Hey cycling fans, I hope that you’re all having a great summer and hopefully enjoying some cooler temperatures finally, wherever you are in the world (unless you like it hot... some do, so I hear). I’m painfully short of time this summer; somehow it’s even more pressed than usual and I find myself wondering how on earth is already time for another Grand Tour? I have barely returned to normal after the incredible Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (and still owe you all another post about it, which is currently in the works), and along comes La Vuelta a España.

I’m sticking with my tried and tested side-quest formula for this meandering preview, but before we head to Spain to consider all things Vuelta, a couple of words on the news that devastated us all as a collective, at the end of last week.

Finlay Tarling’s tragic and untimely passing has left me kind of numb the last few days and unable to fully engage with the raft of racing that’s unfolding around Europe. I never met Fin, but reading all of the beautiful tributes to him it’s clear the world has lost one of the brightest of lights. There is much more to be said about rider safety, about where we go from here, but for now I’m sending love and strength to his parents Michael and Dawn, brother Josh, his friends and family and teammates and all those who were lucky enough to know him. We have been here too often in the past, and I desperately hope we never have to revisit this again. It’s simply unacceptable, and change is long overdue.

A fundraising page has been set up in Fin’s honour by his agent and friend Jamie Barlow - please give generously in Fin’s memory, if you are able. Since I first wrote this meagre tribute, Fin’s brother Josh has honoured him in the bravest possible way, doing what he does best at La Vuelta, finishing third and taking the white jersey on the first stage in Monaco after a time trial. The immense strength that must have taken, after the turmoil he and his family have been through this week… just huge chapeau to him, hope that white jersey stays on his shoulders a while longer.

Six side quests to follow at La Vuelta

The idea of writing about side quests when it comes to La Vuelta is kind of a funny one. It seems to me at least, that as far as Grand Tours go, the Spanish race is a side quest, in and of itself. It’s the edgy outsider of the Grand Tours, the least selected as favourite, the after thought, in a way. The Giro is always greeted with fizzing enthusiasm by the cycling fandom – the first Grand Tour of the year, spring in full swing, the chaos and beauty of Italy. The Tour de France is well, it’s the Tour de France isn’t it? The jewel in cycling’s crown. The centre-piece of the plentiful table of the season’s schedule. Then everyone goes off for their summer holidays and the fatigue sets in and KERBLAMMO we are ambushed with another Grand Tour, sneaking in like a hot, sultry ninja to guide us through to September. It may be a latecomer, but it deserves more love in my opinion.

The Vuelta is underrated as a spectacle. Its relentless terrain and last chance saloon vibe lend it a sense of reckless abandon – anything could happen, and it probably will! This year though, with the confirmation that Tadej Pogačar is in town with one of the few remaining gaps on his cycling bingo card left to check off, we can once again venture to suggest that like at the Tour, the Vuelta general classification is effectively a done deal. With even less top-level competition – Jonas Vingegaard calling his season over, Remco Evenepoel opting to skip the race, Paul Seixas taking a rest – there’s even less likelihood that Pogačar will be challenged on the roads of Spain, even after the gruelling challenge of the biggest of the year. Even the king of Spain himself, Primoz Roglič, won’t be at his best following a training crash.

EDITED TO ADD: I wrote this a few days ago but haven’t been able to publish until today (Sunday) for reasons, and as if to confirm what everyone feared, after just one short time trial, Pogi is already in red. Even more reason to read on and discover some side quests to follow…

Beyond Pogi himself, UAE Team Emirates-XRG could sweep more than just the GC; with João Almeida and Jay Vine on the team, it’s entirely possible they could win a whole raft of stages, fill out the GC podium, win the polka dot jersey… it’s kind of a terrifying prospect (as UAE usually are at bike races, so nothing new there).

So what do we have to look forward to, if everything’s already decided? Well my friends, once again I present to you an array of potential side quests for your delectation. Because a Grand Tour is about more than just the GC race. It’s about breakaways and stage battles, unexpected heroes and twists in the tale. UAE will be rampant, rambunctious, and raring to reap all of the rewards - but they won’t have things all their own way…

The terrain

Ah, Spain. Where ‘uncategorised climb’ means a leg snapper that could break up a race, where sprinters take one look at the course and scroll frantically through the schedule to find an alternative, where green jersey means ‘hardest rider in the race’, and where the word ‘flat’ has no direct translation. The Vuelta course is always a riot. It doesn’t really seem to matter which bit of the country the race ends up in; there are daunting challenges around ever corner, and the relentless nature of the landscape tends to keep the racing more unpredictable.

