Cycling’s Tour de France, with its vast caravan of teams, media, publicity and security, was visible everywhere around the Spanish city of Bilbao Thursday, with riders poised to embark on the epic 21-day race to Paris.

The 22 teams comprising a total of 176 riders will parade around a short downtown circuit starting in front of the Atlantic port’s landmark Guggenheim museum later Thursday.

A year after a hugely successful three-day Grand depart in Copenhagen and Denmark, the Tour de France will spend three days in the Spanish Basque Country.

The region’s rolling green hills should provide for a thrilling start with stage 1 a constantly undulating run of 182km from Bilbao and back.

Read the full story on Sportsdesk...

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.