Overall Contenders for the Tour de France 2024
Who are the overall contenders to win the Tour de France 2024?
Now that Jonas Vingegaard’s participation has been confirmed, we will be treated to the much-anticipated battle among the Big Four.
They are Vingegaard, Tadej Pogacar, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel. It should prove fascinating.
Jonas Vingegaard
Jonas Vingegaard won the last two editions of the Tour de France, so under normal circumstances he would be the outright favourite.
Unfortunately for the Dane, he suffered serious injuries in a crash during the Tour of the Basque Country in April.
Vingegaard left hospital on 16th April 2024, and by early May he was back training on the road.
More recently the 2023 champion has been training at altitude with his team in Tignes, and yesterday Team Visma Lease-a-Bike confirmed his participation in the Grand Boucle.
Although he has been training, Jonas Vingegaard hasn’t raced since his April crash, and he is going to the Tour on the basis of training alone. That makes it likely that he will be under-cooked at the Grand Départ.
He will hope that he can ride his way into form by the second or third week of the race.
There is an inconvenient truth, though, that the start of the 2024 Tour de France is very hard.
Stage 2 and Stage 3 are like one-day Classics, and Stage 4 is a difficult mountain stage.
It will be fascinating to see if Vingegaard gets through these early tests without losing too much time.
Tadej Pogacar
Tadej Pogacar didn’t take part in the Tour of the Basque Country, and was the only one of the Big Four to avoid crashing there.
He is on a different schedule to the other three, having done and won the Giro d’Italia.
Pogacar seems to be in the best form of his life. The main doubt over him is whether he can maintain sparkling form late into July.
The Giro-Tour double hasn’t been done since 1998. Then it was Marco Pantani who did it, and he was certainly on performance-enhancing drugs, so arguably his achievement should be disregarded.
Can Pogacar do the double? Time will tell.
Primoz Roglic
Roglic is a proven Grand Tour winner – three times in the Vuelta and once in the Giro. He hasn’t won the Tour de France yet.
He will have a strong team to support him, including Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov. There will be no question of who is the Bora Hansgrohe team leader, unlike when he was a Jumbo rider in last year’s Vuelta and had to cede priority to Sepp Kuss.
Further, Roglic won the Tour warm-up race, the Dauphiné.
Everything is pointing in Roglic’s direction then?
Not quite. There are three main reservations.
First, the Slovenian’s Dauphiné win came with a serious wobble on the last day. Second, Roglic is now 34, which means he might be past his very best.
Third, as brilliant as he is, he could be just off the level of Vingegaard and Pogacar at their best.
Remco Evenepoel
Remco is another excellent GC rider, but is probably the fourth of the Big Four.
He has won one Grand Tour, the 2022 Vuelta. Neither Vingegaard nor Pogacar were on the start list of that race, and Roglic crashed out on Stage 17.
He is the reigning ITT World Champion, and might be expected to win the time trials on Stage 7 and Stage 21.
Remco was involved in the Basque Country crash, but by 26th April he was back training outdoors.
He was fit enough to ride the Dauphiné, and good enough to win the individual time trial.
In the mountains, though, Evenepoel let the best riders go and treated the stages as training rides. He finished the race seventh overall, 2 minutes 25 seconds down on Roglic.
Given his preparation to that point, we perhaps shouldn’t read too much into it.
The Belgian will be hoping for a podium finish as a minimum.