Yep, it’s almost July, and it’s Tour time. Here’s the obligatory stats on the field that you might not find elsewhere, plus, new kits! More terrible fashion judgement!
Stage Winners
Mark Cavendish is back for one last go* at extending his record (it gets increasingly annoying to hear people still say it’s Merckx’s record – no, they’re both on 34, they share it) to 35 stage wins and holding it outright, and is holding 34 of the 130 Tour stage wins on the line – 26%.
*just like last time!
Cavendish’s effect on the stage wins number is notable by looking at the recent numbers on the start line – it drops drastically whenever he’s not there. This year is one of five in the last twenty years where more than 40 Tour stage winners are on the start line – 24% of the total.
Previous Winners
Four Tour winners line up for the first time since 2021 in Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingeegard, Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal. In 2021, it was Pogacar, Thomas, Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali. The Tour has missed out on the opportunity of having three riders, all of whom have won multiple Tours, to have been on the start line, thanks to Chris Froome not being selected by Israel Premier Tech.
Not having Froome means that rather than equalling the record of titles held on the start line (there would have been 10), there are “only” six, which is about par for the course in recent years.
As an aside on Froome, he is likely to have the worst result by a Tour winner after winning the event of 133rd in 2021 (not counting DNFs). Geraint Thomas, on the other hand, has the lowest finish of any rider who would then go on to win the Tour, having been 140th in his 2007 debut – 2nd last.
Historic Stage Wins by Teams
Which teams have been the most successful? Obviously, the ones who have been around the longest have an advantage here. Visma Lease a Bike are on an unbroken streak of starts since 1984 after all.
Visma and Quick Step are leagues ahead of other teams in terms of stage wins, which is to be expected given their combined 63 starts in the race. Meanwhile at the other end, Uno-X, Intermarche and Arkea have yet to win a stage in a combined 17 attempts of trying. Only three teams have actually won the race – Ineos, UAE and Visma, the latter of who took 38 attempts to crack it.
Alpecin have only been in three Tours, but have taken an average of nearly three wins per race, taking them ahead of Quick Step. The Belgian team do have a streak of eleven years in a row with at least one stage win going back to the 2013 Tour de France to uphold though.
Days in yellow
To be clear, this is the historic number of days each team has held the yellow jersey, not the number of yellow jersey wearers on their team.
Five teams have never managed to wear the iconic malliot jaune for a day, whilst Ineos have worn it for 91 days – the equivalent of 4.3 complete Tours. Movistar are second on 79, although they haven’t worn it since 2008 when Alejandro Valverde held the jersey after the opening day and they were Caisse d’Epargne. Similarly, Astana haven’t worn the jersey since 2017 (Fabio Aru), and EF Education have been through iterations as Garmin-Barracuda, Garmin-Sharp, Cannondale-Garmin and Cannondale-Drapac since Thor Hushovd wore the jersey in 2011.
Yellow Jersey Wearers
Okay, so how about which riders have had a day in the malliot jaune? There are 17 current riders who have worn the jersey, of which two aren’t present at the Tour: Chris Froome, with 59 stages, and Julian Alaphilippe, with 18.
Unsurprisingly, Visma and UAE are the teams with the most stages in the lead, although no team has more than two riders who have achieved the feat these days.
How about team strength?
Looking at the teams themselves, UAE have a startlingly strong team – of their eight riders, only Nils Pollitt and Tim Wellens haven’t been in the top ten of a Grand Tour. Ineos, Bahrain and Red Bull have four riders a piece who’ve been in the top ten, and Ineos and Red Bull have two Grand Tour winners each in Thomas/Bernal and Roglic/Hindley.
Previous Points Classification Winners
Where the 2024 Tour is exceeded expectations is in the number of previous Green jersey winners starting the race, with five riders on the line for the first time since 1993, when Eric Vanderaerden, Jean-Paul Van Poppel, Olaf Ludwig, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov and Laurent Jalabert all started. This year we have Mark Cavendish (2011, 2021), Michael Matthews (2017), Sam Bennett (2020), Wout Van Aert (2022) and Jasper Philippsen (2023) in the first year without the record seven time winner Peter Sagan.
