The 16 national champions starting the 2024 Tour de France - Arnaud De Lie, Dylan Groenewegen, ...

The Tour de France starts this Saturday and in the peloton there will be 16 riders wearing special jerseys. Right after the national championships, a lot of riders will be debuting their new equipment in the biggest race of all.

There is only one rider who will be wearing it every single day of the race however: Ryan Gibbons of Lidl-Trek who has won both titles in the South African national championships. But eight other riders have won in the road race nationals: Dylan Groenewegen (Netherlands); Arnaud De Lie (Belgium); Alberto Bettiol (Italy); Paul Lapeira (France); Alex Aranburu (Spain); Kevin Geniets (Luxembourg); Sean Quinn (USA) AND Rui Costa (Portugal).

In the list of the time-trial champions we've got another set of riders, another seven riders who will only race against the clock in their jerseys. They will have in stage 7 a flat time-trial fit for the specialists whilst stage 21 will be a mountain time-trial starting in Monaco and finishing in Nice. This includes Matej Mohoric of Slovenia, Richard Carapaz of Ecuador, Tim Wellens of Belgium, Nils Politt of Germany, Soren Waerenskjold of Norway, Bruno Armirail and Stefan Küng of Switzerland.

Most of these riders were not wearing their jerseys before the Tour and we should expect important riders such as De Lie and Groenewegen to fight for stage wins in the sprints; whilst Stefan Küng will certainly be a favourite to win the flat time-trial on offer in the opening week.