The Tour de France 2024 will start from Italy for the first time, with the three initial stages: Florence-Rimini, Cesenatico-Bologna, Piacenza-Turin.
The official presentation of the so-called 'Grand depart' 2024 was held today in Palazzo Vecchio, with the mayor Dario Nardella, the president of the Emilia Romagna Region Stefano Bonaccini, and the director of the Tour de France, Christian Prudhomme.
"The Tour de France has never started from Italy in 120 years, and it was kind of an anomaly, an incongruity," Prudhomme said, quoting the race's Italian winners, from Bottecchia to Nibali.
The director of the Grande Boucle underlined that "Italy is a great cycling country, a passionate country, a magnificent country, a country that will offer us the beauty of its landscapes".
According to Christian Prudhomme, above all, "there will be an interesting sporting terrain for the champions: for us it is very important to have the champions of the Tour de France shoulder to shoulder from the first days, from the first hours. With the route from Florence to Rimini, and then from Cesenatico to Bologna, it is a certainty that there will be champions. Then we will go from Emilia-Romagna to Piedmont, up to Turin, where there will certainly be a sprint. All kinds of riders are interested in this first great start in history of the Tour de France in Italy".
