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 received a loud reception on their parade in downtown Bilbao. 

The action started in front of the landmark Guggenheim Museum, with the tension tangible, as riders warmed up beneath low hanging black clouds with the peculiar hills straddling the horizon. 

"I feel good, I feel ready, I'm where I want to be," said Jumbo-Visma rider and defending champion Jonas Vingegaard. 

Vingegaard said he was ready to renew his rivalry with two-time champion Tadej Pogacar and laughed off suggestions that the Slovenian would be hampered by a wrist injury suffered in April. 

"I expect (him) to attack right from Stage 1, just like he did last year, and I'll be there to follow him," said the Dane. "As champion, you could say I'm the hunted man, but believe me I'll be hunting, too." 

A year after a hugely successful three-day Grand depart in Copenhagen and Denmark, the 110th edition of 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 182 kilometers from Bilbao and back. 

"This kind of start here in the Basque Country means the guys trying to win the race can't relax at all," said France's Julian Alaphilippe, one of the attack-minded riders expected to go for the Stage 1 win Saturday. "They'll have to be ready right from the first day."

Bilbao is decked out with Tour de France images on the sides of buses and in the metro stations, but that is nothing to what is expected along the roadsides of the route in one of road cycling's heartlands. 

Tour director Christian Prudhomme described the region as "the yellow jersey of spectators." 

Local rider Mikel Landa of the Bahrain Victorious team, who grew up speaking the Basque language, beamed with pride when asked how he felt ahead of the race. 

"There are seven of us (riders) from the region, the excitement and passion for cycling of the Basque people is huge," said Landa, who finished fourth on the 2021 Tour and is expected to challenge again this year. 

His teammate Pello Bilbao, from the Basque town of Guernica, said he, Landa and the six other Bahrain Victorious riders would be doing their best to honor Gino Maeder, who died at age 26 following a fall in the Tour of Switzerland earlier this month. 

"Every day, we'll be riding in memory of Gino," he said of his Swiss former teammate. 

The Tour also takes in the neighboring coastal town of San Sebastian, which hosted the Grand Depart of the 1992 Tour. 

Sunday's stage embarks from the town of Vitoria, passing through the region's salt valley and nearby Rioja wine vineyards, while Stage 3 starts at Amorebieta-Etxano and takes the peloton away from the Spanish Basque Country and across the border with France to Bayonne on a largely flat 185-kilometer run.