Red Bull Bora Amongst the Best Bets for Tour de France 2024
The 2024 Tour de France is a race of firsts. The race will start in Italy for the first time in its history, and for the first time, it will not finish in Paris. For the first time in 35 years, a final-day time trial means the yellow jersey will not be decided on the penultimate day.
34-year-old Primoz Roglic, who recently won the eight-stage Criterium du Dauphine, has a new team strong enough to stake a claim on the 2024 Tour de France’s team classification. ©RedBull
However, we do not know the answer to the biggest question: Will this year’s race feature a first-time winner? The winners of the last six Tour de France editions are amongst the field, and cycling betting sites make two of them, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, 8/15 and 5/2, respectively. At first glance, an upset looks unlikely.
But the 2023 Tour of Spain, won by a 300/1 shot, Sepp Kuss, showed anything is possible. A time trial on the 21st and final 2024 Tour de France stage could prove as shocking as the conclusion of 1989’s unforgettable race when the Tour last finished with a time trial. Thirty-two kilometres of gravel roads on Stage 9 could also throw sizeable spanners into the workings of many teams and riders.
With ‘value’ at the heart of calculations, cycle betting expert Roy Brindley has cast his eye over the 176-rider field, seeking the best bets for one of the four winner’s jerseys and the team classification. His selections can be backed with Unibet, bet365 and other respected UK sports betting sites.
Who Are the Chief Yellow Jersey Contenders?
The 2024 Tour de France has incredible depth. The betting is headlined by Tadej Pogacar, who won the race on his debut in 2020 and retained the title in 2021. He has finished second for the past two seasons, losing out to Jonas Vingegaard, who was the runner-up on his debut in 2021.
The 2018 Tour de France winner, Geraint Thomas (second in 2019 and third in 2022), is also in the line-up, as is the 2019 winner, Egan Bernal. Advancing years and severe injuries in Bernal’s case mean bookmakers have this duo quoted on 300/1 and 80/1, respectively.
At odds of 8/1, cycling betting sites believe Primoz Roglic is the third most likely winner. Now riding for a strong Bora-hansgrohe team, he has an obvious chance to better his 2020 Tour de France runners-up spot.
The winner of the 2022 Giro d’Italia and three Vueltas (the Tour of Spain) from 2019 to 2021, the Slovenian will hope to become only the eighth rider in history to complete cycling’s prestigious Triple Crown. At 34, it could be one of his last chances to join an elite club.
Fourth on the betting list is Remco Evenepoel. In 2022, aged 22, this Belgian won the Tour of Spain on his second grand tour outing. The former youth international footballer won the one-day Liège–Bastogne–Liège ‘monument’ contest in 2022 and 2023. During his short career, he has also claimed five ‘classics’ and five World Championship medals.
Who Brings the Best Form to the Tour de France?
At the start of April Jonas Vingegaard was priced on 8/13 to win his third successive Tour de France. However, a horror crash in the Tour of the Basque Country left him with a broken collarbone, broken ribs and lung damage. He was reportedly hospitalised for 12 days and has been in a race against time to make the world’s showpiece race.
Remco Evenepoel was another rider to sustain a broken collarbone in the Basque Country event and more recently he has been down with sickness. Primoz Roglic was the third ‘big name’ rider to crash in the notorious Basque Country race. He suffered no broken bones but abandoned the race and has had a relatively light campaign since.
Roglic recently won the eight-stage Criterium du Dauphine. However, he only just clung on to victory in the final stage when dropped by Matteo Jorgenson on the concluding climb. His margin of victory was a mere eight seconds.
There have been no preparation issues for Tadej Pogacar. The 25-year-old nearly landed Milan–San Remo and dominated other early season races, the Liège–Bastogne–Liège and Strade Bianche. Most recently he won the Giro d’Italia in a common canter.
Who Is the Best Bet in the Tour de France?
The heart says back to Roglic, as he would be the second oldest Tour de France winner ever. Furthermore, for years, he has been handicapped by a Visma team that has given priority to his teammates in the French classic.
