week of “false plain”, with a succession of very steep coasts in the final by the sea.
– The tour played from the Pyrenees? –
This will be an opportunity for Mathieu van der Poel, Wout Van Aert and the Kyrielle of French Putanchers to already illustrate.
And for the leaders in the general classification to tighten their buttocks.
Because, beyond the inherent tension at the start of each turn, the most important race of the year that all the teams address with maximum aggressiveness, the next few days promise to be electric.
“We will just try to survive and at the end of the week we will see who got out of the battlefield without falling or injury,” sums up the double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, third last year.
For the Belgian, the “real tour for the general classification will only start in the Pyrenees” where two arrivals at the top in Hautacam and Superbagnères await the runners with, in the middle, a ribbing time trial in Peyragudes.
Will the tour be played after this triptych and even before Mount Ventoux and the two mountain stages in the Alps, at the Col de la Loze and La Plagne?
It is not forbidden to think so, so Tadej Pogacar has dominated his subject for a year and a half.
Still masterful at the Dauphiné in June, the Slovenian is in the running for a fourth victory in the Tour de France to return to Chris Froome and a length from the record relaxed by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain.
– Vingegaard wants to believe it –
On the way, the world champion can already win the 100th victory of his career with an 18th stage on the Tour, another frightening figure which already places him among the best of all time.
The only one to seem to be able to compete is Jonas Vingegaard, winner in 2022 and 2023.
The Danish, who has “never felt so strong”, can rely on a formidable Visma team (Jorgenson, Simon Yates, Kuss, Van Aert, …) with which he has harassment Pogacar as two years ago.
Behind the two favorites, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel promises to be the main podium candidate with Primoz Roglic. Provided however that the latter already manages to finish the tour which has not happened to him since 2020.
The other big names for the general are all luxury servants, whether Joao Almeida for Pogacar at Uae or Matteo Jorgenson and Simon Yates for Vingegaard at Visma.
With such a fireplace, the two jugns of the peloton are likely to crush the race which will bring the runners to the Champs-Elysées on July 27 after an unprecedented foray into the Montmartre hill, a year after the Olympic Games.
But before, as Pogacar recalls himself, “we will have to spoil everything during the first week, where you can easily lose the turn. It is first to survive”.
Posted on July 5 at 4:47 am, AFP
