The Epic 2024 Season Restart

This may be something of a pointless yawp, but I can’t help but note that once again, everything you need to know about professional cycling can be explained by country music.

Take it away, Emmylou…

Yes, cycling, like life in Appalachia, has a certain rhythm to it whereby your enjoyment of it ebbs and flows like the tides, or the lunar cycles, or some other mystical shit. And the hallmark of this life rhythm is just as Emmylou says: the darkest hour is just before the dawn.

And yeah, I am talking about the Giro d’Italia. My beloved race, which I routinely start off celebrating like an Italian main dish (so great) and end up celebrating like an Italian dessert (is it?). Some years the Giro is everything you want in a grand tour, with the most incredible action taking place in the most charming setting (no disrespect to the remote forests of southern Spain). Other years it… wants to be good. And then this year. It just was what it was, more of an exhibition of cycling than a GC battle, with some very lovely stage battles, because nothing in the Giro is ever all that bad. But it was nearly impossible to get excited about the race, at any point, for more than an hour at a time.

Photo by Tim de Waele/Getty Images

This was, in my opinion, the pre-dawn, moonless darkness settling over the sport in what was billed as a year for stupendously awesome showdowns. As we all know, the promised glory of 2024 was seemingly snuffed out in one week’s time, from March 27’s Dwars door Vlaanderen to April 4’s fourth stage of the Itzulia Basque Tour, where half of the Classics stars and all but one of the Tour de France favorites suffered horrendous crashes that put the entire season on a glide path to Hell. The sun set slowly over Flanders, where we could squint and watch Mathieu van der Poel hungrily devour the uneaten courses laid out for him and his chief rivals. In the dim moonlight of April we watched some mildly amusing races play out, leading into the Giro, and all along the way the only real action was wondering how many helpings of glory Tadej Pogačar could wolf down as he soloed home to another win. It wasn’t terrible, it was still cycling.

But it wasn’t what we were promised. Not at all.

But in ones and twos, the heroes of cycling are returning. Pogačar’s Giro win may have been unusually easy, but in some ways it’s only going to heighten the drama of the Tour de France, where he is no longer a secondary favorite who risked burning too many matches in May. Now he’s the clear #1 pick against his cadre of formerly wounded warriors… but the playing field is a bit more level as a result of all the crashes. It won’t be Perfect Jonas Vingegaard and his Vismada against the post-peak Pogs, the slightly green Remco Evenepoel and the never-very-convincing Primož Roglič. Now, as Vingegaard and Wout Van Aert gear up in altitude training, as Roglič and Evenepoel shake off the rust at the Dauphiné, and as Pogačar continues a recovery period that started somewhere around the second Giro rest day… now you can see all the plot lines merging into an even more explosive story than we could have ever imagined in our feverish offseason dreams:

Photo by Tim de Waele/Getty Images

What if Jonas is mostly fine? The Tour starts in 24 days, and Visma-LAB are projecting cautious optimism about him being ready. He and Van Aert seemed worst off of the crash victims, if you can compare the levels of misery involved in all of these unbearable situations, and as such Vingegaard seems the likeliest of the contenders for Yellow to be missing a little something in France. Bad news for him and his team, but his rivals won’t weep for him, not after he and his squad slammed the door on everyone two years running. And for our purposes, a less-dominant Jonas might be your favorite one to watch? In his best case scenario he wins again but not without a little help and a lot of drama.

Photo by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

Remco ready to go: Of the big names, Evenepoel was destined to start the Tour as the underdog, hardly assured of a podium spot even if he made it to Paris in good shape. He’s making his debut with a record of grand tour schizophrenia, sandwiching some DNFs around his ‘22 Vuelta win. We will know in a few days just how far along he is in his recovery from his Itzulia crash, but with a simpler collarbone break (as opposed to Vingegaard’s multiple injuries) maybe he’s the first man standing?

Photo by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

Primo position: Roglič was almost certainly the least injured of the notable crash victims, giving thumbs up on his way to get checked out as he was driven away from the crash scene. He and Evenepoel are going head to head this week, aa continuing theme as the two have squared off in a handful of Giri and Vueltas. Roglič has mostly gotten the better of his Belgian rival, and in fact, even before he got “his own team” he hasn’t really lost a grand tour on a level playing field to anyone… except one.

Photo by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

The Pogačar Takeover: If this broken season has a theme, it’s “anything you can do, I can do better. Love, Tadej xoxo.” From the classics to the mountains to the relationships inside and outside the race, everyone is totally sold on Tadej these days. Even with the Giro hanging over him and his form like a dark cloud. But can even the stress of winning the Giro slow down this generational talent at the peak (so far) of his powers? Because the only person to stop Pogs in a grand tour is Vingegaard.

Photo by Luc Claessen/Getty Images

And then there are the guys we aren’t discussing: Know who the second-highest-scoring rider in the world is right now? UAE’s backup plan, Juan Ayuso. At 21, he’s coming off fourth in the Vuelta last year, best of the non-Jumbos. He’s going to be a story, one way or another. For another sleeper who actually has the support of his team, don’t forget former podium finisher Richard Carapaz.

Photo by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

Should we talk about the stage battles? We could, and we will. For now, let’s marvel at the fact that van der Poel and Van Aert will be back, probably on top terms, and with Mads Pedersen and Tom Pidcock hanging around some of the same stages for a lovely little cobbles reunion. I mean… every stage could be absolutely fucking delicious.

And then there’s the unspoken topic: How long will we go without talking about the Olympics road race? My guess is, about 30 minutes at a stretch but not much more. The Race for Gold is always hotly contested, but rarely will riders be as keyed up for the race as this year. Between the quadrennial format and the suburban Paris locale (as opposed to let’s fly to Tokyo), the ambitions will be sky high, to the point that the subject will be in the backdrop of the Tour’s final week, at a minimum. The Tour-Olympics is always a double dip of massiveness, but the Paris version of this will be next level.

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As the darkness gives way to dawn, this is a look at the glorious day that lies ahead. The Dauphiné, meanwhile, is the dawn — I’ve been tuned out of the race for years (in the aftermath of ten weeks of classics/Giro geekery) but am fully intending to watch the next several days, because for once they may reveal something we don’t already know. It’s funny how 20 years ago these races used to be truly predictive of the Tour, as riders struggled to find their form at the exact right time. But now, with training science probably to blame, the intrigue is usually absent as everyone knows how to get to the Grand Départ with just the right amount of preparation. This time around, though, the wrenches thrown into everyone’s plans have elevated the importance of the Dauphiné and Tour de Suisse, so even June has a bit more spice to it this year. The perfect bit of seasoning to ramp us up to a full-on Carolina Reaper of a summer season. 2024 is going to be a memorable year in the sport after all.