(Florence) First reconnaissance, presentation of the teams: two days before the start, the Tour de France riders got to the heart of the matter on Thursday in Florence, cradle of the Renaissance where anti-COVID-19 masks were back.

“I don’t want to relive the same thing I experienced last year at the Giro, I just want to be careful,” said Remco Evenepoel while appearing masked in front of the press at the Palazzio Vecchio, one of the multiple majestic palaces in illuminate the Tuscan city.

In 2023, the Belgian, who will compete in his first Grande Boucle this year, had to abandon the Tour of Italy because of the virus, even though he was the leader.

Several runners have been ill in recent weeks, including Frenchman David Gaudu. And some were even forced to withdraw because they were insufficiently recovered, like the British Tao Geoghegan Hart or the American Sepp Kuss, Jonas Vingegaard’s sherpa.

“We know that COVID-19 is making a comeback. We are careful to get back into the habit of barrier measures, even if reflexes have been lost a little. We are facing the major event of the season,” commented the manager of the Décathlon-AG2R La Mondiale team, Vincent Lavenu.

At the start of the week, Tour director Christian Prudhomme told AFP that masks would be “made available” if needed, but that there would be no health protocol, as was the case. case at the height of the health crisis.

The atmosphere went up a notch on Thursday in Florence before the presentation of the teams in the evening on Piazzale Michelangelo, which overlooks the city and the Arno river.

Under a cloudy sky, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, who shared the last four editions, carried out a reconnaissance of the route of the first stage on Saturday between Florence and Rimini in the middle of the morning.

This 111th edition marks the first departure from Italy in the history of the Tour de France, a hundred years after Ottavio Bottecchia’s first Italian victory in 1924. It will end, after three weeks of fighting and suffering, on July 21 at Nice, and not in Paris as usual, because of the Olympic Games.

Tadej Pogacar, winner in 2020 and 2021, is the big favorite, as much because of the sparkling form he is displaying this year as because of the problems encountered by his main rivals.

“My form is even better than expected. I have never felt so good on a bike,” warned the leader of the powerful UAE team on Wednesday.

Dethroned in the last two years by Jonas Vingegaard, “Pogi” aspires to become the first rider since Marco Pantani in 1998 to complete the Giro-Tour double in the same year.

He fulfilled the first part of his contract by crushing the competition at the Tour of Italy, won with almost ten minutes in advance.

“If Tadej stays safe, he will be unbeatable. We saw it at the Giro and it will be even stronger in the Tour de France,” Remco Evenepoel repeated on Thursday.

The Belgian will aim for “a stage victory” while wanting to “finish as high as possible in the general classification”, but without putting “any pressure” on himself.

It remains to be verified whether he has completely recovered from the terrible fall at the beginning of April at the Tour of the Basque Country where he fractured a collarbone and a shoulder blade and which took away two other big favorites, Vingegaard and Roglic.

Of the three, it was the Dane, two-time outgoing winner, who suffered the most damage. Hospitalized for 12 days for fractures to a collarbone, ribs, and a pneumothorax, Vingegaard only got back on a bike on May 7 and has not raced competitively since.

After having dominated the event for the last two years, his Visma-Lease a bike team, pursued by an incredible succession of glitches since the start of the season, promises to be less strong this time than the UAE armada and perhaps even Roglic’s Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe.

The Slovenian, also involved in the accident in the Basque Country but who escaped without fracture, will be supported in particular by the Australian Jai Hindley and the Russian Aleksandr Vlasov.