The 2024 Tour will unite France and Italy.

Two central nations in the history of european and world culture. Not only the ‘high’ culture of the great philosophers and men of letters, painters and sculptors, but also its most common expressions.

It is the aesthetics of the everyday. That all-European ability to take the humblest things in life and treat them to the point of making them art. The excellence of the two countries in food, clothing, and design comes to mind. But it is also the case with the humblest of means of transport: the bicycle.

It is in these two countries that cycling as a sport was born and achieved its glorification. From Milan-San Remo to Paris-Roubaix, from the Giro d’Italia to the Tour de France.

These two countries have always been the blank page on which the most formidable champions, challenging each other, have written their legends. Garin, Girardengo, Petit-Breton, Bottecchia, Pellissier, Bartali, Bobet, Coppi, Anquetil, Gimondi, Hinault, Saronni, Fignon, Bugno, Virenque, Nibali... heroes of an epic that, for more than a century, has brought the masses together by the side of the road, children and the elderly hand in hand, to cheer on the champions of the future and to recount the great feats of the past.