education first cycling tour de france

It’s time for the Tour de France

We’re bringing eight riders from eight different nationalities to the world’s greatest bike race

June 29, 2022

It’s time for the Tour de France.

As French families head for the beaches of the Côte d’Azur and to campsites high in the Pyrénées and Alps, they will follow the news of their country’s summer spectacle, gathering around TV sets in sweltering bars and reading day-old newspapers or Insta-updates under their sun umbrellas. Americans will rise at dawn to watch the final kilometres of each stage, while Australians wait late into the night to see who will wear the yellow jersey. People from all over the world will camp by the side of French roads and party together long after the peloton has passed. The Tour de France now belongs to you, too. It is the vital side story to your summer holidays.

We’re excited to announce the riders for us that will star in one of summer’s classic traditions: Rigoberto Uran, Neilson Powless, Magnus Cort-Nielsen, Jonas Rutsch, Stefan Bissegger, Ruben Guerreiro, and Owain Doull will race Le Tour for EF Education-EasyPost.

For our riders, the Tour de France will be anything but a vacation. For 21 days, on a 3,328-kilometre race course, they will sweat to dizzying heights up France’s highest cols and throw themselves into mad sprints for the finish line, pushing their bodies to the limits of human endurance, as they try to win stages and pull on cycling’s greatest prize: the maillot jaune.

They are eight riders from eight different nationalities. Ever since they were little kids, they have dreamed of racing onto the Champs Elysées in Paris. We asked them about their ambitions for this year’s race and what Le Tour means to them.

Magnus Cort

"To win stages at the Tour is on a different level to anything else you can do in cycling. It means a lot just to be selected and going, especially this year when the Tour is starting in Denmark. It is probably the only race where you really count how many times you have been there and have finished. It’s not my first time going, but as a small kid, like most other Danes, I just followed the Tour on the TV during the summer holidays. I didn’t know anything about cycling, but watched the Tour every summer. It is pretty crazy to think back to that eight-year-old, myself, sitting there looking at all the bike riders, and now I am actually the one inside the television, riding the Tour de France in my home country."

Rigoberto Urán

"The best riders are here. The teams come prepared with everything, the new material, the new bikes. Everybody is focused on the Tour de France. You see the new developments. All the world is watching. The level is super high. Every stage is hard. The riders, the masseurs, the mechanics — everyone is focused and nervous for 21 days. Every second is important. It is nice. It is very different, starting in Denmark and not in France is something different, but especially here it is nice because there are many fans in Denmark. We take it day by day. It is one month. You need to stay first lucky and then healthy. You make a strategy, but must take it day by day. The most important thing is to sleep well."

Neilson Powless

"When I think about the Tour de France, I just think of the highest level of competition and just a race filled with athletes who have dedicated their lives to becoming as fit as possible and showing that along the countryside in France for the world to see. It is a pretty massive sporting event that crosses a pretty large area of space in France. It reaches a lot of people, which is really cool. The influence that it has is pretty massive, over the whole globe, which is pretty unique, and not a lot of people get to compete in an event like that, which is pretty exciting."

Alberto Bettiol

"Tour de France for me is the biggest race of the year. It is a big goal for the season. The Tour is the race where all of the teams put in the most effort. The best riders in the world are at the Tour de France, so it is a big show, so I really want to win a stage in this Tour de France. That is why I worked so hard, even if I had some trouble during the season with COVID and so on, but I am confident now after the Tour de Suisse. The team is really ambitious for the GC with the stage racers, and we will try to win a couple of stages. I worked hard for this event. I know it, because I have done it already three times, but I am really looking forward to the race."

Jonas Rutsch

"I have great memories from last year. It is the biggest bike race in the world, the one I am always looking forward to. I always hope that I will be selected, and I managed to get selected. I am just really excited to see what comes next. I love the whole history of the race, how well prepared the riders are every year, and the whole atmosphere."

Stefan Bissegger

"It feels amazing to be here after all the bad things I had in the last few weeks with COVID and having to leave the Tour de Suisse. It feels amazing to be here and be ready to race. The Tour de France is the biggest race of them all, so it is always nice to be a part of. I remember watching a mountain stage on TV and then later we went with the family to Alpe d’Huez. I’m definitely looking forward to it."

Ruben Guerreiro

"The Tour de France is the race that made me a rider. I was young and watching the Tour de France and imagined, dreamed to one day ride the Tour. It is my favorite race. I think it is the race that motivated me to be a professional rider. My ambition is now bigger. With this team I have the opportunity to ride and arrive here in the best condition and now I hope to win something. It is a big achievement, a big honor to make my dream come true. Last year was my first one. This year is my second one. Last year, I didn’t win anything, but I was there, and this year I want to win something."

Owain Doull

It’s a childhood dream. This is my first Tour, so I don’t know what to expect. Watching the Tour is my earliest memory of cycling. I think it probably means the same to every person who starts the Tour, whether it is their first or their tenth. It is the biggest race in cycling and I can’t wait to be a part of it. Even before I got into cycling, ITV used to show the Tour and I would always watch the highlights package in the evening. There is no other bike race where you know the theme tune. I remember watching that and every day they would do a round-up of how the British riders were getting on and it was in smaller numbers then. I can’t wait to get stuck into it.

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There is now a Colombian TV show about Rigoberto Urán’s life. It is about more than Olympic medals and grand tour podiums, fashion shoots, and appearances in the celebrity pages of newspapers.

Rigoberto’s dad was killed by a paramilitary group three months after he introduced Rigo to cycling. Rigo was 14. All of a sudden, he had to work to support his mom and his sister. He took over his dad’s job, selling lottery tickets to support his family, while going to school and trying to race. He still won a lot.

At 16, it was too much. Rigo told his cycling team that he would either have to turn pro or quit and go back to selling lottery tickets. Technically, he was too young to become a professional. To get around that fact, the team offered his mother the contract. Three years later, Rigo traveled to Europe for the first time to race for a small Italian team.

He has never looked back. An Olympic silver medal and podium finishes at the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France are highlights from his illustrious career. Rigo is still a contender. In 2022, he won stage 17 of the Vuelta , completing his trifecta of stage wins in each of the grand tours, and was a force in the autumn classics.

Rigo continues to inspire his teammates and a whole generation of cyclists with his laid-back, fun-loving approach to the sport.

When Stefan Bissegger was ten, he signed up for a bike race in his home village in Switzerland. He just didn’t know that he needed a racing bike. The organizer, an old pro, called him and said he could borrow one. He is still Stefan’s coach.

Stefan had fun at the race. Soon he was dreaming of winning classics like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. He was good at time-trials and long solos and wanted to become the kind of racer who could ride away from all of his rivals on the Oude Kwaremont.

After a stellar few years in the juniors, Stefan came to our team in 2020. He had a breakthrough season in 2021, with time-trial victories at Paris-Nice and the Benelux Tour and an outstanding solo stage win at his home race: the Tour de Suisse. To cap it all off, he participated in his first Olympics on the track with the Swiss team-pursuit squad.

In 2022, Stefan won the European time trial championships, the TT at the UAE Tour, and a rainbow jersey in the mixed relay at the world championships.

He had a difficult start to last season, breaking his wrist right before his favorite race of the year: Paris-Roubaix. He worked his way back into form however and won the Swiss national time-trial title.

If Stefan wasn’t a racer, he would be a bike mechanic. He likes tinkering with the set-up of his SuperSlice and testing his position until it is as aero as possible.

When Neilson Powless started racing X-Terra triathlons with his sister back home in Northern California, he just wanted to spend time outside and rip around the trails near his house. His first love was mountain-biking. It was his best discipline in those off-road triathlons, and when he got to high-school, there were all sorts of chances for him to compete in California’s mountain-bike league. Soon, he was travelling with the US national team, racing junior world cups and championships against the world’s most talented mountain-bikers. Race in and race out, Neilson proved he was one of them.

Then he decided he wanted to have a go on the road.

Neilson has progressed steadily since he turned pro in 2018, thanks to his hard-work and diligent approach to training. In 2020, Neilson Powless became the first tribally recognized Native North American to race the Tour de France. The next year, our rising American star won Spain’s greatest one-day race, the Clásica San Sebastián, and finished fifth at the world championships in Belgium. Neilson was stellar in 2022. After a strong campaign in the Ardennes, he finished fourth on GC at the Tour de Suisse and lit up the Tour de France. He finished the year off with a victory at the Japan Cup .