This year there are just four stages classified as flat - and even those are likely not to be easy days out - a whole bunch of summit finishes, and some serious climbing along the way. Expect fireworks. If anyone has any energy left to detonate them.

Wout van Aert

I can hear you all shouting from here. That’s cheating! Wout van Aert isn’t a side quest! Just because you included Mathieu van der Poel in your Tour de France side quests doesn’t mean you get to have Wout at La Vuelta! It’s not the same!

Your protests are valid. Somewhat. Let me explain. As a long-suffering fan of the man from Belgium I can attest to how utterly brilliant he it at basically everything. However. With the brilliance comes what feels like more than a fair share of well… heartbreak, not to put too fine a point on it. Numerous second place finishes in major races, repeatedly missing out on major goals, nasty injuries and crashes derailing any period of good form… his palmares may have a wider variety of wins than your local Chinese takeaway has dishes on the menu, but they’ve come at great cost – to his body, and to the fragile emotions of his long-suffering fans.

La Vuelta was the last place where he suffered a major setback – two years ago, a horrific knee injury that was complicated in its healing and kept him from his best form during the spring Classics. He returns with a score to settle – his battle with Mads Pedersen for the green jersey will certainly be front page news rather than a side quest, as the two versatile riders take on the tough challenge of winning the points jersey on terrain not suited to sprinters – but while it could potentially end in glory, there’s also a higher than average chance we might be commiserating come September, especially if it means seeing Wout miss out on another World Championships.

Teams under pressure

Team Picnic-PostNL are a team on the edge. They still have just one victory to their name this season (and none on the women’s side) and with an exodus from both men’s and women’s teams of their top riders expected at the end of the season, it’s not looking good for their continued existence heading into 2027.

La Vuelta is a playground for the up and coming but it’s also a stage for the last chance saloon, the desperate for a win, those who need to prove something, to sponsors, fans or themselves. It’s a place to come and grasp onto hope. Looking at the squad the team have brought to the race, with the best will in the world – hope is not running high. It looked as if they would bring Max Poole, the young Brit who has performed well at the race before, but he is still apparently suffering in the aftermath of Epstein-Barr virus – a huge blow for Picnic as they have been unable to gain a foothold on the season and really make their mark. Who can bring them some much needed hope in Spain? They have two or three riders capable of maybe springing a surprise - after a strong showing in the Tour Auvergne-Rhone Alpes, which went largely under the radar, I’ll tip 23-year-old Frenchman Henri-Francois Haquin as the man for the job.

Netcompany-Ineos are another team in need of something special after a lacklustre Tour. With Oscar Onley back in the fold they may have a dilemma between a high GC placement or stage wins, but Onley will be chomping at the bit to make an impact having missed his main target of the season.

The home nation

It feels very weird to suggest that Spanish riders will be a side quest at their home Grand Tour. In terms of numbers, they are very much the main event – like the French at the Tour and the Italians at the Giro, Spanish riders are the most numerous on the start list, with 30 riders. Like the French, in a torrid 2026 edition of the Tour with zero stage wins for a domestic rider, the Spaniards also had one annus horribilis in recent memory – 2021 produced no stage wins for the nation – but before that, you have to look back to 1995 before you can find a year in which they haven’t managed to bring home glory in at least one stage.

It wouldn’t be a massive surprise to see a Spanish stage win at this race – there are a host of talented riders taking the start line - however, the statistics for the nation in terms of their achievements at the highest level have been diminishing year on year since the glory days of the likes of Valverde and Contador, and Indurain before them. Since the disrupted covid year of 2020, the nation’s overall number of wins per season has dropped quite drastically and this year they have just two victories at WorldTour level so far, a poor showing for a nation with such a rich history in the sport.

