Tour de France 2024 Italian Grand Départ from Florence & Emilia Romagna
3 Italian road stages will open the 2024 edition of the race for the first ever Grand Départ from our country
Tour de France 2024 - Grand Départ d'Italie
In 2024 the Tour de France, the biggest cycling race of the world, will begin in Italy.
The choice of our country to host the Grand Départ marks 25 years after Marco Pantani won the race and 100 years since Ottavio Bottecchia became the first Italian rider to win it.
A project that in recent years has involved the Emilia-Romagna Region and the City of Florence, then joined by Turin and the Piedmont Region, becomes reality. With the support of the Italian Government, this Grand Départ will mark an historic appointment for Italy. An appointment that for the Emilia-Romagna Sport Valley represents a new opportunity to attract people from all over the world in a territory with a very high sporting vocation.
The three stages of the 2024 edition, announced by Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme, are as follows:
- Saturday, 29 June — Stage 1: Florence to Rimini, 205 km
- Sunday, 30 June — Stage 2: Cesenatico to Bologna, 200 km
- Monday, 1 July – Stage 3: Piacenza to Turin, 225 km
The Emilia-Romagna stages of the Tour were run by the young athletes of the #inEmilia-Romagna Cycling team, the under-23 cycling team promoted by Apt Servizi. This has been a way to test the characteristics of routes which see, as regards the 200 km of the Cesenatico-Bologna stage, a flat stretch along the Romagna coast and then leave the field to the first climbs, in particular that of Cima Gallisterna in the Imola area, to end with the difficulties of the Colle di San Luca ring.
The 225 km stage from Piacenza to Turin winds entirely in the heart of the Po Valley, a flat route that borrows some roads from the Milan-San Remo race, ideal for sprinters.
The first stage, from Florence to Rimini, on the other hand, is predominantly Apennine: 205 km with a difference in altitude of almost 4 thousand meters and a series of steep climbs up to the passage in the Republic of San Marino, to then head towards the Rimini riviera.
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