The 2023 season was his best yet. Neilson won his first race of the year: the Grand Prix Cycliste de Marseille. He then won the overall at Étoile de Bèsseges and stormed the Flemish classics, finishing third at Dwars door Vlaanderen and fifth at De Ronde in his debut campaign on the cobbles. At the Tour, he captured hearts with a stellar run in the King of the Mountains jersey.

Neilson lives in Nice, France with his wife and baby girl during the racing season. He enjoys exploring their new city and relaxing on the beach after hard rides through the Alps.

If he can find time in his schedule, Neilson would like to get back to his roots, and do some off-road alternative racing in 2024.

Owain is one of just two Welsh speakers in the peloton and became the first Welsh-speaking athlete to win a gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

While he loves to explore new places on long rides, his favorite place to ride is in the Peak District — preferably on a sunny day. For Owain, setting goals and giving his all in their pursuit is deeply satisfying. In the moment that a race kicks it up a notch, he finds motivation in reminding himself that the outcome will be worth the effort. Owain, the runner-up in the 2019 edition of Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, loves racing the Classics and Grand Tours. When Owain is not on his bike, you’ll find him overseeing 5 Rings, his coffee company named for the Olympic rings.

Alberto Bettiol has always been a winner. He started racing around the hills of Tuscany when he was five and won his second-ever race in his hometown of Castelfiorentino. He has been bringing home bouquets of flowers ever since.

His coaches and supporters always believed in his talent. Alberto was a strong junior and U23 rider, who signed his first professional contract with our team in 2014. But Alberto wanted to become a champion. He had grown up watching the classics and the Giro d’Italia with his father, a former footballer, and dreamed of winning the sport’s greatest races.

In 2019, he won his first Monument. Alberto’s victory in the Tour of Flanders that year changed his life. It gave him the confidence that he could beat the best riders in the world. He backed it up with an impressive string of results, including a stunning solo stage victory at the 2021 Giro d’Italia.

In 2022, Alberto earned podium places on stages of the Tour de France, Tour de Suisse, and Deutschland Tour.

He now splits his time between Lugano, Switzerland and Castelfiorentino. He enjoys all of the opportunities to travel that cycling now provides him, but is always happy to return to the Tuscan hills where he got started.

Alberto started 2023 with a prologue win at the Tour Down Under, but had a tough spring set back by injury and illness and had to miss his favorite classics. He made his return with a strong ride at the Giro d’Italia. He has great ambitions for the Tour de France.

Jonas Rutsch loves the Classics and is always excited when he gets to race up the Muur-Kapelmuur. The lanky German won the U23 Gent-Wevelgem and finished 11th at the 2021 Paris-Roubaix. He is a very versatile rider, who is always ready to work for his teammates.

In 2022, he even impressed in the mountains at the Tour de Suisse.

This is already Jonas’s fifth season racing with the team. He says that racing in the WorldTour had been his goal since he was a little boy, when cycling’s historic races captured his imagination. He has now finished two Tours de France and even proposed to girlfriend on the Champs-Élysées after the 2022 Tour.

In addition to racing, Jonas also finished his exams at the German police academy. While he follows a training schedule, his favorite days are when he just gets to ride his bike. Whenever he has the chance, he goes mountain biking.

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EF Education First Pro Cycling: "Our Tour de France Roster"

• By EF Education-EasyPost
• Posted on Aug 26, 2020

EF Education First Pro Cycling (France) - Press Release: Urán, Martínez, and Higuita highlight Tour team.

Rigoberto Urán, Sergio Higuita, Dani Martínez, Jens Keukeleire, Tejay van Garderen, Neilson Powless, Hugh Carthy, and Alberto Bettiol.

The EF Pro Cycling team for the 2020 Tour de France is as dynamic as it is charismatic. We bring a strong group with general classification ambitions as well as riders who can look at stages opportunistically, given race situations. We travel to Nice with seasoned Tour riders and several Tour rookies. We’re a balance of experience and opportunity. And we’re absolutely ready to go.

For more information about this article from EF Education-EasyPost click here .

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The CEO of an 'experiential education' company explains why he bought one of America's top Tour de France teams and why a YouTube video will never replace real travel

LES HERBIERS, France — Last August we reported that one of the US's top pro cycling teams was in danger of folding unless it came up with $7 million within a week, which was kind of crazy considering its star rider had just finished second in the world's preeminent bicycle race. It wasn't fake news, though: Without the extra dough, team boss Jonathan Vaughters said, it really would've shut down.

But as The Wall Street Journal reported in early September, the green came , and with it not just a big new sponsor but a new owner, one that many American cycling fans had never heard of: EF Education First .

EF is a privately owned company that calls itself " the world leader in international education ." It was founded in 1965, in Lund, Sweden, and today it has 580 schools and offices in 52 countries. Think of it as the biggest education-travel company you've never heard of until now.

Recently at the Tour de France , CEO Edward Hult spoke with Business Insider about why EF bought a cycling team, why he's not losing sleep over the sport's rampant-doping past, and why a YouTube video can only show you so much about the world.

Interview condensed and edited for clarity.

Daniel McMahon: We're sitting here at the Tour, which is viewed by hundreds of thousands on the roadside and millions more on TV worldwide. This year your company, EF, not only took on title sponsorship of the Cannondale-Drapac team but bought the naming rights. Yet before that I'd never heard of EF, as I presume was the case for many Americans. In your words, what is EF Education First?

Edward Hult: We're experiential education. We're about teaching people different cultures and getting people exposure to different beliefs and different ways of looking at things. We do that through language, we do that through travel, and we do it through cultural-exchange programs, and even some academic programs. We try to incorporate an educational component and a cultural-education component, so a travel component that has some sort of cultural exchange to it, as well as education. Education can be language training, it can be about the cultures, or it can be formal degree programs.

McMahon: So it's like curated travel for people who want to learn a language.

Hult: Yes, it's mostly curated. We try to make it experiential because the last thing we want to do is bring people abroad and stand there and lecture at them. You can take a lecture anywhere. So it's really like, let's get them out there, let's make it a safe environment, but get them to experience the countries and the places they go to.

McMahon: So if I wanted to travel in, say, Asia and learn a language there, can I do it short term and long term?

Hult: Yes. You can enroll for a week; you can enroll for a year. You can travel, and in some places we have local schools. We encourage you, if you can, to take the travel ones, because it's always better to learn a language immersed in it, I believe. We also have online English training.

McMahon: How did the company get started?

Hult: The very first product we had was taking mainly high-school kids from Sweden during their summer break to study English in the UK. That was EF day one. And that really came about because of my father. I'm dyslexic, and he's very dyslexic. He struggled in school, and then he worked as a mail-delivery boy at a bank in the UK for a summer, and that's where his English really got better. And he was like, "Wow, it was so much easier learning English that way."

McMahon: So what are some of EF's most popular programs today?

Hult: It depends on where you are in the world. You can go to Asia, as you said, for instance, where we have a lot of local language schools. In Europe it's mainly language travel, so you travel to the country and study. And in North America it's mainly what we call some of our tours business, which is you go on a tour and we show you part of the world for a week or two. And then we've got a high-school program. We're associated with the Hult International Business School. And then we've got the high-school exchange and the au pair program.

So it really depends on where you are and what you're looking for, but if you take the tours business — what I operationally oversee day to day — our most popular tours are London, Paris, and Rome, and you do that for 11 days. For many of our travelers, they've never been outside of their own town before, so for them it's huge.

You know, a couple of years ago I was on a tour, and London was the first day. Everyone arrived, and it was five different groups from five parts of the US, small towns of just a few thousand people, and almost none of them had been outside their town before. So for them to come to London and go on a subway and see all the people — and when we got to Paris they had gained confidence, and the students were running around: "We want to go there!" "We want to see that!" And you see it over the 11 days how it transforms the kids and their confidence level and just their understanding of things.

McMahon: Who are your competitors?

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Hult: EF in itself as a global company doesn't really have a direct competitor, but within the products there are tons of competitors. If you take EF Go Ahead Tours , it has a lot of competitors — Trafalgar, for example. Then there's a lot of local language training in different countries.

