The 2019 Tour de France was the 106th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's three Grand Tours. The -long race consisted of 21 stages, starting in the Belgian capital of Brussels on 6 July, before moving throughout France and concluding on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 28 July. A total of 176 riders from 22 teams participated in the race. The overall general classification was won for the first time by a Latin American rider, Egan Bernal of . His teammate and 2018 Tour winner Geraint Thomas finished second while Steven Kruijswijk () came in third.
Kruijswijk's teammate Mike Teunissen won stage 1's bunch sprint to take the first yellow jersey of the Tour. Julian Alaphilippe of took the lead of the race following his victory of stage 3. He lost the yellow jersey after the sixth stage to Giulio Ciccone () who was the highest placed rider of a breakaway group that finished ahead of the peloton (main group). Ciccone's lead of the Tour lasted two stages, before Alaphilippe retook it after stage 8. Against expectations, he held the yellow jersey for the next eleven stages, including the Pyrenees, before losing it to Bernal on the second day in the Alps, stage 19, which was shortened by inclement weather. Bernal held his lead in the final two stages to win the Tour.
The points classification was won by 's Peter Sagan for a record seventh time, with Romain Bardet of winning the mountains classification. Bernal also won the young rider classification. The team classification was won by and Alaphilippe was named the overall most combative rider. Caleb Ewan of won the most stages, with three.
Teams
The 2019 edition of the Tour de France consisted of 22 teams. The race was the 27th of the 38 events in the UCI World Tour, and all of its 18 UCI WorldTeams were entitled, and obliged, to enter the race. Additionally, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the organisers of the Tour, invited four second-tier UCI Professional Continental teams to participate in the event. The three French and one Belgian teams had each participated in the race before. The presentation of the teams – where the members of each team's roster are introduced in front of the media and local dignitaries – took place in front of a crowd of 75,000 on the Grand-Place square in Brussels, Belgium, on 4 July, two days before the opening stage.
Each squad was allowed a maximum of eight riders, resulting in a start list total of 176. Of these, 33 competed in their first Tour de France. The riders came from 30 countries. Six countries had more than ten riders in the race: France (43), Belgium (21), Italy (15), Spain (13), Germany (11) and the Netherlands (11). The average age of riders in the race was 29.71 years, ranging from the 21-year-old Jasper Philipsen () to the 39-year-old Lars Bak (). had the youngest average age while had the oldest.
The teams participating in the race were:
UCI WorldTeams
UCI Professional Continental teams
Pre-race favourites
Pre-race predictions in the media, as well as the bookmakers, on the general classification were drastically altered when four-time Tour winner Chris Froome () was ruled out with multiple injuries following his crash at the Critérium du Dauphiné three weeks before the Tour. Although he was third overall behind teammate and winner Geraint Thomas in the previous year's Tour, Froome was considered the 2019 Tour favourite before his crash. Prior to Froome's withdrawal, there was no official announcement by on leadership for the Tour, which could have potentially been shared between himself, Thomas and Egan Bernal. Another major absentee was the 2018 Tour runner-up Tom Dumoulin (), who missed the Tour with a knee injury he picked up at the Giro d'Italia, the Grand Tour of Italy that took place a month before the Tour de France, and a race he won in 2017. With their absence, the Tour was expected to be a more open race, with Thomas and Bernal as the leading contenders. Their closest rivals were thought to be Romain Bardet (), Jakob Fuglsang (), Steven Kruijswijk (), Mikel Landa (), Vincenzo Nibali (), Thibaut Pinot (), Nairo Quintana () and Adam Yates ().
After celebrating his 2018 Tour victory, Thomas was overweight at the start of the 2019 season. His only result of note before the Tour was a third-place overall finish at the Tour de Romandie in early May. In June he abandoned the Tour de Suisse following a crash, and required recovery time, which put his ability to perform at the Tour in doubt. Bernal made his Tour debut in 2018 riding as a domestique (leader's assistant) for Froome and Thomas, who are ten years his senior. In the 2019 season, he was planned to lead his team's Giro squad, but missed the race after he broke his collarbone. His major wins of the season up to the Tour were the Paris–Nice stage race before his injury and the Tour de Suisse on his return. In the Tour, he was to share the leadership with Thomas according to the team, although some in the media expected an internal battle between the two.
Bardet had finished on the podium twice in his career, second in 2016 and third in 2017. His form was lacking in the build up to the Tour, although his experience and the consistency of his previous performances in the race were considered enough to make him a serious contender. Fuglsang was the most in-form contender, enjoying a successful spring classics campaign, including victory in the prestigious "monument" one-day race Liège–Bastogne–Liège as well as the stage races Vuelta a Andalucía and the Dauphiné. Fuglsang was thought likely to benefit from a strong team, but doubt was cast on his ability to perform over a three-week Grand Tour, as he had never finished in the top three places in a Grand Tour. That too was the case with Kruijswijk, who had performed well in the season and was considered a top contender, despite suffering with illness leading up to the Tour. Landa's form was considered harder to predict, as he had stayed away from racing after the Giro, where he just missed out on a podium place. His best overall result in the Tour so far had been in 2017, when he finished fourth riding as a domestique to Froome.
