Which riders were selected for the 2022 Tour de France Panini sticker album?

Ineos Grenadiers' sticker page includes Egan Bernal and Richard Carapaz (Image credit: Patrick Fletcher)

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.

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.

Patrick is a freelance sports writer and editor. He’s an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish). Patrick worked full-time at Cyclingnews for eight years between 2015 and 2023, latterly as Deputy Editor.