But generally I think competition is healthy. I'm quite competitive, so it makes it kind of fun. And if companies didn't have competitors you'd all get fat and lazy, and the consumer would end up on the losing side even more, because then you have higher costs and poor service, where if you have competitors you keep your products and your services top notch, and that's what you should be providing. And that's how we're going to have any sort of impact — not through crappy services. You're going to have an impact by having great services.

McMahon: So why buy a pro cycling team?

Hult: Well, for one, cycling is awesome. But it really sort of started a couple of years ago, with me and my oldest brother, who works in the London office.

EF has generally been bad at PR and brand awareness. We grew up being really strong at sales, and sales have been the driver of how we built EF from the ground. We've done very little marketing and almost no PR and no branding. So as we keep growing, we keep hearing we're the best-kept secret and that no one knows who we are, though we're around the world. And so me and my brother started talking about it. "Should we try to do a global sort of brand campaign?" And so we started looking into it because we thought it might be worth a try, to see if we could become a little bit more known for everything we do.

So we started looking into media agencies. But if you want to do a global brand campaign, one, it's super expensive, and, two, there are a lot of really good media agencies that specialize within just one or a few countries. We were struggling to find ones that were really good globally. And while we were looking we heard about this cycling team that was about to fold. At first we didn't think twice about it.

The thing is, I'm very passionate about cycling, but I don't follow pro cycling. I love riding a bike — I do amateur events. But if you asked me who all the pro riders were before we got involved, I wouldn't have been able to tell you anyone. But we started looking more closely, and it kind of hit us that there's this group of people from diverse countries and diverse backgrounds who are all coming together, working hard together for a common goal on a global stage. And we were thinking that that, in itself, is a little of what EF is all about too. It's about bringing different cultures together, solving problems, world issues.

A lot of our programs will bring different cultures together to look at problems and get the idea generation you get from different cultures when they share their backgrounds and how to approach it. It's pretty cool. And so here is this pro cycling team that's doing that, and they're being seen and they're being viewed by the world. And while I do understand it's a cycling-fan-based world, cycling is also a really popular sport, especially in Europe, but even more so in other countries.

And so we're like, "Could this be our branding campaign? Instead of a media agency, could we actually use this cycling team? Because they're kind of representing what EF is trying to do." And so we started looking more into it. We also looked at the current sponsors of the team, and we realized, for instance, that it was Drapac, which emphasizes education for the riders, and EF is all about education. There was [the helmet maker] POC, which is all about safety, and Cannondale, which prides itself on being innovative. Our whole big thing is getting out there to the masses. We felt if we do this right, this could actually be really cool.

So not only was this marketing thing going on, there was this whole cycling spirit that we believe in, with bringing all these different cultures together, working together. And it's a really nice way to unite staff around the globe, to cheer on this team and make them be proud of this team.

McMahon: And so even though cycling is cleaner today than it has been in the past, given its history of rampant doping, did you have concerns about the sport's integrity?

Hult: Yes, of course. Natural hesitations there. We clearly had zero tolerance for this, but one of the things that was attractive was Jonathan Vaughters' stance against this too. I think the way he's sort of spearheaded a lot of the internal stuff within cycling — trying to help clean it up — was quite inspirational. And it felt right; it felt like he's 100% on board that there's zero tolerance. And so we feel safe with him at the helm of the day-to-day operations. But yeah, we don't want to be involved in any of the dirty stuff.

Also, it gets easier to get sucked into that if everything is about winning. And of course winning is great, and it's a big plus, but for us that's really not the main objective. We see it as a big added bonus. But really it's about how do we get the message out there that these different people from different nationalities are coming together, working together, and then how can we get them involved in community events and cycling and things like that, rather than "We have to win at all costs." And of course we want to try to win — winning is great — but that's not the end-all, be-all for us by any means.

McMahon: What does EF's growth look like?

Hult: What we usually say is that we double about every five years sort of any way you measure it. There've been years we've taken big hits — 9/11 was an example of that. There was the oil crisis in the '70s, before my time, and that was a big hit as well. So then you sort of reset, and you keep building.

McMahon: How sensitive is EF's business to the global political climate, with things like Brexit and the current administration in the US?

Hult: It's not as sensitive as people think. People still want to learn. With technology you're somehow interacting on a global scale today even if you're not meaning to. We've found that people are still interested in learning about different cultures. They want to know. They want to get out there and see. Not 100% of the population, absolutely not, but a large, large part. Education will never go away. People are still going to need face-to-face stuff, to actually be able to talk to someone. But people are going to want to travel. They're going to want to see these cultures and meet different people and learn about how they see the world.

McMahon: What's the big thing you'd like people to know about EF?

Hult: If you're interested in learning something new about any culture or any people, or the history or arts, and you want to do it in an experiential way, that's what we provide — rather than reading about it or seeing it in a YouTube video. I love YouTube, but a video can only show so much. And not really until you're immersed within a situation can you have your biases and your truth challenged, where you feel you're challenging your own truths yourself, because you're learning and hearing something.

Watch: We went to the official Harry Potter tour in London where there's a huge animatronic spider and an incredibly detailed model of Hogwarts

• Main content

EF Education-EasyPost announce Tour de France lineup full of climbing quality including Carapaz, Uran, Chaves and Cort

The penultimate team to announce their Tour de France 2023 lineup, EF Education-EasyPost have revealed the eight riders tasked with bringing success to the American-based team.

Plenty of climbing quality is on show for EF Education-EasyPost at this year's edition of the race. Richard Carapaz will lead the charge as far as the general classification charge with support from fellow South American's Rigoberto Uran, Esteban Chaves and Andrey Amador .

PREVIEW | Tour de France 2023 - Key stages, how the Pogacar vs Vingegaard battle will unfold and the star-studded peloton

Giro d'Italia stage winner Magnus Cort Nielsen will be hoping to repeat his breakaway success once again, whilst Neilson Powless and James Shaw will also provide some quality climbing support for the leaders with Alberto Bettiol rounding out the 8-man lineup.

EF Education-EasyPost for the 2023 Tour de France:

Richard Carapaz, Rigoberto Uran, Esteban Chaves, Andrey Amador, Magnus Cort Nielsen, Neilson Powless, James Shaw and Alberto Bettiol.

Final startlist Tour de France with BIB | Vingegaard, Pogacar, Cavendish, Van der Poel, Van Aert, Alaphilippe, Bernal, Pidcock, Sagan and Girmay

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EF Education First names Tour de France team

• July 2, 2019 July 2, 2019

2017 Tour runner-up Rigoberto Uran headlines a united, motivated EF Education First team for the 2019 Tour de France.

EF Education First’s Tour de France team is set and ready to roll this weekend in Belgium, with eight riders from eight different countries.

“Our specific ambitions we will leave to ourselves. As giving it away wouldn’t be any fun,” says team CEO Jonathan Vaughters. “And we’re all about having a bit of fun.”

Below, hear from each of our Tour riders about his selection and hopes for La Grande Boucle.

Rigoberto Urán

“The route is going to be a good one for me this year. There are some hard stages, like always, with a lot of stages that finish over 2000 meters. Fans can expect a beautiful, challenging route. In the last week, that’s when the gaps will form between the leaders. This year is a good year for Colombians who are from high altitude, the born climbers.”

“I have been more consistent this season, and I have been consistently present on the attack. That’s something I want to do at this Tour. I want to be visible. I want the fans, particularly the Canadian fans, to turn on the TV and see a Canadian at the front of the best race in the world. I’m not here to be a passenger. I’m here to be active and influence the outcome, so that some Canadian kid back home can watch and say: ‘That’s Mike Woods. I want to grow up and race like Mike Woods.’ That’s what motivates me.”

“The group has been coming together really well. Our build-up as been low on stress and high on motivation. Within the team, we’re all satisfied and happy with how we’re progressing on the bike, and that attitude has created a real relaxed and light-hearted environment.”

Sebastian Langeveld

“I’m one of the key riders for the team time trial, and I’m here to protect our leaders, especially in the first week when things are the most hectic. Depending on how hard that job is, I’d love to have a crack at the individual time trial, but I’m going to the Tour absolutely as a domestique.”

