Watch Live Tour de France Virtual Stage 2

The virtual Tour de France is taking place on Zwift, an indoor cycling app that runs rather like a video game, allowing you to control an avatar. There will be six stages over three weekends with a mix of flat and hilly courses attracting some of cycling’s biggest names

Today sees the 2nd stage of the race and we've got some new riders lining up on what is a totally different course from yesterday. We stay in virtual Nice, but the riders are heading into the mountains with Zwift's Epic KOM dominating the stage.

The climb sends the riders up to the very top and with the steepest pitches towards the summit, we think that a well-timed attack could take the day, even though any solo escape would have to hold out on the descent and then flat final kilometres to the finish.

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Two races will take place today with a men’s and a women’s race running over the same distance and on the same course.

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With teams only putting four riders into each race, we expect to see riders brought in for one day and then replaced for the next stage. No single rider in the men’s peloton can race more than three stages while the women can do no more than four. As a result, we should see a good number of different riders lining up over the course of the virtual Tour.

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So far, the big names that we’ve seen confirmed as lining up for the virtual TdF include the Team Ineos trio of Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal. Cyclocross superstar Mathieu van der Poel will also feature with the Alpecin Fenix team.

The women’s field is equally packed with massive names including Marianne Vos, Chloé Dygert Owen, Kirsten Wild and Anna Van der Breggen

Men’s Teams

• AG2R La Mondiale
• Arkéa Samsic
• Alpecin-Fenix
• Astana Pro Team
• B&B Hotels-Vital Concept
• Team Bahrain McLaren
• Bora Hansgrohe
• CCC Team
• Team Cofidis
• Circus-Wanty Gobert
• Deceuninck – Quick-Step
• EF Education First Pro Cycling
• Groupama-FDJ
• Israel Start-Up Nation
• Team INEOS
• Team Jumbo-Visma
• Lotto-Soudal
• Mitchelton-SCOTT
• NTT Pro Cycling
• Rally Cycling
• Team Sunweb
• TOTAL Direct Énergie
• Trek-Segafredo

Women’s Teams

• Alé BTC Ljubljana
• Team Arkéa
• Boels-Dolmans Cycling Team
• CANYON//SRAM Racing
• CCC-Liv Team
• Ceratizit – WNT Pro Cycling
• Drops
• FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope
• Lotto Soudal Ladies
• Mitchelton-SCOTT