The Tour de France is just 11 days away, and that means 21 stages, 3,328 kilometres, five summit finishes, two time trials, 11 cobbled sectors cobbles, and 358 stickers.
The Panini sticker album is an institution in football, still indispensable to a youngster's (or 30-year-old's) experience of a World Cup, and it has also caught on in cycling in recent years.
Introduced by Panini to mark the 100th edition of the Giro d'Italia in 2017, the first Tour de France version came along in 2019 - also to mark the centenary edition - and was clearly considered a success, given the continued roll-out in the years since.
However, there's a slight catch. The album is never perfect. As in football, the riders in the booklet will not exactly match those on the start line in Copenhagen on July 1.
The whole thing was sent off for production in March, meaning the makers have to make a stab - albeit an educated one - at the riders each team will select. With injuries, changes of schedule and form, not to mention the vagaries of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's a tough job and already some errors have been exposed.
Cyclingnews grabbed a copy from France recently and we've delved into the riders who have made the sticker book cut. Whereas the Tour de France field is made up of teams of eight, the sticker book has 10 riders per team - an insurance policy perhaps (but also a chance to sell more stickers).
Most selections appear solid enough, based on early-season longlists. However, there are some questionable decisions. For example, Egan Bernal is the first rider on the Ineos teamsheet, despite suffering a life-threatening crash at the start of the year. Even with his miraculous comeback, he's not riding the Tour, and back in early March it remained to be seen whether he'd ever return to top-level competition. Richard Carapaz was also selected despite being on a Giro-Vuelta programme, while talk of a Tom Pidcock debut didn't come soon enough, although the Briton is now a question mark after contracting COVID-19.
There are a few other slightly hopeful big-name punts, such as Tom Dumoulin for Jumbo-Visma, Alejandro Valverde for Movistar, and Biniam Girmay for Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert. Mikel Landa won't be there after all for Bahrain Victorious, nor will Tim Merlier for Alpecin-Fenix, while the Panini selectors can be forgiven for not considering Israel-Premier Tech might need to dispatch Sep Vanmarcke elsewhere in the scrap for UCI points.
Finally, Panini has chosen not to take sides in the Mark Cavendish or Fabio Jakobsen debate, instead selecting both sprinters for QuickStep-Alpha Vinyl's page.
We've listed out the full 10-man selections for each team below so you can check how accurate they are as the full and final start list is unveiled.
AG2R Citroën Team
- Benoît Cosnefroy
- Bob Jungels
- Oliver Naesen
- Aurélien Paret-Peintre
- Stan Dewulf
- Clément Champoussin
- Geoffrey Bouchard
- Greg van Avermaet
- Dorian Godon
- Ben O'Connor
Alpecin-Fenix
- Mathieu van der Poel
- Jasper Philipsen
- Tim Merlier
- Kristian Sbaragli
- Michael Gogl
- Xandro Meurisse
- Silvan Dillier
- Jonas Rickaert
- Oscar Riesebeek
- Robert Stannard
Astana Qazaqstan
- Alexey Lutsenko
- Miguel Ángel López
- Vincenzo Nibali
- Gianni Moscon
- Samuele Battistella
- Leonardo Basso
- Dmitriy Gruzdev
- Alexandr Riabushenko
- Yevgeny Fedorov
- Stefan De Bod
B&B Hotels-KTM
- Cyril Barthe
- Alan Boileau
- Franck Bonnamour
- Maxime Chevaler
- Alexis Gougeard
- Victor Koretzky
- Cryil Lemoine
- Eliot Lietaer
- Luca Mozzato
- Pierre Rolland
Bahrain Victorious
- Mikel Landa
- Gino Mader
- Fred Wright
- Damiano Caruso
- Sonny Colbrelli
