A Dilettante's Guide to the 2024 Tour de France, Part 1
Previewing the green jersey competition and the other races within the race
The Tour de France is the only bike race most casual American sports fans are even aware of, so getting this audience on board can be a bit of a lift. But for God’s sake, cricket is Having a Moment in the U.S.—my former co-worker Rodger Sherman, one of the few people I’ve ever met whose love for esoteric sporting events surpasses my own—has been all over the nascent American boom in this bizarre country club sport. If he can make cricket make sense, all things are possible.
So what I’m doing this week is a two-part Tour de France preview. The race starts on Saturday in Florence, Italy1 on Saturday. The regularly-scheduled Friday issue of this newsletter will launch a day early and include everything you need to know about the battle for the general classification. Why a day early? Partially because I want everyone to have space to read it before the grand départ, but mostly because I’ll be traveling all day Thursday when I’d ordinarily be writing, so why not just publish when it’s done?
Today’s issue will deal with the race within a race: Opportunities for stage hunters and the battle for the green jersey. See, the Tour de France isn’t just one race, it’s actually about 25 different races all taking place at the same time. And that’s just counting the contests with a tangible winner; many riders—even entire teams—are just in it to be seen as being in the fight. There’s literally something for everyone.
If you’re a total newcomer to cycling, I recommend you go back to the first post from this newsletter, which I published last fall, which is an attempt to distill everything there is to know about race tactics and strategy into a single blog post.
But in case you don’t feel like clicking through, I’ll just quote a relevant passage here:
How do you win a stage race? Well, the simple version is that the clock starts at the beginning of each race day and stops when the riders cross the finish line. Riders who cross in a group (usually defined as finishing within one second of the rider ahead) get the same time. Add all those times up at the end of the race, and whoever has the lowest time is the winner of the general classification.
The truth is a little more complicated. To spice things up, race organizers set multiple secondary classifications. There’s a special category in most stage races for young riders, usually 25 years old or under. Most races also have two categories that have nothing to do with time. Climbs in stage races are categorized based on difficulty—climb length and gradient—and the first racers to get over the top are awarded points based on how hard the climb is. At the end of the race, those points are totaled up for a king (or queen) of the mountains classification.
Organizers will also award a descending number of points based on who actually finishes each stage first, with additional bonus points awarded to riders who cross certain markers in the middle of the stage first. These go into the points classification. (In a sport full of incredible idioms, this is one they kind of mailed in.) These points also frequently come with bonus seconds—finish the stage first and get 10 seconds knocked off your GC time, with six points for second and four for third.
…
In addition to the secondary classifications, many riders treat individual stages of these races as their own one-day races to be won, particularly at the grand tours. The effect of all this is that the overwhelming majority of the riders in a stage race don’t give even a little bit of a damn what their overall time is, because they’re not in it for the GC. They’re pursuing individual stage wins or secondary classifications, or helping a teammate achieve his or her goal.
In short, the last two paragraphs are at issue today; the first two I’ll deal with in the next newsletter.
The general classification is decided by which rider completes the course in the lowest cumulative time. The points classification is decided by, well, points, which are awarded to the winner of each stage (and the runners-up, on a descending basis). Points also go to the first riders to cross various designated intermediate checkpoints throughout the day. Margin of victory does not matter.
It’s a way to keep the race animated throughout the day, giving riders an incentive to keep the tempo up rather than sticking together and rolling through until the finish.
In many stage races, the same number of points are awarded regardless of the type of stage, so the rider who wins on GC will sometimes win the points classification as well. The Tour de France is unusual in that it awards more points on stages that are more easily won by sprinters—i.e. flat mass start stages—which all but explicitly makes this a competition for the fastest riders in the peloton.
That reality, as well as the traditional final-stage sprint on the Champs-Élysées (which we’re not getting this year; more on that later), usually gets the best sprinters in the world to show up for the Tour de France.
With that said, there are two ways to win the green jersey at the Tour de France. The first is to just blitz the mass sprints and rack up as many points as possible. This is what last year’s green jersey winner, Jasper Philipsen, did. There were six stages decided by a mass sprint last year; Philipsen won four and finished second in the other two. He also came in fourth in two other stages that were won by breakaway riders. Win that many stages and you’ll probably end up in green at the end of the race.
The other avenue is open to riders who have the endurance and climbing ability to excel in the classics, while maintaining the raw power to hang in bunch sprints. These riders get into breakaways and gobble up points at intermediate markers, then hope to end the stage in contention with Philipsen or Mark Cavendish or whichever pure sprinter is running the show in a given year. A pure sprinter who wins the green jersey would expect to win several stages; a hybrid-breakaway-classics-type sprinter could win green without actually taking victory on an individual stage.