Veteran rider Nibali had no wins so far in 2019, but placed second overall at the Giro and was considered to be a danger due to his experience. He was the only rider on the start list apart from Thomas to have won a Tour, the 2014 edition. Pinot was also considered to be in form after finishing fifth overall in the Dauphiné, and before that, winning the general classification of the non-World Tour Tour de l'Ain and Tour du Haut Var. It was however speculated that the pressure of being a home favourite could affect him negatively, as well having issues with heat. His previous results in the Tour had been mixed: he had finished third in 2014, but had dropped out of the race twice since then. Quintana, a two-time Grand Tour winner, was seen as a podium contender. Yates returned to the race after finishing 29th overall the previous year. Although he withdrew from the Dauphiné a few weeks earlier for illness, he had been in good form before then.
Other riders expected to place high in the general classification were Emanuel Buchmann (), Dan Martin (), Enric Mas (), Richie Porte (), Rigoberto Urán and Tejay van Garderen (both ), Alejandro Valverde () and Ilnur Zakarin ().
The 2018 winner of the points classification, Peter Sagan (), returned to defend his title in an attempt to break Erik Zabel's record of six wins. Before the Tour he shared the record with Zabel, after winning the classification in six out of the past seven editions. Sagan was regarded as the clear favourite for winning the points classification. The riders thought to be Sagan's biggest rivals were Caleb Ewan (), Dylan Groenewegen (), Michael Matthews () and Elia Viviani (). Other contenders for the green jersey were Julian Alaphilippe (), Edvald Boasson Hagen (), Alexander Kristoff () and Wout van Aert ().
Route and stages
On 30 May 2017, the ASO announced that Brussels would host the 2019 edition's opening stages (known as the Grand Départ), honouring one of the Tour's most successful riders, Belgian Eddy Merckx, on the 50th anniversary of his first of five overall victories. It was the second time the Grand Départ had taken place in Brussels and was the fifth Belgian Grand Départ. It also marked 100 years since the race leader's yellow jersey was first seen at a Tour. Further details of the Grand Départ were revealed on 16 January 2018: the opening stage that featured the Muur van Geraardsbergen climb, an iconic steep cobbled climb of the Tour of Flanders "monument" race, and a second stage team time trial around the streets of Brussels. The entire route, which the race director Christian Prudhomme described as "the highest Tour in history", was unveiled on 25 October 2018.
The opening stage visited Charleroi and looped back to Brussels, to connect the regions of Flanders and Wallonia in a stage. Starting in Binche, the third stage left Belgium for France, with the following stage taking the race to the north-east to the Vosges Mountains for two further stages. The transitional stage 7 moved the Tour south-west and towards the Massif Central highland region, with stage 8 ending in the city of Saint-Étienne. Stages 9 and 10 traversed the Massif Central, before the Tour's first rest day. The following two stages moved the race to the Pyrenees, which hosted four stages. After the second rest day, the Tour took a long transfer east for stage 16, finishing in Nîmes. Stage 17 took the race up to the Alps at Gap. After three Alpine stages, an air transfer moved the Tour to the outskirts of Paris, ending with the Champs-Élysées stage.
There were 21 stages in the race, covering a total distance of . There were two time trial events, stage 2's team time trial and stage 13's individual time trial. Of the remaining nineteen stages, seven were officially classified as flat, five as hilly and seven as mountainous. The longest mass-start stage was stage 7, at , and the shortest was stage 14, at . The route contained five mountain-top finishes: stage 6, to La Planche des Belles Filles; stages 14, to the Col du Tourmalet; stage 15, to Foix; stage 19, to Col de l'Iseran; and stage 20, to Val Thorens. The Iseran mountain pass, the highest paved pass in Europe, featured on stage 19. This was the seventh time that the Tour climbed the Iseran, but only the second ascent from the more difficult southern side. It was among five hors catégorie (beyond category) rated climbs in the race. Of the 34 stage start or finish hosts, the race visited Binche, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges and Pont du Gard for the first time.
+Stage characteristics and winners Stage Date Course Distance Type Winner 1 6 July Brussels (Belgium) to Brussels (Belgium) via Charleroi (Belgium) Flat stage 2 7 July Brussels-Royal Palace (Belgium) to Brussels-Atomium (Belgium) Team time trial 3 8 July Binche (Belgium) to Épernay Hilly stage 4 9 July Reims to Nancy Flat stage 5 10 July Saint-Dié-des-Vosges to Colmar Hilly stage 6 11 July Mulhouse to La Planche des Belles Filles Mountain stage 7 12 July Belfort to Chalon-sur-Saône Flat stage 8 13 July Mâcon to Saint-Étienne Hilly stage 9 14 July Saint-Étienne to Brioude Hilly stage 10 15 July Saint-Flour to Albi Flat stage 16 July Albi Rest day 11 17 July Albi to Toulouse Flat stage 12 18 July Toulouse to Bagnères-de-Bigorre Mountain stage 13 19 July Pau to Pau Individual time trial 14 20 July Tarbes to Col du Tourmalet Mountain stage 15 21 July Limoux to Foix Prat d'Albis Mountain stage 22 July Nîmes Rest day 16 23 July Nîmes to Nîmes Flat stage 17 24 July Pont du Gard to Gap Hilly stage 18 25 July Embrun to Valloire Mountain stage 19 26 July Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Col de l'Iseran Mountain stage no winner 20 27 July Albertville to Val Thorens Mountain stage 21 28 July Rambouillet to Paris (Champs-Élysées) Flat stage Total
Race overview