- Jack Haig
- Matej Mohorič
- Wout Poels
- Dylan Teuns
- Luis León Sánchez
Bora-Hansgrohe
- Sam Bennett
- Max Schachmann
- Aleksandr Vlasov
- Felix Grosschartner
- Danny van Poppel
- Nils Politt
- Patrick Konrad
- Shane Archbold
- Lukas Pöstlberger
- Marco Haller
Cofidis
- Guillaume Martin
- Ion Izaguirre
- Bryan Coquard
- Remy Rochas
- Jesús Herrada
- Simon Geshcke
- Anthony Perez
- Pierre-Luc Périchon
- Rubén Fernández
- Victor Lafay
EF Education-EasyPost
- Alberto Bettiol
- Stefan Bissegger
- Esteban Chaves
- Ruben Guerreiro
- Mark Padun
- Neilson Powless
- Jonas Rutsch
- Rigoberto Urán
- Michael Valgren
- Jens Keukeleire
Groupama-FDJ
- Thibaut Pinot
- Arnaud Démare
- David Gaudu
- Valentin Madouas
- Rudy Molard
- Stefan Küng
- Mathieu Ladagnous
- Bruno Armirail
- Anthony Roux
- Michael Storer
Ineos Grenadiers
- Egan Bernal
- Jonathan Castroviejo
- Richard Carapaz
- Filippo Ganna
- Michał Kwiatkowski
- Daniel Martínez
- Luke Rowe
- Geraint Thomas
- Dylan van Baarle
- Adam Yates
Intermarchè-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux
- Alexander Kristoff
- Jan Bakelants
- Biniam Girmay
- Quinten Hermans
- Louis Meintjes
- Adrien Petit
- Lorenzo Rota
- Rein Taaramäe
- Gerben Thikssen
- Taco van der Hoorn
Israel-Premier Tech
- Michael Woods
- Jakob Fuglsang
- Daryl Impey
- Sep Vanmarcke
- Guillaume Boivin
- Alessandro De Marchi
- Mads Würtz Schmidt
- Krists Neilands
- Chris Froome
- Guy Niv
Jumbo-Visma
- Primož Roglič
- Steven Kruijswijk
- Sepp Kuss
- Mike Teunissen
- Wout van Aert
- Jonas Vingegaard
- Rohan Dennis
- Tom Dumoulin
- Ties Benoot
- Christophe Laporte
Lotto Soudal
- Caleb Ewan
- Jasper De Buyst
- Thomas De Gendt
- Philippe Gilbert
- Roger Kluge
- Andreas Kron
- Rüdiger Selig
- Harry Sweeny
- Brent Van Moer
- Tim Wellens
Movistar Team
- Enric Mas
- Alex Aranburu
- Imanol Erviti
- Iván García Cortina
- Gorka Izaguirre
- Gregor Mühlberger
- Nelson Oliveira
- José Joaquín Rojas
- Alejandro Valverde
- Carlos Verona
QuickStep-AlphaVinyl
- Julian Alaphilippe
- Mark Cavendish
- Kasper Asgreen
- Mattia Cattaneo
- Fabio Jakobsen
- Tim Declercq
- Dries Devenyns
- Michael Mørkøv
- Mikkel Honoré
- Yves Lampaert
Team Arkéa-Samsic
- Warren Barguil
- Nairo Quintana
- Nacer Bouhanni
- Nicolas Edet
- Matîs Louvel
- Clément Russo
- Connor Swift
- Hugo Hofstetter
- Elie Gesbert
- Daniel McLay
Team BikeExchange-Jayco
- Dylan Groenewegen
- Michael Matthews
- Simon Yates
- Lucas Hamilton
- Luke Durbridge
- Luka Mezgec
- Amund Grøndahl Jansen
- Jack Bauer
- Mick Schultz
- Chris Juul-Jensen
Team DSM
- Edvald Boasson Hagen
- Maciej Bodnar
- Niccolò Bonifazio
- Mathieu Burgaudeau
- Pierre Latour
- Daniel Oss
- Cristián Rodríguez
- Peter Sagan
- Anthony Turgis
- Alexis Vuillermoz
Trek-Segafredo
- Mads Pedersen
- Giulio Ciccone
- Bauke Mollema
- Jasper Stuyven
- Julien Bernard
- Kenny Elissonde
- Markus Hoelgaard
- Quinn Simmons
- Toms Skujnš
- Antwan Tolhoek
UAE Team Emirates
- Tadej Pogačar
- George Bennett
- Marc Hirschi
- Brandon McNulty
- Vegard Stake Laengen
- Rafal Majka
- Mikkel Bjerg
- Marc Soler
- Matteo Trentin
- Rui Costa
Tour de France Femmes
This year marks the return of a women's Tour de France after a long hiatus, now called the Tour de France Femmes.
There is no separate sticker book for the eight-day race but it has been given a section of the Tour de France sticker book. There will be 132 riders on the start line in Paris but just eight stickers, reserved for the 'big favourites'. According to the album, "barring surprise, the winner will be one of them".
- Katarzyna Niewiadoma
- Annemiek van Vleuten
- Elisa Longo Borghini
- Elisa Balsamo
- Marianne Vos
- Juliette Labous
- Demi Vollering
- Cecile Uttrup Ludwig