There are plenty of possibilities for Spain, with Movistar’s Ivan Romeo passed over for the Tour de France likely to be desperate to show himself, his teammate and former stage winner Pablo Castrillo, and UAE’s Pablo Torres among many others, including a host of lesser known names ready to make their mark on their home Grand Tour…

Breakout stars

Above all other Grand Tours, La Vuelta is the race where young riders, or names that wouldn’t ordinarily be at the top of everyone’s list of favourites, are given the space to roll the dice and try their luck. Recent years have seen the likes of Jay Vine, Max Poole, Eddie Dunbar, Pablo Castrillo and more make a statement, and one of the reasons why I love La Vuelta so much is the total ‘anything goes’ vibe, that is absolutely not present at the Tour, with its deep significance in terms of global visibility for sponsors and the intense media presence. La Vuelta is different. A place for teams to try and retrieve something from a lacklustre season. A playground for riders who are finding their legs after injury or who missed out on key goals due to illness. And a breeding ground for future stars to show themselves to the world, and maybe even

A few for you to keep an eye out for…

Thibau Nys – the Lidl-Trek star is on the comeback trail after a long period sidelined through injury.

Sente Sentjens – young guy, fast finish – the Alpecin-Premier Tech rider may be supporting Kaden Groves, but he may also be given his own chances

Jakob Omrzel (Bahrain-Victorious)– there’s been big hype around the newest young talent coming out of Slovenia, he will be keen to show himself in the first Grand Tour of his career

Markel Beloki (EF Education-EasyPost) – the 21-year-old was dominant at the recent Tour de l’Ain, and will be ready to impose himself on a bigger stage – one of Spain’s biggest hopes for victory

Pau Martí (NSN Cycling Team) – another 21-year-old Spaniard with a bright future

Jarno Widar (Lotto-Intermarché) – a future GC superstar in the making, Widar hasn’t managed to make his presence felt on a bigger stage just yet, but this could be the chance the young Belgian has been waiting for.

Paul Double (Team Jayco-AlUla) – a climber with some serious skill, Double has won a number of races at cycling’s lower tiers and is ready to make the step up to a Grand Tour stage win

Marcel Camprubí (Pinarello-Q36.5) – this guy is special – he won a gruelling edition of the Spanish national championship road race this year and will hope to show the national champions stripes off in the best possible way.

Last dance

It’s the final Grand Tour of the season, and the final three-week jaunt for a few of the sport’s major names including Pello Bilbao and Steven Kruijswijk, who have 16 and 17 seasons in the peloton between them respectively. Two incredibly experienced riders, who have seen the sport change unimaginably in their time as pros, will hope to go out on a high. It’s possible Bilbao might consider going for a stage win; it’s far more likely Kruijswijk will play his familiar role of recent years of loyal domestique. Nairo Quintana was supposed to be saying farewell in his final Grand Tour, but was not selected for Movistar, and Magnus Cort also rides his final Grand Tour – perhaps the most likely of the trio of retirees to go out on a high.

Enjoy the race! I can’t promise updates as regularly as during the Tour but I have plenty more to share with you over the coming weeks, so stay tuned, and if you’re enjoying these newsletters, why not consider upgrading to a paid membership tier?

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Thanks for reading!

As promised, here are my final thoughts about a memorable Tour de France for the men - I enjoyed this year’s edition, and actually, despite a bit of a lack of side-quests, my initial predictions turned out to be reasonably accurate. We did have the MVDP show, Decathlon’s internal politics proved to be, well, flawless, and certainly worth comment, the polka dot jersey battle was entertaining, and Baptiste Veistroffer was indeed bombastic. More on all of those as we move through the final stages - we begin with a protracted consideration of a lack of mystery at this year’s race, though, written immediately after the race concluded.

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The end of the story

It’s Sunday night, right after the end of the Paris stage, and an email arrives in my inbox. One of the many I receive daily, recounting the day’s action at the Tour de France, from various angles. It reads ‘BREAKING NEWS: TADEJ POGACAR WINS TOUR DE FRANCE.’

To coin a somewhat crude adage… no shit, Sherlock!