Tejay van Garderen

“The Tour is the one race that transcends cycling. Without the Tour de France, cycling would be an obscure sport. The Tour puts cycling in front of the world. The everyday person knows about this race. As a kid, it was the only race in the US that was ever on TV. […] Naturally then, we all want to perform at the highest level on the biggest stage, and I think I’m well-positioned to do that, and so is the team.”

Alberto Bettiol

“Doing the Tour this year is another big opportunity. It’s an honor to be a part of the Tour squad, and it’s also a great responsibility. I’m really looking forward to the start of the race. With the Tour beginning in Brussels, in Belgium, where a few months ago I won the most famous one-day race, the Tour of Flanders, I feel like the first stages in Belgium will be really special for me.”

Tanel Kangert

“This year is my fourth year doing the Giro-Tour double. It’s never easy. I’m a little sharper and more punchy in the Giro, but I think the Tour requires more endurance, and doing the Giro gives me an advantage there. I’m more ready for the Tour mountain stages than the Giro stages whenever I do the double. I’m hoping to support our climbers and maybe get into a big breakaway myself in second half of the race.”

Simon Clarke

“The team has evolved in the last few years, but we haven’t made too many changes to the roster since Rigo got second. That core roster has grown stronger, and I’m confident that we’re bringing a more solid, united team than ever at the Tour. We’re all so motivated to represent the EF colors in July.”

Ron is the chief cook and bottlewasher at Bike World News, doing everything from website design to bike reviews.

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From ducks to dragons: EF Education First and Rapha partner up to create another Palace Skateboards kit

The most disruptive partnership in the WorldTour is set to turns heads one more time

Words: Nick Busca

Photos: EF Education First; Rapha

In 2020, it was the ducks used for the team's Giro d'Italia kit that divided opinion. Now, it's the little yellow dragons chosen for the women's and men's Tour de France teams.

If you wonder why the dragons, you're not alone, and a Rapha's spokesperson explained they choose dragons as they are "a symbol of supernatural power, wisdom, strength and hidden knowledge. It's not gender specific, but we felt it was a great way of encapsulating the spirit of the women who ride for EF Education-TIBCO-SVB."

"It's wild, it's bold, and it's an exciting time for the cycling world and long overdue. It's an honour for our team to race in this kit in advance of the women's Tour de France. Both races will be incredible, and we'll fight to keep this kit and its celebratory message at the front of the race this July."

The pieces of the kit that received the Rapha + Palace switch-out include the women's and men's Team Aero Jersey, Pro Team bib shorts and Pro Team training jerseys (plus socks and caps, of course).

Related: Discover Rapha Pro Team crit jersey

The change will not only affect the kit. All the Cannondale team frames (including SystemSix, SuperSix EVO and SuperSlice) will be customised with the same design, as will their POC helmets and Crocs shoes.

Both teams will wear a customised off-the-bike special edition of their casual wear. The collections will be available to the public through the Rapha and Palace stores online plus in selected Rapha Clubhouses and Palace stores. In addition, the Cannondale SuperSix EVO frameset will be available through rapha.cc,   palaceskateboards.com   and   cannondale.com .

All items will be sold in limited numbers, and there will be three drops at localised times in the UK, EU, Canada and the USA and the Asia-Pacific region.

A further selection of Rapha + Palace on-bike items will be made available to Rapha Cycling Club members active on or before June 28 or who had renewed a lapsed membership by the day before the commercial launch (details to be confirmed soon).

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Tour de France Cycling Team Doc 'Enter the Slipstream' Official Trailer

by Alex Billington April 18, 2023 Source: YouTube

"This is a sport about perseverance no matter what." Monument Releasing has debuted an official trailer for a cycling documentary film titled Enter the Slipstream , which is a actually a pretty cool title for a film about the world's best cyclists. The film opens in June this summer if anyone is interested. It follows the Education First (EF) Cycling Team as they navigate a turbulent 2020 season through the Tour de France , telling the individual stories of the ambitious riders, from the Colombian star Rigo Urán to rising up-and-comers and veteran teammates. With their superstar "Rigo" Urán coming back from a catastrophic injury, the USA's oldest professional cycling team must come together as they face the sport’s biggest contest: the Tour de France. Other riders featured in this include Dani Martinez, Sergio Higuita, TeJay van Garderen, and Neilson Powless. There have been tons & tons of cycling docs before, though this still looks quite good.

Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Ted Youngs' Enter the Slipstream , direct from YouTube :

Jonathan "JV" Vaughters runs USA's oldest professional cycling team, an international organization of over 120 riders and staff that race across the globe. A former pro and teammate of Lance Armstong, JV founded the team as a repudiation of cycling's rampant culture of doping. Over the course of a decade, he built a squad that competes at the highest level–drug free. Along the journey, we discover why the Tour de France is not so much a race as a cultural institution. We learn about the sport’s fragile economics, made only more vulnerable by a coronavirus settling like dust across the planet. And we take inspiration from seeing how the seemingly solitary activity of riding a bike competitively is teamwork in the purest form. Enter the Slipstream is directed by filmmaker Ted Youngs , making his feature directorial debut with this. Produced by Matt Rogers. This first premiered at a few small film festival already. Monument Releasing will debut Enter the Slipstream in select US theaters + on VOD starting June 1st, 2023 this summer. Anyone?

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Tour de France

WorldTour, Grand Tour, 1st -23rd July 2023, France

Information.

1st -23rd July 2023

Science News by AGU

Sharing the Geology of the Tour de France

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Each July, the most elite cyclists in the world compete in the Tour de France, a nearly monthlong race that covers thousands of kilometers of punishing terrain in the Pyrenees and Alps.

An avid cycling fan, Utrecht University geologist Douwe van Hinsbergen had watched the race for years. Behind the zooming athletes, he said he always saw something else: a geological excursion. As TV commentators filled hours of uninterrupted live coverage with historical and cultural information about locations on the route, he wondered: Could geology have a place in these broadcasts, too?

With the help of his university and outside grants, the idea grew, and the Geo-Sports team formed. Now, Tour de France viewers in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands can catch 2-minute geology segments on broadcast television during both the men’s and women’s tours.

“It’s really, really fun,” van Hinsbergen said. 

This is the second year the segments will be televised.

The Geo-Sports clips feature van Hinsbergen and Utrecht University Earth scientist Marjolein Naudé presenting the geologic history surrounding the routes. (The Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes routes differ each year.)

In 2023, the subjects covered by Geo-Sports varied widely, ranging from fossils found on the banks of the Lot River to volcanic materials used to build the striking cathedral of Notre Dame de l’Assomption in Clermont-Ferrand. This year, the team has created clips about the earthquake history of the Italian Apennine Mountains and the ways that geology influenced wine culture in the Burgundy region of France, among other topics.

Along with the broadcasts, Geo-Sports produces blogs written by geoscientists from around the world. “We try to make it a completely open platform for everybody to share their knowledge,” van Hinsbergen said. The Geo-Sports team also plans to work with secondary school teachers to adapt some of their materials for educational purposes, he said.

“It requires a unique amount of patience to construct something which is articulate and sufficiently specific to tell a story.”

It’s “brilliant” to use the Tour de France as a “meeting ground between the world of higher education and the world of regular people,” said Nick Zentner , a geologist at Central Washington University who has presented his own geology show, Nick on the Rocks , on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. 

Zentner said he was impressed with the warm and welcoming tone and accessible pace of the Geo-Sports video clips. “That’s a key part of any kind of science communication,” he said.

Engaging Sports Audiences

Creating clips for cycling fans requires a different approach to communication than the one van Hinsbergen normally takes. Viewers pay attention to the race broadcast because they’re interested in cycling, not necessarily in geology, van Hinsbergen said. Because of that, the content needs to be not only accurate and clear but highly interesting, uplifting, and fun, he explained. 

“I watch cycling every day, and I do geology every day. And that’s what’s appreciated.”

For those reasons, van Hinsbergen and the team focus the videos on highly visible, physical examples of geological processes, said Mark Carpenter , a filmmaker, geoscience educator, and the team’s producer and director.  

“It requires a unique amount of patience to construct something which is articulate and sufficiently specific to tell a story,” Carpenter said. “In a 2-minute clip, it’s all got to be at the right pitch.” As director, he watches carefully for moments that might exceed the public’s understanding or interest and guides the presenter back on track.