Sagan’s absence means that the five riders hold six titles between them, rather than the ten that were held last year thanks to Sagan’s presence. As an aside, the last Tour winner to win the green jersey was Bernard Hinault back in 1979 – Tadej Pogacar probably has as good a chance as any in an era where sprints are seen as dull and GC riders race for every stage, but I can’t see it happening.
Previous KOM Winners
The attachment of the King of the Mountains competition to the GC battle in all but name has meant that there are a plethora of “Kings” in the peloton these days, and after three years where we had six previous polka dot wearers, we’re now down to five on the line: Tadej Pogcar, Jonas Vingegaard, Warren Barguil, Romain Bardet, and Giulio Ciccone.
With no Julian Alaphilippe or Rafal Majka this year, Pogacar is the only double winner in the field (Majka was the only other rider to do so since, er, Michael Rasmussen).
Previous Young Rider Winners
Whilst we increasingly see the Tour as youth dominated, it turns out the early 90s was when the most previous winners of the Tour’s young rider jersey rode the race. That said, it was helped by the rules being different – in 1983, it was for first time riders, but in 1987 it changed to be any rider under the age of 26. We still have five former winners on the start line mind – Pogacar, Bernal, Pierre LaTour and the Yates twins have all been successful before.
Pogacar is likely to be around for a while adding his four titles to the mix, and none of the previous victors can win the competition this time around, so we’re guaranteed a new name in white for the first time in a while.
New Kits!
It’s seemingly obligatory for teams to bring new kits out at the Tour these days, and this year is no different. The Tour roadbook suggested we might get more than we actually did (Astana and EF didn’t deliver, but Arkea did despite not being down to, and Intermarche waited till Friday) but some are basically just adding a sponsor without changing the wholesale design.
Here’s what we have to look at for the next three weeks, in reverse order of aesthetics:
First up, it’s Visma’s now obligatory change kit, which they apparently don’t need for all the other races with a yellow leader’s jersey (another reason to bring back the white Paris Nice leader’s kit), but do swap out for the Tour. After three years of kits personalised to fans (you could get your name on the kit, essentially), this year they’ve gone “renaissance” to celebrate the Tour’s start in Florence. Apparently the Renaissance is just like the team in terms of innovation et all – but it is ultimately another blue jersey in already very blue field.
Adding to the dark blue is the newly renamed RedBull Bora Hansgrohe, who have gone with the dark blue to match their F1 team overalls. Dark kit in the height of summer is a bold move, although it is arguably better than what they had before, especially with the bottle green shorts. Shame those masters of marketing at RedBull couldn’t come up with something more thrilling though.
Another team who were going to struggle not to improve, the positive of Jayco’s colour change, which apparently reflects the Saudi Alula resort better, is that it’s no longer mostly blue, and that with no orange in the peloton, they’ll be very easy to spot. The bad news is that it’s orange and dark green, which is terrible.
Nothing says mid-life crisis quite like riding an expensive carbon bike in a kit that looks like double denim, whilst advertising a hair loss shampoo (sorry, “hair booster”), and now especially when it’s explicitly clear the shampoo is out to stop your grey hairs. I can only assume van der Poel refused to wear the blue variant in time trials, so this advertising campaign for “grey attack” is the result. There is some cognitive dissonance in making a kit grey when the product is advertising is supposed to remove grey hairs mind. It’s not blue though, so they don’t clash with Soudal Quick Step as much. Presumably, as in previous years, a purple and yellow “Merci Pou Pou” kit will appear on rest days.
A kit they will use for both the Tour and Vuelta (where they would clash with the red jersey), Cofidis have extended the asymetric design and brought back the ol’ Cofidis sun, enthused by their two stage wins last year. Very nice.
Beating Alpecin to the punch with yellow and purple kit, Intermarche want you to believe they’re 50 years old, which is when they can trace their lineage as an amateur team. They rode in a yellow kit then, and this is a homage to that. Obviously, there’s an obvious clash with the leaders jersey, which they’ve solved by saying they’ll only wear it on rest days. It’s for charity as well – for Restos du Coeur, who are fighting poverty.
Perhaps the nicest kit is one we mich not actually see being raced in – Arkea paid tribute to campionissimo Fausto Coppi in a celeste jersey as a homage to the Bianchi colour scheme of the Italian’s team. Classic nostalgia is always popular in cycling, and this certainly works.
Sicycle 
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