These Are the 2024 Tour de France Stages You Won’t Want To Miss
The route of the 2024 Tour de France was announced in late October, and all signs point to it being one of the hardest in the Tour’s 111-year history. It’s also a Tour de France of several “firsts”–the first to start in Italy, the first Tour to include a stage featuring large sectors of gravel roads, and the first that doesn’t end in Paris.
In total, the 2024 Tour de France covers 3,492km (2,165mi) spread over 21 stages, with 8 flat stages, 4 “hilly” stages, 7 mountain stages (with 4 summit finishes), and 2 individual time trials.
It’s a Tour that should be exciting from start to finish, with each stage offering a unique and challenging route offering opportunities for all types of riders and teams. Here are six stages that we’ve already marked in our calendars:
Stage 4 - Pinerolo to Valloire (138km) - Tuesday, July 2
The 2024 Tour de France begins with three long, hard stages in Italy, stages that could cause an early shake-up of the Tour’s General Classification. But if they don’t, Stage 4 certainly will.
Beginning in Pinerolo–where Italy’s Fausto Coppi took a legendary stage win during the 1949 Giro d’Italia–the race heads back into France via the high Alps, first with the climb to Sestriere (the site of a famous Coppi stage win in 1952), then the Col du Montgenèvre, and finally the 2,624-meter Col du Galibier, which in most years would be the highest pass in the Tour de France (more on that later).
From the top of Galibier the riders face a long, treacherous descent to the finish line in Valloire, meaning any gaps from the summit should hold to the finish. This is the hardest mountain stage we’ve ever seen this early in the Tour–even compared to last year’s first week trip through the Pyrenees.
Stage 9 - Troyes to Troyes (199km) - Sunday, July 7
The Tour’s first week ends with something new for the Tour de France: a gravel stage. The Tour’s organizers have been flirting with gravel for years, first with a gravel stage in Paris-Nice, then with a stretch of gravel during an Alpine stage in 2018, and finally with a stage through the gravel roads of the Champagne region during last year’s Tour de France Femmes p/b Zwift.
Well, after years of dabbling, the Tour is taking the full-on gravel plunge in 2024 with a stage starting and ending in Troyes with 32.2km of white gravel roads divided into 14 sectors, 6 of which come in the final hour of the stage. Two days after the Tour’s first individual time trial and one day after a challenging transitional stage, this is a stage that fans won’t want to miss–and riders will be praying to survive.
Stage 11 - Évaux-les-Bains to Le Lioran (211km) - Wednesday, July 10
The second-longest stage of the 2024 Tour de France brings the riders through the Massif Central, a region known for tough climbs, technical roads, and high temperatures.
Beginning in Évaux-les-Bains, the day begins on rolling roads, but things get vicious near the end of the stage with four punchy climbs jammed into the final 45km. This is a great day for a breakaway filled with the sport’s best one-day racers to head up the road looking for glory. It’s also the perfect launchpad for a GC ambush–if the Tour’s heads of state aren’t paying attention or their teams have a hard time controlling the front of the peloton.
Stage 15 - Loudenvielle to Plateau de Beille (198km) - Sunday, July 14
Last year’s Tour went through the Pyrenees during the first week, which meant they were overshadowed by stages through some of France’s other ranges (like the Alps) during the second and third weeks. So this year the Tour’s organizers have made the mountains that form the border between France and Spain the centerpiece of the Bastille Day holiday weekend.
Stages 14 and 15 both end with summit finishes, but of the two, we think Stage 15 is the toughest. At 198km, it’s much longer than Stage 14, with 4,850m of elevation gain compared to “just” 3,900m the day before. But it’s the sting in this stage’s tail that makes Stage 15 a real beast: the Plateau de Beille, a climb that returns to the Tour for the first time since 2015.
At 15.9km and with an average gradient of 7.9 percent, the Plateau de Beille is the toughest summit finish of the second week. By this point in the Tour, the riders are certainly going to be exhausted, and this stage could blow the race apart heading into the final week.
Stage 19 - Embrun to Isola 2000 (145km) - Friday July 19
After a brief trip through the Alps on Stage 4, the Tour heads back to them for three stages in the third week. Of the three, Stage 19 is definitely the toughest.
Beginning in Embrun, the stage crams three peaks with 2,000m summits into just 145km of racing: the 2,109m Col de Vars, the 2,802m Cime de la Bonette (the highest paved road in France), and the 2.024m climb to the finish at the Isola 2000 mountain resort.
Even though there’s lots of road between the top of La Bonette and the base of the final climb to Isola 2000, this is a stage for the Tour’s pure climbers–and perhaps a day for redemption if one of the Tour’s out-of-contention GC contenders goes on the attack in search of the stage win.
Stage 21 (ITT) - Monaco to Nice (34km) - Sunday, July 21
We don’t usually include time trials as Can’t Miss stages–they’re just too “meh.” But the Tour doesn’t always save them for its final stage–and when it has they’ve never been as long or as challenging as this one.
Since Paris is hosting the Summer Olympics less than a week later, it would be a logistical nightmare to bring the Tour into the city for its traditional final stage. So the race ends in Nice in 2024, with a final weekend that brings the riders through the Maritime Alps on Saturday and ends with a challenging individual time trial–the second of the Tour–on Sunday.
The stage begins in Monaco then quickly climbs into the hills above the Mediterranean where the riders will crest the La Turbie and then the Col d’Eze, a climb that traditionally serves as the focal point of the final stage of Paris-Nice each March. The riders will then plunge back down into Nice with a ride along the Promenade des Anglais followed by a finish in the Place Masséna.
This is the first Tour to end with an individual time trial since Greg Lemond beat Laurent Fignon to win the 1989 Tour by just 8 seconds. With one of the longest, hardest time trials in the last few years, the Tour’s organizers are hoping for another exciting finish 35 years later.
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