
Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard will line up as the two overwhelming favourites when the 113th Tour de France rolls out from Barcelona on Saturday, the first Grand Départ in Spain since 1992. The Slovenian and Dane, unbeaten in 2026, arrive with sharply contrasting preparations yet share the same goal: a fifth Tour victory that would place them alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. “We have two favourites now,” Slovenia’s national broadcaster RTV SLO declared on Thursday, echoing the consensus across European cycling desks .
Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates squad presented all 184 riders in Barcelona on Wednesday, confirming the five-time champion’s bid to equal Merckx’s record. Vingegaard, meanwhile, has reshaped his season around happiness as much as speed, telling Dutch daily NRC that his mental state is “excellent” after discarding a rigid programme that left him drained in 2025 . The Dane’s Visma-Lease a Bike team has arrived with a squad built for punishing breakaways and relentless tempo, while Pogačar’s team combines climbing firepower with a lead-out train honed for the cobbled sectors of the opening week.
French hopes rest on two shoulders: 19-year-old Paul Seixas, who will become the youngest French starter in modern Tour history, and Remco Evenepoel, who will share leadership duties with Florian Lipowitz at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. Evenepoel reacted with visible irritation when asked about the “double leadership” on Thursday, while Lipowitz, the German outsider, insisted the arrangement is “about giving the team options” . Liberation, however, has highlighted five other French riders—including Rémi Cavagna and Valentin Madouas—whom it believes could animate the race beyond Seixas’s yellow jersey dreams .
For spectators, the Tour is also debuting “Inside My Race,” an AI-driven platform that uses narrative models to deliver personalised, near-real-time race insights to fans via mobile apps . The organisers expect Barcelona’s streets to swell to 850,000 on Saturday, despite competition from the football World Cup final, as the peloton sets off on a 182 km opening stage to the Catalan coast.
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