The team’s appreciation for cycling lends them an advantage, too: They’re able to relate the geology of each tour stage to how the cyclists might perform. “What [the audience] is tuning in for is someone who’s a cross between an interesting science journalist and someone who has a feel for bike racing,” Carpenter said. “That’s what makes us unique.”

“I’m not playing a role—I’m actually me, I actually do this,” van Hinsbergen said. “I watch cycling every day, and I do geology every day. And that’s what’s appreciated.”

—Grace van Deelen ( @GVD__ ), Staff Writer

This news article is included in our ENGAGE resource for educators seeking science news for their classroom lessons. Browse all ENGAGE articles , and share with your fellow educators how you integrated the article into an activity in the comments section below.

Citation:  Van Deelen, G. (2024), Sharing the geology of the Tour de France,  Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240224 . Published on 24 May 2024.

Text © 2024. agu.  cc by-nc-nd 3.0 except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited., features from agu publications, seals help scientists make discoveries in antarctica’s bellingshausen sea, the not-so-quiet cretaceous quiet zone, agu introduces a new policy to foster inclusion in global research.

Derek Gee Claims First Professional Victory at Critérium du Dauphiné

The Canadian outclimbs competitors in a thrilling finish, taking the leader’s jersey and setting high expectations for the upcoming Tour de France.

The pair followed Gee’s Israel-Premier Tech teammate Krists Neilands, who was the first to launch on the day’s final climb. Shortly after, Gee outclimbed Grégiore to the top of Les Estables, notching his first win WorldTour victory.

With the win, Gee took the leader’s jersey from team Uno-X Mobility’s Magnus Cort, who won the race’s second stage. Cort fell to second place, and Grégiore is currently third.

“A massive part of it was Krists attacking with a kilometer to go,” Gee, typically a climbing domestique, said. “I was in a good position, and he just strung it out. I wasn’t planning on going there, but when Krists came back, I had to take advantage of it. We were going for Dylan (Teuns)most of the day. He made the call on the final climb and told us to go for it. We took it up, and I’m happy to come away with it.”

Expectations surrounding Gee have been high since he finished second in last year’s Giro d’Italia King of the Mountains and Points competitions. Those second places became something of a theme for Gee in last year’s Giro, as he finished second four times over the race’s twenty-one stages.

“It’s unbelievably special to win here; I’ve been waiting for a win in Europe. I’ve come second enough times, and it was nice to finish it off,” Gee said after his victory.

Thirty-five kilometers into the stage, 2022 Dauphiné champion Primož Roglič —who many pundits picked to win the day’s punchy course—was caught up in a crash. Luckily, the BORA-hansgrohe GC man didn’t appear to suffer any significant injuries, though he did need a bike change. He sits fourth in the overall standings.

Harry Sweeney of EF Education-EasyPost, Nicolas Prudhomme of Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, and Rémy Rochas of Groupama-FDJ spent most of the day off the front, working in a three-man rotation that was never able to get more than two minutes clear of the peloton.

Some thirty kilometers from the finish, Jayco-AlUla’s Christopher Juul Jensen bridged to the breakaway, which eventually dropped Rochas back into the pack. The break was caught with three kilometers to go and stayed intact until the last kilometer when Neilands threw the first punch only to be countered by Grégiore and eventual winner Gee.

Meanwhile, Visma-Lease a Bike seems to be testing out its contingency plans in the event that Jonas Vingegaard isn’t quite back to form by the time the Tour de France rolls around. The team has employed an all-American two-pronged approach to the GC race, with Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson —who is currently fifth in the GC race—leading the way.

“We want to see how far we can go in the GC,” said Visma’s sport director, Frans Maassen. “Matteo and Sepp will be our leaders. At Paris-Nice, Matteo showed he can handle a week-long stage race well. Sepp’s qualities have been known for a while. He has been indispensable in our recent successes in several grand tours. Last year’s Vuelta was the crowning achievement of his career. Hopefully, he can also be an important part of any success this summer.”

And though other GC riders like Carlos Rodríguez of INEOS Grenadiers, David Gaudu of FDJ-Groupama, and Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quick-Step are currently tenth, twentieth, and thirty-third, respectively, just thirteen seconds separate first and forty-sixth place through three stages.

With five stages to go, the Tour preamble is still wide open.

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As it happened: a mass uphill dash concludes Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 3

Gee outpowers Grégoire for both the stage win and the lead

2024 Critérium du Dauphiné - the complete guide 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné - race route 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné – Analysing the contenders 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné stage 2 - Magnus Cort beats Primož Roglič in misty hilltop sprint

1 kilometre to go.

Three kilometres to go, seven kilometres to go, 12 kilometres to go, 20 kilometres to go, 30 kilometres to go, 32 kilometres to go, 42 kilometres to go, 50 kilometres to go, 59 kilometres to go, 80 kilometres to go, 90 kilometres to go, 121 kilometres to go, 132 kilometres to go, 150 kilometres to go, 163 kilometres to go.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of stage 3 of the 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné.

One non-starter today so far: Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), the 2024 Giro d'Italia's Best Young Rider and fifth overall.  As of Tuesday evening, Tiberi was lying nearly 15 minutes down on GC in 135th. The team are citing fatigue.

📣 Antonio Tiberi won’t start stage 3 @dauphine After achieving his primary objectives of securing the white jersey and finishing in the top five in his home Grand Tour, the Giro, he aimed to build on his performance with a strong showing at the #Dauphiné [1/2] pic.twitter.com/AJCMwlZA0Y June 4, 2024

Here's a quick glance at the results as they stood after Monday's stage 2, courtesy of our colleagues at FirstCycling

Today's stage 3 is another hilly affair, this time featuring nearly 3,000 metres of vertical climb. It's the most the Dauphiné riders have had to face so far in this race, though, nothing compared to the Alpine challenges they'll be tackling from Friday onwards.

Riders are currently moving through the neutralised section, it's 4.3 kilometres long. Kick-off in just a few minutes.

Weather is cloudy and overcast, but not too cold, just 18 degrees Celsius. 

And racing is underway. Only 181.7 kilometers to go.

  The key points on today’s menu Km 22.1: Climb: Cat.4 -  Côte de Augerolles (2.4km at 5.7%)

Km 75.8: Sprint: Arlanc

Km 87.6:  Climb: Cat.2 -  Côte de Saint-Victor-sur-Arlanc (3.1km at 9.4%) 

Km 125: Climb: Cat.3 - Côte de Retournac (3.2km at 5.4%)

Km 147.1: Climb: Cat.4 - Côte de Valogeon (2km at 5.2%)

Km 181.6: Climb: Cat.3 - Côte des Establs (3km at 5.2%)

Km 181.6:  Finish : Les Estables

Six riders try to get away on the first uncategorized uphill, but without success.

Stage 1 winner Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) tries to get away, without success, then allrounder Dorion Godon (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), already the winner of two stages in Romandie this year, attempts a move. But that doesn't stick, either.

Whilst we're waiting for something of note to happen, here's a nice picture of Pedersen and race leader Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) having a natter at the stage start.

The 2024 Dauphiné been a solidly Danish affair so far this year, with two wins out of two courtesy of Pedersen and Cort. Will that change today?

Puncture for Pedersen. Attacks coming thick and fast, but still nothing sticks

We are now on the lower slopes of the first of five classified climbs of the day, the  Cat.4  Côte de Augerolles (2.4km at 5.7%). And Darren Rafferty (EF Education-EasyPost) is narrowly off the front.

Rafferty is superceded by Frenchman Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon Ag2R La Mondiale), who reaches the top of the Augerolles to take the sole KoM point on offer. After which, the bunch regroups.

Pedersen back in the bunch after his puncture. Peloton still all together after 31 kilometres of racing.

And finally a break gets over 30 seconds. After 35 kilometres of racing, Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon-Ag2R), Rémy Rochas (Groupama-FDJ) and Harrison Sweeny (EF Education-Easypost) open up a gap. Average race speed for now is an ultra-brisk 48 kmh.

Overall Prodhomme is definitely the danger man of the three, he's just 10 seconds back on race leader Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) on GC. Sweeny is at 2:54 and Rochas more than six minutes down.

Crash for Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe), one of the top race favourites, according to the official race website. He's needed a new bike, but his teammates are guiding him back to the peloton.

