The 2023 Tour de France starts in just 4 weeks; and will be the 110th edition of the most famous Road Race in the world.
It will start in Bilbao, Spain on 1 July and end with the final stage at Champs-Élysées, Paris on 23 July.
22 teams are scheduled to take part in the race. (176 Riders in Total)
All 18 UCI World Teams have been automatically invited and they will be joined by 4 UCI ProTeams – the two highest placed UCI Pro Teams in 2022 (Lotto–Dstny and Team TotalEnergies), along with Uno-X Pro Cycling Team and the Israel–Premier Tech team.
In January 2022, Amaury Sport Organisation announced that the Basque Country in Spain would host the Grand Départ, with the first stage in Bilbao.
It is the second time that the Basque Country hosted the Tour’s start, following on from the 1992 race.
In October 2022, the full route was announced by Christian Prudhomme. The Tour will return to the Puy de Dôme for the first time since 1988, and only 22 kilometres (14 mi) of time trials are on the route — the shortest amount since the 2015 edition.
The 2023 Tour de France is expected to be a two-way fight between defending champion Jonas Vingegaard (Team Jumbo–Visma) and two-time winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
Both had finished in first and second place respectively in 2022, with the positions reversed in 2021.
The pair had raced against one another early in the season at Paris–Nice, a race won by Pogačar, while Vingegaard finished third. Vingegaard’s form then picked up as the season progressed. He won three stages and the overall classification at the Tour of the Basque Country in April.
At the Critérium du Dauphiné, one of the preparation events for the Tour, he won two stages and won the general classification by the biggest margin since 1993.
Pogačar meanwhile enjoyed a very successful spring campaign, winning the Tour of Flanders, the Amstel Gold Race, and La Flèche Wallonne. He also come fourth at Milan–San Remo and third at the E3 Saxo Classic. A crash and subsequent injury at Liège–Bastogne–Liège then, unfortunately, interrupted his season.
The most notable absentees from the race are a quartet of general classification favourites and former Grand Tour winners who chose to prioritise the 2023 Giro d’Italia, which featured more time trial kilometres than the Tour in 2023, which suited some these riders.
Those four were eventual Giro winner Primoz Roglic (Team Jumbo–Visma), 2018 Tour winner Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) and two who left the Giro through illness and injury when highly placed, 2020 Giro winner Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers) and incumbent World Champion and Vuelta a España winner Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–Quick-Step).
After the shock announcement of his retirement – this will be Mark Cavendish’s last Grand Tour and his last change of taking the record (from Eddie Merckx) for the most Stage Wins at the Tour de France.
With 6 Flat Stages – he has every chance of taking that record.
However, with very little Time Trialing, only 14kms, it is going to be a race for the climbers.
It will be one of the great spectacular events of the summer 2023.