The road season is already history and the year is quietly drawing to an end. 2024 was undoubtedly the year of Tadej Pogačar! What supremacy this young man from Slovenia demonstrated... That other riders were able to walk away with beautiful victories seemed only possible because Pogačar was not at the start. Of course there was also Remco Evenepoel, who was undoubtedly the best in the time trial and, in the absence of the Slovenian, took the Olympic road race in a spectacular way. 2024 was also the year in which then-reigning world champion Mathieu van der Poel rode a great spring with wins in E3 Saxo Classic Harelbeke, Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix. Despite the demonstrations Mathieu shook out of his sleeve there, we were still a little hungry due to the absence of unlucky rider Wout van Aert. That 2024 was a truly unlucky year for Van Aert would prove later in the season. Peaking twice and showing twice that you are leaning towards your absolute best, but then...smack against the asphalt. In addition to the physical suffering, it must have been very hard on Wout mentally. The fact that he continues to show his fighting spirit and positivity says everything about the heart and mentality of the man from Herentals. Chapeau Wout! Jasper Philipsen is also more than worth a mention. In addition to winning Milan-San Remo and three stages in the Tour, what stands out is that Jasper finished the season in third place in the UCI ranking. Talk about a great rider! Jasper is the perfect bridge to talk a little about Mark Cavendish as well. In this issue we pay attention to this absolute best in the history of cycling. Cavendish can arguably be called the best sprinter of all time. Driven by statistics and records, Cav continued to strive for his 35th stage victory in the Tour during the years when things were not going so well. What a career this man has had, congratulations Mark! We have enjoyed a great cycling season immensely, but Cyclelive Magazine is mostly about enjoying cycling itself! That is why we are always looking for new challenges, different paths and wonderful new destinations to discover all the beauty the world has to offer. Cyclelive Magazine biked in so many different places this year where we were always amazed by the diversity, splendor and expressions that nature gives us all over the world. Traveling and touring by bicycle enriches you over and over again. Experience culture, history, gastronomy and art while keeping your body in motion. With the bicycle you see more, experience things differently, go into more detail and have many more possibilities than with any other means of transportation. In this issue we take you, among other things, while cycling to the beautiful white villages in the wonderful Axarquia region in Spanish Andalusia. Sometimes we don’t quite understand why fanatic cyclists keep returning to the same region or even the same village/town. We think cycling should be discovery and adventure in addition to training. Spain is therefore much more than Girona, Calpe or Benidorm. Maybe it’s time for you as a reader to do a little exploring too? In this new FREE issue of Cyclelive Magazine you will find many more tips for great cycling destinations where there is plenty to experience and discover, on and off the bike. So I wish all our readers a lot of fun reading, a cartload of guts to step out of your regular cycling lifestyle patterns and a wonderful end of year celebration! Patrick Van Gansen

Tour de France fever There is that long-awaited summer! The beautiful days are just around the corner and relaxing and strenuous bike rides will be ramped up sensitively in the coming weeks. With the Tour de France, the Olympic Games in Paris and, for the soccer fans, the European Football Championship in Germany, it will be a busy sports summer. In this issue we put the Tour de France in the spotlight and so we immediately take the opportunity to transform this usual foreword into a preview of the Tour de France 2024. Clash of titans When the 2024 Tour de France was announced, everyone immediately had their mouths full about the huge battle that was to come between the phenomena of Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič. However, the latter three went down heavily at the Tour of the Basque Country and saw their planned preparation fall seriously into the water right away. They were rehabbing while Pogačar rode the stars of heaven in Liège-Bastogne-Liège and afterwards took the Giro d’Italia in Merckxian fashion, even seeming to ride with the handbrake on. It was as if he rode everyone home in saving/training mode and it gives the impression that this Giro did not wear him out at all, on the contrary, it even made him a lot better. Immediately then comes the question of who is doing what to him? But is that question appropriate? Isn’t it a little too short? After