Missing Men, Turgid Transitions, and a Gummed-Up GC: Top Flops of the 2024 Tour de France

Remember the “Big 4″ battle touted to light up the 2024 Tour de France? The most wide-open sprinter field in years? Red Bull’s big stampede into the biggest race in the world?

They’re some of the top flops of a Tour de France whack-a-mole of huge hits and disappointing misses.

Before we dig the dirt on the duds, let’s be clear – this was in many ways a Tour de France for the ages.

As Velo’s wise sage Andrew Hood rightly pointed out, history makers and record breakers like Tadej Pogačar, Biniam Girmay, and Mark Cavendish ensured this was a race that didn’t stop delivering.

From Richard Carapaz and Victor Campenaerts to Matteo Jorgenson and Julien Bernard, there were plenty of sub-plots to be stoked for.

But even the biggest Pogi-lauding Cav-lover would admit this year’s three-star-rated Tour de France was missing a few pieces.

Here are the top flops of the 2024 Tour de France:

Missing men: Crashes, COVID

COVID and crashes worked their wrath on the 2024 Tour de France and stole the race of an awesome foursome that could have driven the narrative.

Vingegaard and Visma-Lease a Bike’s chances in its super-team showdown with Pogačar and his white-clad stormtroopers saw yet another puncture when Sepp Kuss was a DNS with COVID.

Matteo Jorgenson stepped up in exceptional fashion for a team derailed by a season of disasters, but the long lean Idahoan doesn’t pack the anti-Pogačar antidote in the high mountains quite like Durango’s Eagle.

Would Kuss have made a difference in the overall result?

Unlikely. But he might have made Pogačar’s parade through the Pyrénées and Alps look a little more labored.

Primož Roglič’s crash and stage 13 exit robbed the race of one of the very few that might have hung with Pogačar.

After a year of big hype for the “Big 4,” Couch Peloton was bereft a “big” with an intriguing Tour de France backstory and bold new backing band.

“‘Rogla” was already off the pace when he pulled out with injuries and didn’t look to have his best legs this summer. Yet he kept the race for the podium intereresting in a top-10 otherwise locked out by leaders and superdomestiques.

Elsewhere, animators de-luxe Tom Pidcock (COVID) and Mads Pedersen (crash/injuries) succumbed to the sad side-effects of grand tour racing. They’re exactly the type of riders that could have added the explosive je ne sais quoi so needed in the race’s turgid transition stages.

Missing men: Legless and unable to deliver

And then there’s the riders that just didn’t deliver.

Sorry to say it, Mathieu van der Poel, David Gaudu, Carlos Rodríguez, Enric Mas, Sam Bennett, and Fabio Jakobsen, but you’re on the naughty step for not living up to the pre-race hype.

Bennett didn’t hit a podium in his Decathlon-Ag2r-La Mondiale renaissance and Jakobsen fared even worse in a sprint mob ruled by versatile climb-bashers Girmay and Jasper Philipsen.

David Gaudu was way off the boil before he even started Le Tour and was totally tepid by week three.

Yates and Mas – a rider once touted the savior of Spanish GC ambition – floundered in a GC race ruled by a “Big 4” one rung out of their reach. Their breakaway antics in week three saved them from a more severe report card.

Speaking of Spanish saviors, what happened to Rodríguez?

Sure, the 23-year-old cemented his status as an uber-consistent GC racer with seventh overall, his third-straight top-tier result in a grand tour.

But did Rodríguez actually do anything? The Tour would barely have noticed if he, or his entire Ineos Grenadiers team, wasn’t there.

Ineos Grenadiers wasn’t the only team to spectacularly under-deliver.

Bennett’s Ag2r crew lost the wheels at the race that matters most after it wildly overachieved all through the early season. Their French rival Groupama-FDJ was similarly dire and in desperate need of some vintage Thibaut Pinot.

And Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe was pretty much impotent after Roglič and top climber Aleksandr Vlasov were DNF.

Last but definitely not least, let’s talk monument man MVDP.

Van der Poel’s all-out focus on the Olympic Games was a big loss for ASO.

The Dutch devastator was undercooked for the Tour’s first week and his spectacular leadout smash only got its legs in week three. MVDP barely seemed interested the rest of the time in a race seemingly caught in the blinkers of his Olympic vision.

An Alpine endgame defizzed by dominators

Two short and severe Alpine stages and a final day mountain time trial?

Way to go, ASO!

Tour de France route designer Thierry Gouvenou served up several portions of spice when he created the back-end of an unprecedented Tour divorced from its traditional Paris procession.

On paper, there would be assaults and ambushes in the hulking mountains of stages 19 and 20 before a nerve-jangling time trial into Nice. The race for yellow would go to the wire in the most explosive Tour final yet.

But not even the cycling overlords at ASO could predict their race would be taken to pieces by Pogačar and taken over by “super teams.”

The spectacular finale through the Alps was neutered by a GC blown wide open by mega-minute time gaps and gummed-up by superdomestique-loaded “super teams” Visma-Lease a Bike, UAE Emirates, and Soudal Quick-Step.

Pogačar guaranteed fireworks and Remco Evenepoel was an animator, but otherwise, the amphitheater of the Alps became a stadium for defensive tactics as rogue atoms like Derek Gee and Giulio Ciccone clung to the wheels and hoped for the best.

Thank the cycling gods for Richard Carapaz and his polka dot panache.

The Tour’s unprecedented Cote d’Azur time trial likewise could have been a belter.

The rugged mountain-lined route could have bettered the Planche des Belles Filles of 2020 or the Monte Lussari of last year’s Giro d’Italia.

Mais, non.

There was little to race for as by the time Le Tour rolled down the ramp on stage 21 for the Champagne-slurping, caviar-chowing Monaco crowds.

I’m no mega-fan of the Tour’s traditional procession into the Champs-Élysées, but at least it guarantees the race finishes with the big bang of a big bunch sprint.

Turgid transitions

What the heck happened in the transitional sprint stages that stitched together the course of the 2024 Tour de France?

Well, next to nothing, actually.

The Tour’s flat finishes – once the domain of a doomed break and maybe a few late solo flyers – were turgid slogs short of action and heavy on TV shots of crumbly old chateaux.

What bit the breakaway at the Tour de France this summer?

An overload of sprint teams and GC units commited to controlling danger-loaded finales meant the breakaway had even slimmer chances at success than ever.

Rather than flick matches into a pointless attack, the pack-filler French ProTeams were in it to win in 2024.

Headliner Tour de France victories bacame the raison d’etre for the likes of Cofidis and TotalEnergies, and the so-called “TV Breakaway” became a victim of the social media doom-scrolling era.

Sure, watching three Arkéa B&B attackers rolling through-and-off for 150km isn’t the best way to spend an afternoon.

But it’s better than the mockery that was the 2024 alternative.

And sad to say it, but when the countdown clock finally buzzed for a bunch sprint, crashes and controversies stole the headlines from the long-awaited results.