If that’s what classes as breaking news, you’ve not been paying attention. That news arguably broke earlier this year, when we saw the shape Tadej was in, in the Spring, and he revealed he was doing his best ever numbers. When he finally blitzed to victory in Milano-Sanremo, before pocketing another Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, then adding a Tour de Romandie and taking the Tour de Suisse GC by over six minutes.

If we didn’t already know he was likely to win, he made his intentions very clear early in the race, not wasting time in putting distance between himself, his closest rival, and any would-be successors.

The inevitable came to pass. And for the sake of completion, I need to finish the story. It’s his story (history, get it?) but it’s also the story of so many others. Let’s go on one last side-quest…

Elementary, my dear cycling fans

Summarising five stages of the Tour in one newsletter feels like a big ask. It’s a completely different prospect to writing about the early stages. When you’re writing the first lines of a new story, there are so many ways the narrative could unfold, therefore every detail that you notice could potentially be significant. That early breakaway that sticks, could end up containing the future yellow jersey. That narrowly avoided crash could lead to a stage win, later on. To take my flippant Sherlock Holmes comment and run with it; if you were writing in the crime genre, you draw your reader’s attention in whatever direction you want it to go – red herrings, false leads, and all the while, killer hides in plain sight.

So here I was, rambling on about side quests, while Pogačar was busy claiming victims. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The victims, to persist with the metaphor, range from the sick and the injured, to the teams and riders who’ve been rendered anonymous by the juggernaut of modern cycling, to even the very best in the world, who will feature only as side characters in the epic, multi-volume series that the Slovenian is writing, as he marches his way through the cycling landscape, destroying records and ruining parties. It’s not a great series, as mysteries go. Perhaps more of an epic. Or just a history book.

At the beginning of a race, you’re looking through the correct end of the telescope. Zooming in on moments, like the detective character in the novel, on high alert for signs of weakness, or statements of intent, or characters who may wish to make themselves the hero of a story that ultimately, isn’t theirs to tell. At the end, you flip the telescope. Everything is small, and far away, and you can probably only make out the most apparent object – the main focus of the story. We’ve found the killer, the story is at an end, and now there are just loose ends to be tied up.

So we could focus on all of the complicated specifics that made up the final few days of racing at the Tour de France; the intricate battles for supremacy in the breakaway groups as both the green and polka dot jerseys were still in play; the visceral desperation of the French teams and riders to salvage something from a torrid Tour, beyond the hope for future success in the shape of the valiant young warrior Paul Seixas. Even the stubborn resistance of Richard Carapaz, determined to make the polka dot jersey his own.

But I cannot sift through the notes from the past few stages and make any sense of them now that their meaning has been reduced to just meaningless details – the stuff that no longer matters anymore; the cut scenes. I’m talking breakaway formation, fruitless attacks, people being dropped. It’s just no longer relevant. Some of the notes are relevant though. Some of them, despite not perhaps having a bearing on the overall result, will be packaged up with the memories of this year’s Tour and will endure.

Let’s call it a montage. I pick through my notes and anything that rings a bell, makes the cut.

Stage 17. Pogi calls this stage a ‘pain in the ass’. I’m more excited about it than Alpe d’Huez… on paper, it looks like a classic in the making.

Twin combatives Veistroffer and Abrahamsen take a shot at the break. I can’t remember whether they made it or not but I loved that they were together for a while. Cut from the same cloth, those two.

Lenny Martinez crosses himself as he narrowly avoids a crash. It’s a poignant moment. Fred Wright is less lucky, but he’s quickly back on his bike.

Mads Pedersen and Quinn Simmons trying to hold off the sprint teams – the green jersey battle is now Mads versus the sprinters. They drill it to try and keep the group away, and the sprint group breaks up as a result. Adam Yates dangles at the back looking green around the gills, struggling with illness. Jasper Stuyven launches a heroic solo attack which almost works out. Josh Tarling makes a break for it heading into the final kilometre, trying to salvage something for a beleaguered Netcompany-INEOS.

Somehow, despite all of that, the sprint transpired, and who else but MVDP to find the perfect position at the perfect time – he launches his lead-out and delivers Jasper Philipsen two bike lengths clear of the rest. His first stage victory of the race, following a long wait for the Alpecin-Premier Tech man, and what is that I see? A smile on the face of Christoph Roodhooft? No, I must be hallucinating.

