Getty Images
The 2024 Tour de France will begin in Italy for the first time in the race’s 120-year history, with Florence the host for the cycling grand tour’s opening stage on 29th June.
Next year’s race will take place in Italy 100 years after Ottavio Bottecchia became the first Italian to win the event.
The first stage will take riders through Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, concluding in the seaside city of Rimini. Italy will also stage the following two days of cycling, with the race to stop at both Bologna and Turin.
The Tour will conclude with a time trial in Nice, rather than its usual finale in Paris, for the first time since 1989, due to the 2024 Olympics Games in the French capital occurring simultaneously.
“The Tour has started from all the countries bordering France,” said race director Christian Prudhomme.
“It has even started six times from the Netherlands, which has no common border with France. But it has never started from Italy. It’s an incongruity that will disappear.”
This year’s Tour de France is due to begin in the Spanish city of Bilbao on 1st July.