Meanwhile the trio's gap has opened up to 1:30.

Roglič's early misfortune comes in his first race back from his crash in Itzulia. He also placed a promising second on Monday's uphill finish at Col de la Loge. Primož Roglič shows his Critérium du Dauphiné ambitions despite long absence from racing

Roglic is back in the bunch.

A first shot of the day's break

Unconfirmed reports that Roglic fell to the ground but was back up pretty quickly after his crash, which apparently involved several riders. He was lucky in that the break had just gone so the pace in the peloton, after that frantic start, had slowed notably. Either we'll bring you more news as it comes through.

A shot of Roglic back in the CdD bunch, taken by ASO's Seb Piquet. Ripped race number but no other visible signs of the fall from this angle.

Back in the pack after crash @rogla @dauphine #Dauphiné pic.twitter.com/RjlQnjbM3F June 4, 2024

The gap for our three leaders is now a fraction north of three minutes.

Ten kilometres further on, and the break is still at around three minutes.

Curious fact: if any of the three riders in the break - the youngest of whom is Sweeny, 25 - gets to stay away, it'll be their first pro win. Sweeny's highest profile result to date was third off a break in a Tour de France transition stage back in 2021, Rochas placed second overall in the Tour de Guangxi last year, and Prodhomme has a sixth and a fifth respectively in the Tour du Doubs and Clásica Jáen one-day races this year.

The one sprint of the day at Arlanc and Prodhomme gets a 3 second time bonus for first, Rochas takes second, Sweeny third.

We're fast approaching the toughest climb of the day, the Cat.2  Côte de Saint-Victor-sur-Arlanc (3.1km at 9.4%), which peaks out with 94 kilometres to go.

A shot of the race leader. The early cloud seems to have lifted completely, which nobody will be complaining about.

The trio's lead has shrunk by 30 seconds on the toughest climb of the stage, with an average gradient of just over 9%.

Results for the Cote de St Victor sur Arlanc climb 1. Rochas 5 points 2. Sweeny 3 points 3. Prodhomme 2 points And Mathis Le Berré (Arkea-B&B Hotels), currently heading the mountains, classification, shoots ahead of the bunch to pick up  fourth place and the one remaining point.

Just over halfway and the gap for the three riders ahead is now 2:30.

Uno-X Mobility have upped the pace notably in the peloton, maybe because now the toughest climb of the day is done and dusted and the risk of any domestiques getting dropped is reduced. But that's just a theory. 

One rider who has decided to throw in the towel, though, is young sprinter Lars Boven (Alpecin-Deceuninck). Boven had been in difficulties almost since the stage began, and the 22-year-old has now opted to abandon.

Still to come...

Km 181.6: Climb: Cat.3 - Côte des Estables (3km at 5.2%)

Km 181.6:  Finish: Les Estables

His stage win last year in the Dauphiné was one of the race highlights for local fans, but the charismatic Soudal-QuickStep leader was never down to take part this time round after his highly successful Giro d'Italia, and now it looks very likely he won't be back at the Tour de France either. Cyclingnews' Barry Ryan has more here: Julian Alaphilippe to miss Tour de France and focus on Paris 2024 Olympics

And the advantage for the three head is shrinking remorselessly...it's now down to a shade over two minutes.

Ineos Grenadiers have added their support to the Uno-X Mobility-led chase

A generic shot of the Critérium du Dauphiné peloton midway through stage 3

The gap is steadying again at around 2:30 as we head towards the last three climbs of the day.

The foot of the third of the day's five classified climbs is fast approaching for the breakaway: Cat.3 - Côte de Retournac (3.2km at 5.4%) 

2:29 the gap

A steady but not overly fast pace for the peloton sees the gap on the climb come down to just under two minutes.

Uno-X have four riders ahead of their race leader Magnus Cort as the peloton reaches the upper slopes of the Côte de Retournac. 

Rochas claims maximum points at the summit of the Côte de Retournac ahead of Prodhomme and Sweeny with minimal opposition from his two breakaway companions, content to simply follow him across the top of the climb. 

Speaking before the start, Magnus Cort has just confirmed on Eurosport that he'd like to try to go for a second stage win today. The finish is certainly a similar one to Monday's, even if the run-in is not so tough.

And just under a minute's advantage for Prodhomme, Rochas and Sweeny.

A shot of Primož Roglič, where you can see some more consequences of his crash on his left side.

Mechanical for Cofidis' rookie pro Oliver Knight. But it's sorted and he's quickly heading back to the peloton. 

4%, 5%, 4%...there's a long, uneven grind now for the race up to foot of the second-last climb of the stage, the Cat.4  Côte de Valogeon (2km at 5.2%). Of the 3,000 metres of vertical climbing in today's stage, we've still got nearly 1,000 left and we're all but into the last 40 kilometres. 

Four new bikes, two new wheelsets, fresh custom paint, tyre nerdery, and much more besides: Biggest ever tech gallery from the Critérium du Dauphiné

1:18 the gap. The bunch are clearly not wanting to close in too soon on the break.

Jayco-AIUIa's Chris Juul-Jensen fires himself out of the left-hand side of the pack and has gone on the hunt for the break.

Next up the road is France's Valentin Madouas, keen to show off his National Champion's jersey in the last few weeks before he has to fight for it again.

Christopher Juul Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa) is close to reaching the three ahead - Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Remi Rochas (Groupama-FDJ) and Harry Sweeny (EF Education-Easy Post).

Juul Jensen makes it to the three ahead, but Madouas looking as if he is going to be caught by the bunch.

We're now onto the fourth of the five classified climbs of the day, the cat. 4  Côte de Valogeon. 

Madouas is not giving up though, and he's about 25 seconds back on the four ahead.

Rochas leads over the summit of the Côte de Valogeon for the lone point on offer.

Four riders ahead: Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale)

Remi Rochas (Groupama-FDJ)

Harry Sweeny (EF Education-Easy Post)

Chris Juul Jensen (Jayco-AIUIa) At 27 seconds:

Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ)

At 48 seconds:

Madouas forges on determinedly, but the gap between the four riders ahead is widening again and his advantage on the peloton is narrowing...

Madouas caught by the bunch. 1:00 for the break.

No classified climbs left apart from the last one now with the finish at the top: Km 181.6: Cat.3 - Côte des Estables (3km at 5.2%).

Crash with around four riders down towards the back of the peloton as they speed over a small bridge: Chris Harper (Jayco-AUIAa) amongst those affected, but he's back up again.

Meanwhile Uno-X and UAE Team Emirates are adding an extra notch of pressure at the front of the peloton.

Three teammates waiting for Chris Harper to tow him back up to the peloton.

Harper and his teammates are chasing hard, but he's still got a gap of 40 seconds to get back to the peloton.

Race website has said that all the riders involved in the crash affecting Harper are back up and racing again.

UAE, INeos and Uno-X are all chasing hard to catch the break.

Rochas, one of the three original members of the break, has sat up. The other three (Prodhomme, Sweeny, Juul Jensen) now only have 45 seconds advantage.

A recent shot of the break with Juul Jensen now replacing Rochas on the move

Harper, incidentally, has made it back into the bunch.

44 seconds for the break

Reports of a late abandon: Adrien Petit (Intermarché-Wanty).

Juul Jensen has visibly reboosted things for the breakaway, and is driving hard on the front.

A small detachment of Lidl-Trek riders are on the front side of the peloton, and helping keep the pace relatively high. Still a lot of riders in the main bunch despite all the climbing today. 

A plateau and then a long undulating descent now precedes the final climb, the 3.8 kilometre Cat.3 Côte des Estables. 

A big effort from Nils Politt (UAE Team Emirates) is making serious inroads on the break's advantage, which shrinks to just 40 seconds.

30 seconds for the three-man break

A fast, twisting downhill and the peloton can see the three riders ahead.

Mechanical for Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious).

And the gap is still sticking at around 30 seconds.

A determined effort from Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) on the front of the lined-out bunch.

Ineos move into the front as the road begins to kick upwards for one last time.

Ar0und 70 riders still in the front group, but numerous riders in difficulty at the back.

The bunch is just a few hundred metres behind the three rider break as the climb, a broad, draggy affair, continues to kick upwards.

Ineos, Jumbo and UAE are closing in on the three riders ahead, who still have a 23 second advantage as the official foot of the final ascent approaches.