Peter Sagan is the record holder with seven green jerseys; in those seven Tours de France, he took just 11 individual stage wins, but was constantly snatching up points opportunistically.
The other fun subplot between these two types of green jersey contender is the time limit. In order to win the points classification you have to actually finish the race, which means completing every individual stage within a certain percentage of the leader’s time. And the price riders like Philipsen (or Cavendish or Caleb Ewan or whoever) pay for their raw speed is they absolutely suck ass on the long, grinding climbs where the yellow jersey battle is decided. Sometimes, it’s a challenge to finish the stage within 30 or 40 minutes of the winner.
I’ll give you a recent example. In 2017, the contenders for the green jersey included punchy Australian Michael Matthews—a perennial bridesmaid at Milan-San Remo—and the hulking German speedster Marcel Kittel. Kittel took five of the first 11 stages of the race, at which point he led Matthews by more than 100 points. But Stage 17 of that race included four categorized climbs, two of them over 2,000 meters in elevation, including the hulking 2,600 meter Col du Galibier. Matthews’ team set a hard tempo, which the Australian could follow but Kittel could not, and Kittel missed the time cut.
Matthews started Stage 16, which he won from the breakaway, 79 points behind Kittel. He ended Stage 17, thanks to Kittel’s DNF, with a 150-point lead in the green jersey competition, despite only 90 points being available to any single rider across those two stages.
In the past 10 years, seven of the green jersey winners (including Sagan five times) have been of the hybrid variety, versus three pure sprinters. In terms of finishing in the top five in the points classification, 32 of those places have gone to hybrid sprinters, compared to 14 for pure sprinters.2
So how is that going to shake out this year?
Well, there are seven flat mass start stages I’d expect to come down to a bunch sprint: Stages 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, and 16. Stages 9 (gravel) and 18 (hills) have obstacles that could theoretically be overcome by the big sprinters if the breakaway is caught early and the latter kilometers of the race are taken at a slow enough pace. But I wouldn’t necessarily count on it.
If this green jersey competition comes down to who collects the most bunch sprint wins, it’s Philipsen’s to lose.
I’m serious—I don’t know which other pure sprinter in this field can beat Philipsen heads-up, especially not with the Alpecin-Deceuninck train at work. Cavendish is back for one last attempt to break Eddy Merckx’s Tour de France stage win record; the Manx Missile had a shot on the Champs-Élysées in 2021 and just missed, and he’s been putting off retirement ever since until he gets that last one. I think Cav can put it together once, but not enough to challenge for green.
The same with Arnaud Démare…well, maybe less so with Démare. Cavendish’s incredible 2021 comeback is all the more remarkable because sprinters usually fall off a cliff once they hit age 30. Démare once had a claim for the title of fastest sprinter in the world; he’s now 32 years old, two years removed from his last World Tour win and six years removed from his last Tour de France stage win. Alexander Kristoff, 36, was once a regular Tour de France stage winner, but he’s gone 0-for-the entire World Tour since he won the Soap Stage at the 2020 Tour de France. That year, Sam Bennett ended Sagan’s run of green jerseys, but since joining Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale he’s been shut out at the Dauphiné, Paris-Nice and UAE Tour this year, though he won four of six stages at Four Days of Dunkirk.3
And even among the younger pure sprinters Philipsen wins on every card. The last 46 times Philipsen and Dylan Groenewegen have started and finished the same race, Philipsen has finished ahead. The last time Groenewegen bested Philipsen in a competitive sprint was Stage 3 of the 2022 Tour de France. Fabio Jakobsen’s had a little more luck; he won a bunch sprint ahead of Philipsen as recently as June of 2023, and he might’ve had more luck in last year’s Tour de France if he hadn’t crashed and turned his entire right shoulder into a giant scab. Phil Bauhaus and Marijn van den Berg have never beaten Philipsen in a bunch sprint.
So not only is Philipsen fast: his team, Alpecin-Deceuninck, is the most specialized team in the peloton; it has almost no interest in races where the biggest climb is longer than the steps on the team bus. Alpecin-Deceuninck’s biggest star, Mathieu van der Poel, would be one of the favorites for the green jersey competition if let off the chain. Instead, he’s Philipsen’s leadout man.
Which brings up another thing Philipsen has going for him: His team is built to win the green jersey.
Unless Philipsen crashes or fails a drug test or goes through a bad breakup or something equally weird, no other pure sprinter is going to beat him to green. What could happen—what I suspect will happen, despite the surfeit of sprint opportunities—is that some classics-sprinter-hybrid type takes the Sagan-Matthews route to victory, going in breakaways, maybe stealing one sprint stage outright, and using his climbing ability to put Philipsen under pressure on mountain stages.4
The man best suited to do this is someone who’s done it before: Wout van Aert. Unfortunately, van Aert has had to spread himself too thin in previous Tours. In addition to being one of the best sprinters in the world, he’s also one of the best time trialists in the world, one of the best classics riders in the world, and a key part of the mountain train for the team with the two-time defending GC winner. His team was able to shoot the moon and pull off the points/GC double in 2022, but that’s a very rare thing.
Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek is one of the few riders with the outright speed to trouble Philipsen in a bunch sprint, but he’s also a canny breakaway and classics rider who can deploy a hybrid strategy. I don’t think he’s got the climbing legs to do to Philipsen what Matthews did to Kittel in 2017, however.
So let me give you my guy for the green jersey: Arnaud de Lie. He’s a 22-year-old Belgian with absolutely zero experience at this level. He’s never raced a grand tour before. A couple weeks ago he put in a forgettable performance at the Tour de Suisse, which is nevertheless important because until that point the only World Tour stage race he’d ever completed—of any length—was last year’s Tour of Guangxi.
But his last race start came at the Belgian national road race championship, which came down to a sprint, and de Lie outsprinted Philipsen, van Aert, last year’s Champs-Élysées winner Jordi Meeus, and five-time grand tour stage winner Tim Merlier.
And “outsprinted” doesn’t really do it justice. He got dropped off by his leadout train with Philipsen right behind him, in perfect position to explode out of the slipstream to victory like he’s done dozens of times before. And Philipsen just couldn’t budge—de Lie was that powerful.
I think de Lie has the raw juice to at the very least hang with Philipsen on bunch sprint stages, as well as the versatility—if he so chooses—to chase intermediate sprints and rack up points on climbing stages the way van Aert, Sagan and Matthews have.
So after more than 2,000 words (plus that excerpt), here’s my green jersey prediction for the 2024 Tour de France:
Arnaud de Lie
Jasper Philipsen
Wout van Aert
Mads Pedersen
Fabio Jakobsen
That green jersey preview got away from me a little, but I’d still like to take a moment to look at some of the stage hunters to watch.
Stage hunting at a grand tour is an approach that more or less ignores the GC and points classifications and treats each individual race day as its own entity. Once you’re out of the top 10 on GC, nobody—riders, fans, or sponsors—really cares about where you finish overall, while a single stage win at the Tour de France can make a smaller team’s season or a racer’s career.
Some riders dine out on this style of racing—Uno-X’s Magnus Cort is a master of the discipline—and it requires a savvy, opportunistic, versatile talent base. Because to a large extent, the stage hunters are at the mercy of the teams that come to compete for the yellow and green jerseys. In addition to their leader, these teams employ a bevy of support riders who can crank up the pace and reel in breakaways at will. But sometimes, the strategic situation dictates caution, or the big teams just can’t be bothered.
Moreover, stage hunting is a fallback option for riders who set out to contest GC but got knocked out of the running after one bad day. Remco Evenepoel did this to great effect at last year’s Vuelta.
Where will those opportunities come? Well, the gravel on Stage 9 is sure to cause some chaos, and the repeated short climbs on Stages 1, 2, 8, 11, and 18 could provide opportunities for riders who fall in between contending for yellow and green.
But a few teams will come in right off the bat looking to force those opportunities. Matej Mohorič of Bahrain-Victorious is one of the best in the world at generating separation on downhill sectors, and he has the flat-ground power to make low-percentage attacks stick. He’s won three Tour de France stages in the past three years.
EF Education-EasyPost is usually a strong stage hunting team, but they’re in a weird spot this year. They have a legitimate GC rider, Richard Carapaz, and will put some effort into supporting him. I don’t know what Neilson Powless’s job is—he could be a top-10 GC guy, or contend for the mountains classification, or support Carapaz, or hunt stages, but also he’s been out of action and under-raced this year. And EF just fired a strong puncheur, Andrea Piccolo, after he was investigated for allegedly transporting HGH.5
Nevertheless, the boys in pink have one of the world’s best puncheurs, Ben Healy, along with Alberto Bettiol, who is dangerous on rolling terrain and could be one to watch for Stage 9.
I’ll roll some of that stage hunting analysis into the GC preview on Thursday, but neither Healy nor Bettiol nor Mohorič is going to figure in any overall jersey battle, so I wanted to give them some coverage here first. I’ll pick back up in a couple days.
First thing to know about the Tour de France is it usually doesn’t actually start in France
Plus three spots for GC riders and one for a puncheur, Julian Alaphilippe in 2018.
Don’t ask, I’m not sure I understand either.
Keep your eyes peeled on Stage 15 (with the Col de Peyresourde in the first 10 kilometers) and Stage 19 (three 2,000 meter summits in one day).
This last is highly embarrassing for EF, which is run by a former US Postal rider who founded the team as part of an anti-doping crusade