all, we are talking about the Yellow Jersey in the Tour de France, the most hotly contested race of the year, in which every edition, always something we don’t expect, happens anyway. The battle for the jersey in question will be hard fought and very different than in the Giro d’Italia where the compe- tition - with all due respect to Pogačar’s performance - was rather poor anyway. We weigh the chances of the favorites for the overall victory. Two top favorites, three real challengers Tadej Pogačar The Slovenian lost the last two editions to Dane Jonas Vingegaard. So actually Tadej Pogačar should be second in the favorites pecking order. However, anyone who has seen him throughout the season and especially in the Giro knows enough, he is better than the two previous years. Moreover, his team is also stronger than ever. Or what about a team with Tadej Pogačar, Juan Ayuso, Joao Almeida, Adam Yates, Pavel Sivakov, Marc Soler, Nils Politt and Tim Wellens? We therefore place Pogacar as favorite number 1. Jonas Vingegaard If you had asked us in late March who the top favorite was for this Tour, we would have put Vingegaard at the top spot. Like his entire team at the beginning of the season, he seemed to be even stronger than he was in 2023. Vingegaard’s season started strong again when he dominated the Spanish stage race Gran Camiño from start to finish in late February, winning three of the four stages and the overall classification as he did in 2023. Also in the Tirreno-Adriatico, he showed his wonder legs by winning the fifth stage with a solo attack. The Dane rode away at 29 kilometers from the finish on the steepest part of the San Giacamo. He won the stage by more than a minute’s lead. Later, he also won the stage to Monte Petrano making the Italian stage race, won by 1’24” lead. When American Matteo Jorgenson, beat Remco Evenepoel in Paris-Nice and his team also monopolized the first one-day races, we even thought they were stronger in width than the year before as well. Until the riders of Visma - Lease a Bike suddenly started cycling from one setback to another and also Vingegaard did a huge crash with serious consequences in the Tour of the Basque Country. At the moment - May 30 - it looks like the rehabilitations of both Vingegaard and Wout van Aert are going well and the chances that we will see both in good form at the start of the Tour have become reasonably high. But ‘good form’ is already not enough against a ‘super Pogi’. Can Jonas still find his alien Tour legs in time? We hope so! Remco Evenepoel It will be the first Tour experience for Remco Evenepoel, who will have a Soudal-Quick Step team behind him that is slightly stronger in the tour work than in 2023. But where will Remco stand after his fall in the Basque Country? And how far would he have stood in relation to the two top favorites without that fall? In fact, we have very little to go on about Evenepoel’s real qualities as a grand tour rider and certainly not as a Tour de France rider. The time trials in this Tour are obviously in his favor. Question mark becomes how he handles the tough mountain stages. We see Remco fighting for third place on the podium in Paris. Primož Roglič Primož Roglič, who swapped his Jumbo-Visma cycling jersey for a BORA-hansgrohe outfit this year, had yet to charm us at the beginning of the season. When he too went down with it in the mega-crash in the Basque Country, the question marks only increased. Will he really be an important challenger to the two big favorites? In any case, we place him well away from Tadej and Jonas and think he will compete with Remco for the podium. But the experienced and wily fox that is Primož could also surprise us tremendously. Let’s not forget that in the Basque Country he came out of the crash as the least battered favorite. Perhaps he is the best prepared rider of all and, above all, he and BORA-hansgrohe are spraying a lot of fog and throwing sand in our eyes. We may not see it then, until all the fog has lifted and the sand has been washed out of our eyes.... Outsider Egan Bernal Bernal’s story is well enough known and no one ever expected him to be counted among the favorites again after his near fatal accident. We certainly don’t count him as a real favorite yet, but Egan showed some nice things early in the season and we hope that progression has continued in recent months. Bernal, with his attacking style of racing, could well be a determining factor in terms of the overall victory. Whoever gets him on his side could benefit! It would be nice to see him in the top five at the end of the Tour. Let’s all especially enjoy the exceptional generation of riders we will see at work!.... And with a little bit of chauvinism, we hope it will be Remco who will surprise the most and put Belgium back on the Tour map... Enjoy reading this Touredition of Cyclelive Magazine! Patrick van Gansen