Onto the final climb: the Cat.3  Côte des Estables, 3.8 km at 5.2%

Ineos form a mass of black and red jerseys on the left hand side of the reduced peloton.

And the peloton are less than 10 seconds behind the break. One big effort and they'd catch them.

Chris Froome is dropped.

Break caught with 2.6 kilometres to go and a new race begins. 

A brief lull in the action from the bunch now the break is caught, but the pace is high.

The breakaway riders are all dropped from the bunch, which remains together with two kilometres to go.

Soudal-QuickStep are making their presence known at the front for Remco Evenepoel, and Primoz Roglic visible in the middle of the pack.

Magnus Cort is still up there, so his chances of a second stage win remain intact

Still around 60-70 riders in the front group.

Kwiatkowski and Bora-Hansgrohe still powering on the front.

Bora_Hansgrohe's Matteo Sobrero chases down an Israel rider who attempts to go clear

Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) makes a move with 400 metres to go, and then Romain Gregoire comes round for Groupama-FDJ.

But Gee then comes round again and takes the stage.

Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) wins stage 3 of the 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné 

That was a stunning battle with Grégoire, who responded well to Gee and initially got past him, but just didn't have enough fuel left in the tank to stay ahead of the Canadian.

Third was Lukas Nerurkar (Education First-Easy Post), three seconds back, a gap which, if confirmed, could allow Gee to get the lead as well.

Gee is the new leader according to the provisional GC classifications, ahead of stage 2 winner and previous yellow jersey Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) with Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) in third. 

Some first words from Gee: "It's definitely a different level, unbelievably special to win here. I've been waiting for a win in Europe, I've come second enough times and it's really nice to finish it off." "A massive part of it was Krists [Neilands-teammate] attacking with a kilometre to go, I was in good position and he just strung it out.As soon as he came back, I wasn't planning on going there, but there was kind of a lull when Krists came back, so I had to take advantage of it."

And here's a first shot of the winner

A 50-strong chase group is timed at 3 seconds with all the top favourites present. So they'll be well-positioned to try for the leader's jersey in Wednesday's crucial time trial.

A shot of  Primož Roglič  crossing the line in tenth place. Thanks to his time bonus from stage 2, he's the best placed of the pre-race favourites for the TT, in fourth., which will be handy for time references. But after three stages, the gaps between the top names are minimal.

Regarding the secondary classifications, Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) has ousted Magnus Cort from top spot in the points rankings, while Mathis Le Berre (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) remains top mountains rider. Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), second on the stage, has taken over from Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease A Bike) in the BYR rankings, and Movistar are, for the second running, rated Best Team. 

Cyclingnews full report of today's stage, complete with results, a photo gallery and analysis is here: Derek Gee produces late surge to win Critérium du Dauphiné stage 3

So what's the next stage like? Stage 4 of the Critérium du Dauphiné is the classic mid-week time trial which should see the first major differences emerge on GC. 34.4 kilometres long and running between Saint-Germain-Laval and Neulise. It’s essentially a rolling course, with a fair amount of draggy uphill and a 5.5%  500-metres-long ramp to conclude the day. Last year’s winner and former U-23 World TT Champ Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) is not here, but there are plenty of top time triallists and/or GC contenders who should impact on Wednesday’s stage. Amongst them Derek Gee, the current Canadian national TT champion for the second year running, will surely make an all-out effort to defend his top spot overall.

That just about wraps it up for the live coverage of the Critérium du Dauphiné stage 3. We'll be back with more coverage of stage 4, but meanwhile check out the website for more updates, information and analysis throughout the evening.

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How to watch the Tour de France live stream 2024

All the information you need in order to tune into the biggest race of the year

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The wait is nearly over for the biggest bike race of the year, the Tour de France 2024 . Like us, you'll probably be wanting to tune in and watch, so we've put together a comprehensive guide to exactly how you can watch everything from live coverage to highlights of this iconic Grand Tour.

It should be an exciting battle for overall victory, with four potential winners all vying for the maillot jaune. Reigning champion Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike), Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) and Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe) are the men most likely, although newly-anointed Giro d'Italia champion Pogačar is the only rider to have come through the early season unscathed. The other three have missed training time after tangling with each other in the same crash in Itzulia Basque Country in April.

Vingegaard was the worst affected , and in early June there was still a question mark over whether he would definitely be at the Tour de France.

There are plenty of sprinting opportunities scattered throughout the race. Last year's green jersey Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) will be the man to beat, pushed hard others including Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and Fabio Jakobsen (dsm-firmenich-PostNL). Many eyes will also be on Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan), who returns for his last Tour de France in the hope of finally beating the all-time 35-stage-win record that he is currently tied on with Eddy Merckx.

The final stage sees the race make way for the Paris Olympic Games and finish outside the capital for the first time in history, with a time trial from Monaco to Nice.

When is the Tour de France? 

The Tour de France will begin in Florence on June 29, and finish three weeks later on July 21 in Nice. Individual stages will be broadcast in full on Discovery+ .  

Check your chosen streaming service in your territory for broadcast times of individual stages. 

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How to watch the Tour de France for free 

The Tour de France is free to watch in Australia on SBS On Demand .

Streaming services are often geo-restricted, so if you're an Aussie away from home, make sure to use a VPN to watch your free Tour de France live stream from abroad.

We'll show you how to do that just below with NordVPN, which comes highly recommended via our sister site TechRadar .

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Eurosport.co.uk and discovery+ are the homes of cycling in the UK. Subscriptions are £6.99 per month. There's also an annual plan for discovery+ at £59.99, if you're after the full race calendar of live streams.

How to watch the Tour de France live stream in the USA

Bike racing fans in the US will be able to watch the Tour de France on the FloBikes platform. The TV app is available on Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast and Apple TV, as well as on Android and iOS. Subscriptions cost $150 per year. 

Watch Tour de France 2024 live stream on FLOBikes in USA

FloBikes boasts an impressive bill of live racing throughout the season, including the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and more. A monthly subscription will cost you $30 while a yearly account will set you back $150 ($12.50 per month).

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After cutting his teeth on local and national newspapers, James began at Cycling Weekly as a sub-editor in 2000 when the current office was literally all fields. 

Eventually becoming chief sub-editor, in 2016 he switched to the job of full-time writer, and covers news, racing and features.

A lifelong cyclist and cycling fan, James's racing days (and most of his fitness) are now behind him. But he still rides regularly, both on the road and on the gravelly stuff.

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Critérium du Dauphiné 2024 - stage 4 time trial start times

D erek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) will be the last rider down the ramp on stage 4 of the 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné but all eyes will be on the earlier riders heading out for the 34.4-kilometre test from Saint-Germain-Laval to Neulise - namely World Champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) and Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe).

The two are expected to be the top contenders at the Tour de France along with defending champion Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) but both are coming back from injuries sustained in the mass crash at the Itzulia Basque Country in April.

The time trial will be a major indicator of where Evenepoel and Roglič are in there preparations for the Tour de France in addition to being the first step toward the overall victory in the Dauphiné.

Roglič is third overall at seven seconds behind the Canadian winner of stage 3, while Evenepoel is among a 38-rider group at 13 seconds and is sitting in 33rd.

The Belgian will start his time trial at 3:42 p.m. just before Vuelta a España winner Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike).

Other riders to watch on the stage are Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers), who heads out onto the course at 1:49 p.m. and is the favourite to set the fastest early time.

Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) said on Monday that he has high ambitions for the Dauphiné and is focussed on the time trial. 

"I would like to try my hand at GC, but we'll have to sort of make the decision if I'll have team support after the time trial, because it's still a bit of a unknown," he said to CyclingPro.net .

Powless suffered from a knee injury that kept him out of competition for much of the spring, but returned in time to race the US Pro Road National Championships. He's hoping to make the Olympic team and has been putting in time on his TT bike.

"I've gotten a lot more a lot more comfortable on my TT bike and I'm hopefully getting back to the level that I was at in my u-23 years of being a time trial focused rider. I sort of let it go for a while but now I'm trying to refocus on it."

His compatriot Sepp Kuss is also thinking about the overall classification, telling CyclingPro.net he's worked on the time trial bike, too. 