This time, a new team, the Red Bull-backed BORA-hansgrohe outfit, has been stacked with lieutenants to help Roglic win in 2024. Even Jordi Meeus, who gave the team a stage victory when taking the much sort after sprint on the Champs-Élysées in 2023, has been dropped in favour of a domestique that can pace the Slovenian up hills and over mountains.
Nevertheless, the head screams Pogacar. The likeable win machine has had a trouble-free, impressive preparation, and, unlike the more recent editions of the Tour de France, this time, he has strong teammates to help him.
That is not the case for Vingegaard, who is under a fitness cloud, and his support team is far weaker than in recent years. Wingman Sepp Kuss withdrew at the 11th hour after only slowly recuperating from a bout of Covid-19. Linchpin, Wout van Aert declared, “I’m not at my top level” (following his return from injury) less than a week before the start of the French Tour.
2024 Tour de France in Numbers
- 2: Time trials
- 4: Mountain ranges
- 4: Hilly stages
- 4: Countries visited
- 4: Previous winners taking part
- 7: Mountain stages
- 8: Flat stages
- 8: Riders in each team
- 21: Stages
- 22: Teams
- 25: Kilometre shortest stage
- 176: Riders
- 231: Kilometre longest stage
- 3,492: Total kilometre race distance
- 52,230: Total climbing / elevation gain in metres
Seeing Red With 14/1 Bora Bet
2024’s Tour de France could be a race Visma-Lease a Bike will want to forget. Its 14/1 price in the team classification – calculated by adding the times of the three best riders of each team per stage – underlines its shortcomings.
Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates is 4/7 to take this prize. The bookmaker odds confirm what we know: Joao Almeida, Adam Yates, Juan Ayuso, Marc Soler, and Pavel Sivakov are great UAE Team Emirates workhorses who rarely lose chunks of time on long, steep climbs.
However, it should be remembered that their role is to assist Pogacar, and if they have to fall on their swords, they will. That is the case for any rider not appointed number one status. Consequently, at 4/7, UAE Team Emirates is too short in the betting and rates as a betting exchange ‘lay’ proposition in this market.
🦅 A new era and big ambitions for the team, enough to allow @rogla to fly to victory?
🦅 Une nouvelle ère et de grandes ambitions pour l’équipe, de quoi permettre à @rogla de s’envoler vers la victoire ? #TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/LBLeDeua97
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) June 27, 2024
Preference goes to 14/1 shots, BORA-hansgrohe. Red Bull’s financial input has doubtlessly boosted many aspects of the team including its training. 2022 Giro d’Italia winner Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov (fifth in the 2022 Tour de France) will be reliable wingmen for Primoz Roglic in the mountains. Tour debutant Matteo Sobrero played a big part in Roglic’s Criterium du Dauphine victory and his squad’s success in the team classification.
Go Low on Tour Finishing Numbers
Cycling legend Mark Cavendish has described the 2024 Tour de France as the “toughest course” he has ever seen. The race starts with two hilly stages, and by the fourth day, riders will be tackling mountains.
Cavendish and other sprinters have their best chance of stage victory in week two as five of the final eight stages are mountainous. Even the concluding time trial has a hilly up-and-down profile. Resultantly, it has to be questioned how many speed merchants – Philipsen, Pedersen, Groenewegen, Kristoff, et al – will contest the final week of the race.
The suspicion is there will be a significant number of retirements and more than a healthy slice of sprinters could abandon the race. Predominantly staged in the south of France, 2024’s Tour could be one of the hottest on record. High temperatures and potential heat stroke could be the ruination of many riders’ race.
Then, of course, there is the chance of a catastrophic pile-up that ends the hopes of many riders in one fell swoop. One hundred and fifty riders completed the race in 2023, but only 134 in 2022 when there were some major crashes. One hundred and forty-one riders made it to Paris in 2021.
With all factors considered – including the spectre of Covid-19, which has already done some damage to riders this year – bet365 bookmakers appear to have taken a misstep in quoting under 144.5 race finishers on 5/4 odds. The price is surely too big.
