At long last, the top three favorites for the Tour de France are set to square off for the first time since they stood together on the final podium of last year's Tour in Nice. Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Remco Evenepoel will all line up for the start of the Critérium du Dauphiné on Sunday.
Now in its 77th year, the Dauphiné has long held claim to being the single most important Tour tune-up in cycling (with apologies to the Tour de Suisse), but this year's race has particularly potent preview potential seeing as the Tour's "big three" have managed to avoid racing altogether through the entire early season. Our long wait to see them clash is about to end.
As is usually the case, the route of this Dauphiné is duly designed to give us a glimpse at the Grand Tour readiness of those big names and others, although there's no getting around the fact that the race only kind of matters to them when the Tour de France is the big goal. Still, a strong showing at the Dauphiné will get people talking, while a poor showing will ... well, also get people talking, but in a negative way. Riding high or dealing with media scrutiny ahead of the biggest race of the year could impact the way the stars arrive at the Tour start next month.
Did we do a good job with this story?
