Derek Gee-West competes in the time trial at the Giro d'Italia earlier this year.Jennifer Lorenzini/Reuters
Derek Gee-West is ready for three weeks of pain as he embarks on his second Tour de France.
The 28-year-old from Ottawa, riding for the Lidl-Trek team, is the only Canadian among the 184 riders competing in the 113th edition of the race.
The Tour starts Saturday with a team time trial in Barcelona and finishes some 3,320 kilometres later in Paris.
Of the 21 stages, seven are categorized as flat, four as hilly and eight as mountain stages including five summit finishes. There is an individual time trial, in addition to the opening team time trial, as well as two rest days.
“I am really looking forward to it,” Gee-West said in an interview, struggling to sum up the challenge that lies ahead before settling on “kind of enjoyable.”
The punishing route features 53,950 metres of climbing, the third-highest in the last 20 years, as the riders wend their way through five mountain ranges: the Pyrenees, Massif Central, Vosges, Jura and Alps.
“It’s so competitive that it really doesn’t really matter what the course is,” said Gee-West. “It’s always full gas.”
Still, he expects his body to feel it once the race is over.
“A lot of times you actually get into such a groove that you feel fine. It’s the same thing day-in, day-out, you reach a level of fatigue that kind of steadies itself out … As soon as the race stops is when it really hits, because your body has a chance to rest and all of a sudden everything you’ve done the last three weeks catches up to you. That’s when you really, really feel it.”
The race wastes little time getting to the mountains, with the Category 1 Col de Toses climb on Stage 3.
And there is a sting in the tail.
Stages 19 and 20 feature the storied Alpe d’Huez, with its morale-sapping climb and famed series of switchbacks. While Stage 20 includes the shorter Col de Sarenne side approach, it still makes for a brutal lead-up to the finale in Paris.
Gee-West chooses to see the positives.
“I think it’s pretty cool to get to race these iconic mountains,” he said. “They’re the scenes of some of cycling’s most famous moments. I don’t think I’ve ever done Alpe d’Huez and I’m really looking forward to that one.”
Stage 20 is the so-called queen stage, considered the most testing of the race with 5,600 metres of vertical gain.
Gee-West excels when the going gets tough, however.
He finished runner-up to American rider Sepp Kuss in May on the Giro d’Italia’s queen stage, which featured more than 5,000 metres of climbing across six demanding ascents.
That moved Gee-West into fifth in the general classification, which is where he finished the race.
Lidl-Trek has identified Spain’s Juan Ayuso as its general classification threat at the Tour with Denmark’s Mattias Skjelmose also a contender.
But Gee-West could make headlines with his climbing prowess.
The Canadian was a late addition to the Lidl-Trek team, replacing Italy’s Giulio Ciccone. His season was originally planned around the Giro in May.
Gee-West’s fifth-place finish there was all the more impressive in that he was battling a virus ahead of the race and was caught up in a massive crash on Stage 2 that sent several riders to hospital.
A little more than a month later, he is embarking on another marathon.
“The body’s held up, which is rare,” he said. “Sometimes you just collapse after one of these races. I felt like I came out of [the Giro] quite well.”
This year’s Tour de France represents Gee-West’s fifth participation in a Grand Tour race.
He turned heads in his first Grand Tour race, finishing second on the stage four times and fourth twice in the 2023 Giro. He placed 22nd in the final general classification standings and was runner-up to Italy’s Jonathan Milan in the points race and France’s Thibaut Pinot in the King of the Mountains standings.
Gee-West placed ninth in the GC in the 2024 Tour de France, finishing third on Stage 9, and fourth in the 2025 Giro. He has yet to race in the third Grand Tour event, the Spanish Vuelta.
The other members of this year’s Lidl-Trek team are Spain’s Carlos Verona, Czechia’s Mathias Vacek, Latvia’s Toms Skujiņš, American Quinn Simmons and Denmark’s Mads Pedersen.
Gee-West says while he will support his teammates, he will look for chances to shine.
“For sure there will be a couple of opportunities,” he said. “How many will probably depend on how my teammates are doing. So to be honest, if there’s very few opportunities, that’s probably a good sign [for the team].”
With help from Gee-West, the Lidl-Trek team could do well on the opening team time trial. The Canadian won his third Canadian individual time trial title in Saint-Georges, Que., on June 25.
Tadej Pogacar is the overall race favourite, having won the Tour four times already including its last two editions. The 27-year-old Slovenian, who rides for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, finished second in his two other Tour participations.
He is bidding to join Belgium’s Eddy Merckx, Spain’s Miguel Indurain and France’s Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault as the only five-time Tour winners.
American Lance Armstrong won seven editions of the race from 1999 to 2005 but was stripped of the victories for doping.
Pogacar arrives in form, having won the general classification at the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de Romandie on top of one-day victories at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Tour of Flanders, Milan San Remo and Strade Bianche.
In all, he has posted 13 wins in 16 race days this season.
Rivals include Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike, who won the Tour in 2022 and 2023 and finished runner-up to Pogacar the last two years.
The Danish rider won the Giro in May, becoming the eighth man to win all three Grand Tours.
Other contenders include Belgian Remco Evenepoel, the 2024 Olympic road race champion, and 19-year-old French rider Paul Seixas.
Gee-West says the Tour is unlike any other race.
“Nothing in the sport can compare to the Tour and how big it is every single year. That’s definitely something that you can’t experience at the Giro or any other race – the magnitude of the event that is the Tour de France.”
Gee-West, who makes his home in Andorra these days, will be supported by his wife, Ruby West, on several of the stages. They were married in October with both adopting hyphenated names.
Gee-West joined Lidl-Trek in January after an acrimonious split with the Israel-Premier Tech team, now known as NSN Cycling.
“It’s an amazing organization,” Gee-West said of Lidl-Trek. “The transition into it was super smooth. I’ve really, really enjoyed it.”