• Updates from the 206km opening stage
• Cavendish relishing one final tilt at stage record
• Team-by-team guide | Get in touch! Email Tom

Here’s a look at today’s stage, Saturday 29 June: Florence to Rimini, 206km, with William Fotheringham’s preview.

A first Grand Départ in Italy, ironically when cycling talent in this traditional heartland is vanishingly scarce. There will be barely any Italians on the start list and there is zero prospect of a repeat of Italy’s last overall win, Vincenzo Nibali in 2014. A dramatically hard opening stage is suited to the punchy talent of Giulio Ciccone; however, with three second category climbs, who would bet against Tadej Pogacar trying to gain an early advantage?

• Manxman currently shares record with Eddy Merckx
• ‘I’m more ready now than I was last year’

Mark Cavendish’s final tilt at claiming a record-breaking 35th stage win at the Tour de France begins in earnest on Monday when he targets victory in the longest day of this year’s race, the 230km haul from Piacenza to Turin.

“I’m more ready now than I was last year,” Cavendish, who currently shares the record of 34 stage wins with the great Eddy Merckx, said on Friday afternoon. “I’m so happy I carried on, actually.”

Slovenian has taken over the sport since double Tour winner Vingegaard suffered horror crash in April

If the defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard overcomes both the lingering aftermath of a horror crash in April that hospitalised him for 12 days, and the rampant form of a seemingly invincible Tadej Pogacar, his will be one of the most remarkable wins in the race’s history.

The double Tour winner starts this year’s race, which begins in Florence on Saturday and ends in Nice on July 21 in extremis, his embattled team beset by illness and injury, his form uncertain.

• Authorities cracking down on hidden motors on bikes
• ‘This is a way to show that we really take this seriously’

The head of world cycling’s governing body has revealed his organisation will pay whistleblowers to come forward with evidence of hidden motors being used in the Tour de France and other major races. Hidden motors and electromagnetic wheels, costing about £200,000, are suspected to have been used in the professional peloton for several years.

David Lappartient, the president of the UCI, supported by the former US Homeland Security investigator Nick Raudenski, the UCI’s new head of the fight against technological fraud, is ramping up efforts to detect cheats.

Our in-depth look at every team, main riders to watch and the cast of characters racing through France this summer

• Stage-by-stage guide to this year’s Tour de France

Once a low-key Dutch cyclo-cross team, now the home of the best one-day racer plus the fastest sprinter in the business. Mathieu van der Poel, the reigning world champion and Jasper Philipsen, winner of the points prize at the Tour last year, dominated racing this spring winning three of five Monument one-day races. Ominously, Philipsen seems to have adopted the “race less, win more” approach which paid dividends for VdP last season: team owners the Roodhooft brothers have built a strong support squad around them with Søren Kragh Andersen and Axel Laurance both capable of winning on their day.

• Geraint Thomas ‘super excited’ by ‘strong team’
• Tom Pidcock hoping to repeat stage win from 2022

Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadiers will start the 2024 Tour de France much as they have other recent Grand Tours: hoping for the best from their nominated team leaders, but ready to call for backup from Geraint Thomas and Tom Pidcock, if needed.

With the Giro d’Italia winner Tadej Pogacar seemingly in invincible form, the years have long gone when, as Team Sky, the British squad started the world’s biggest bike race as the team to beat.