"There are a lot of good riders here, we'll have to see how it is after the TT and then go to the mountain stages. I've worked a decent amount on the TT bike, just to have a good feel on the bike. It's a long TT and doing that kind of effort is good training."

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Notebook: Inside Visma’s Mad Tour de France Scramble, Jorgenson’s Big GC Chance, Quinn’s Funky US Jersey

Tour de hoody: will they or won't they start visma-lease a bike is on egg shells if jonas vingegaard or wout van aert will be ready to race the tour de france..

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VICHY, France (Velo) — Miles from this French spa town Jonas Vingegaard is tucked away high in the French Alps in a desperate, late-hour race against time.

The two-time Tour de France champion is joined by Belgian superstar teammate Wout van Aert at Tignes, France, where the snow is only just receding from the highest slopes of the high-altitude ski area, in a desperate bid to chase cycling’s elusive “form.”

With the Tour de France and a season-defining face off against Tadej Pogačar just weeks away, absolutely no one inside the Visma-Lease a Bike team knows if either of their two team franchise riders will be ready to race the Tour.

Visma-Lease a Bike is putting on a brave face this week at the Critérium du Dauphiné, with the American duo of Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson to carry team pride against the likes of Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič .

But what a difference a crash and some bad luck there can make in elite professional racing.

Last year, Jumbo-Visma was flying high, winning all three grand tours with three different riders in an unprecedented grand tour clean sweep unseen in professional racing. With Kuss, Vingegaard, and Roglič dominating the stage races, the added might of Van Aert in the one-days made the team’s dominance unseen in cycling history.

Yet less than three weeks to go to the Tour, the team is walking on eggshells.

Will Vingegaard be ready to race the Tour? Or Van Aert?

No one knows right now.

Team insiders are cautiously optimistic, with team officials telling me this week that they’re more hopeful that Van Aert — who missed the northern monuments after a crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen — will at least start the Tour.

They’re less certain about Vingegaard , who spent weeks in a Spanish hospital after surgery following this devastating April crash at Itzulia Basque Country.

“Everything was going great this season until Wout crashed,” one Visma official told me here at the Dauphiné. “Then Wout crashed and we lost our momentum.”

The question marks and different possible scenarios are ripping through the team’s fabric this week here in France.

The possibilities are the following:

• Both Vingegaard and Van Aert start

• Vingegaard starts, and Van Aert doesn’t

• Van Aert starts, but Vingegaard doesn’t

• Neither Vingegaard or Van Aert start

Each and every one of those scenarios impacts each individual rider on the team in dramatically different ways.

If Vingegaard is there, things are much easier. Everyone, including Van Aert, will work for the Dane to help him win a third-straight yellow jersey. Easy as.

There will potentially be 5 former Tour de France winners in this year’s race: Vingegaard Pog Bernal Thomas Froome That hasn’t happened since 1992: Indurain LeMond Delgado Roche Fignon — Cillian Kelly (@irishpeloton) May 31, 2024

If he’s not, then that’s when things get tricky.

Riders like Van Aert and Kuss and everyone else will have maximum freedom to chase wins , breakaways, and do what they can in the GC with Vingegaard not race-ready.

And if neither Vingegaard or Van Aert are there, well, a rider like Kuss might be presented with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lead one of the world’s deepest team and have all that horsepower at his disposal.

The catch is, Kuss admitted himself in an exclusive interview with Velo this weekend that his chances of winning the yellow jersey are actually enhanced if Vingegaard is at the Tour.

At first glance, the nagging uncertainty might drive a lesser team to their wit’s end, but so far, it appears everyone inside the bus are taking things fairly much in stride.

I guess that’s what sweeping all three grand tours in one season can give to a team’s self-confidence.

Yes, as one insider told me, they’d clearly prefer to have Vingegaard and Van Aert at the start line in top form in Florence on June 29, but if they’re not, Visma-Lease a Bike will still have a very strong team .

Visma brass keep insisting that Vingegaard won’t go to the Tour unless he’s at “100 percent” and ready to fight for the victory on equal terms with Tadej Pogačar and others.

Team boss Richard Plugge said last week that if Vingegaard isn’t at optimum form, it’s better for him to avoid getting crushed at the Tour and the mental toll that might come with it, and instead reload to win the Vuelta a España in August in full glory.

A lot will depend on what Vingegaard has to say and how he feels. Even Vingegaard at 90 percent still might be able to finish on the podium and perhaps still eek out a win, especially if Pogačar somehow runs out of gas in the Tour’s final week.

It’s going to be very interesting to watch to see how the next few weeks evolve.

Visma-Lease a Bike sport directors told me that the final decision won’t be made until after the Tour de Suisse and perhaps only until a few days before the Tour de France starts.

Without either Vingegaard or Van Aert, the team would naturally lose some of its heft. Riders like Kuss, Jorgenson, and Christophe Laporte would give the team some chances, but it would clearly be a very different vibe than if the two-time defending champion is at the start line in peak fitness.

The irony in all this, of course, is if Primož Roglič had not left Visma-Lease a Bike at the end of last year’s controversial Vuelta power struggle, he might have been very much positioned to headline the “Killer Bees” one more time.

Jorgenson’s big chance: How far can he go?

Matteo Jorgenson returned to racing Sunday after a long break following his spectacular spring that included victory at Paris-Nice and Dwars door Vlaanderen.

The Idahoan starts this week at the Dauphiné in a unique position. Without Vingegaard here to suck up the team’s collective forces, he will start as one of the team’s GC captains, alongside Vuelta champion Sepp Kuss.

He quickly paid back the support by kicking to third in Monday’s second stage in an intense hill-top finale to bolt up to third overall in the race known as the “mini Tour de France.”

The leadership role at the Dauphiné reflects both how much confidence Visma team staffers have in the American all-rounder as well as his ever-steady improvement in the WorldTour.

Last year, Visma-Lease a Bike won a bidding war for Jorgenson’s signature against several teams, including Soudal Quick-Step, and he’s quickly proven his worth.

The team hoped he could challenge in one-week stage races after seeing him shine in the 2023 Tour de Romandie, which he led until Adam Yates overtook him on the decisive climbing summit finish.

Victory at Paris-Nice only bolsters their belief in Jorgenson.

Who will win Dauphiné? It’s poll time! — Andrew Hood (@EuroHoody) June 1, 2024

This week’s climb-heavy Dauphiné will present an interesting challenge for Jorgenson.

The Dauphiné comes in June, not early spring, and the field is packed full of GC contenders heading toward the Tour de France.

No one is expecting him to win this week, but a top-10 or perhaps even a top-5 overall coming out of the final weekend of high-altitude climbing stages would be a huge boon for Jorgenson’s already rising stock.

Could he even someday evolve into grand tour material?

Neither Visma-Lease a Bike brass or Jorgenson know right now.

The simple answer is his full potential remains a mystery. This next week could prove decisive in clarifying the future of his fast-rising profile.

Sean Quinn shows off unique US national jersey

Sean Quinn was beaming at the start of Sunday’s opening stage at the Critérium du Dauphiné to show off his newly minted U.S. national champion’s jersey.

Even though it was covered up under a rain vest, he unzipped it to show off to curious journalists and well-wishers at the start line.

The EF Education-EasyPost raced Sunday in the specially designed Rapha jersey emblazoned with a unique twist on the stars-and-stripes national kit.

Quinn won the road race in May ahead of Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) and teammate Neilson Powless.

“I am very proud to represent the country and race in the nice jersey at the Dauphiné,” Quinn said. “I had a bad race Wednesday, but I have been training well for the past two months, so you don’t lose all your form in one week. I am confident for this week.

“It’s a pretty open race,” he said of the Dauphiné. “We’d like to win a stage with the team, if we can do our best every day, and maybe do something in the GC.”

Other North Americans in the Dauphiné include Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost), Sepp Kuss, and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike), and Canadians Hugo Houle and Derek Gee (Israel Premier Tech).

The U.S. road win, however, did not punch Quinn’s ticket for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

McNulty secured a spot by winning the U.S. national time trial title, and he will race both the elite men’s road race and time trial in Paris.

Jorgenson assured himself a spot on the Olympic road race team with his victory at Dwars door Vlaanderen in March, with two road spots and one time trial spot left to fill.

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What’s it like to be an American cyclist living in France? Watch to get professional road cyclist Joe Dombrowski’s view.

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