Stage 18. The first of three in the Alps. The media would have us believe there were worrying times for race leader Tadej Pogačar with a number of his teammates struggling with illness. Except there weren’t, not really.

Valentin Paret-Peintre was on a polka dot mission. But with EF on the offensive, his days were numbered. Guillaume Martin is in the race! Wait – no he isn’t. Romain Gregoire worked his way across – the French need something. Anything.

Paret-Peintre and Carapaz vied for polka dot points and Mads was rewarded for his commitment with the intermediate sprint points. The peloton gave up the day, dropping back to over seven minutes, with Q36.5 the ones to take up the pace-setting, as Brandon McNulty abandons for UAE.

The day’s protagonists go head-to-head with 4km to go – Carapaz attacks, and makes the day his own.

Stage 19 – Alpe d’Huez. My early stage notes make no sense and my brain is fried. Skip to the good bit. Pogačar attacks on the first hairpin, as up the road Sepp Kuss tries to ride a steady pace while Carapaz and Lenny Martinez act like a pair of teenagers, throwing away their precarious advantage watching one another, Carapaz burning match after match with mad attacks while Martinez does his ninja ‘you can’t see me’ thing, ghosting along behind. It made me mad. I’m not sure they could have held off Pog, but if they’d worked together, they might have at least given themselves a chance.

In the end records fell for the fastest ascent, and Martinez proved the best of the rest, banging his handlebars at the finish line in frustration. It seems he’s not the most well-liked among some fans and maybe other riders, and he certainly wasn’t Carapaz’s favourite on the mountain, but I can’t help but like him.

Outside of the racing, record crowds of 600,000, an intimidating atmosphere, and a horrific moment as Einer Rubio slammed into the back of a UAE team car as the driver was forced to brake hard as a fan fell into the road. After the intense heat, and wildfires, it was a reminder that human factors in an outdoor sport can be as unpredictable and dangerous as environmental ones.

We could be heroes

Stage 20 saw a rounding up, a signing off, a kind of academic conclusion, revisiting all of the main stories of the race, as the major players had their final say.

Mads Pedersen bridging from the back of the race to the breakaway, on the queen stage, was utterly ridiculous, and needs to be talked about more. The man was involved in EVERY SINGLE intermediate sprint – and won most of them. Then he went to work for his team when he needed to, with legs to spare. It was an immense performance, and marks him out as one of the absolute best riders in the world, in case we were in any doubt.

Decathlon’s late effort on the Col de la Sarenne underlined everything that was good about their Tour de France. Another story that didn’t get the love it deserved, despite the intense spotlight on Paul Seixas. On the day, they were brave, but ultimately fruitless in the face of the UAE brotherhood. But imagine having the guts, the belief, the sheer hearts-on-sleeves bravado to even give it a try. Nicolas Prodhomme was the man of the match and with Tadej Pogačar’s praise for him ringing loud in the media, it would be absolutely no surprise to see him riding for UAE in the near future.

For Paul Seixas, it was a dream realised. A Tour complete. An incredible effort, given his age. And a promise made, to a yearning French public. I will write so much more about him in the future. But for now, I want to focus on his team. They managed two different goals with understated pragmatism. No drama. No in-fighting. Everything worked out in this regard; if Olav Kooij had been flying and they’d targeted the green jersey, the scales may have been tipped, or if Seixas had been a year or two older, and it wasn’t the tentative debut of a future star, perhaps things would have been different. As it was, they managed both sprint and GC goals with dignity and poise, taking a stage win, a clutch of podiums, fighting for the white jersey until the final days and throwing everything at the Queen stage despite it being a last ditch effort. It was bloody brilliant and they have made a fan of me for life.

UAE’s bluster was dulled due to illness – they didn’t keep a tight hold of the mountain stages with depleted resource, allowing an ebullient Richard Carapaz to go on the march and win the polka dot jersey outright, and for this, for the spectacle, for not having them breathing down the neck of every single breakaway, I’m grateful. Despite this Pogačar was still able to exert his control when it mattered, and to do so in support of his younger teammate at the end of the race was classy; the ultimate show of respect for Isaac Del Toro, and a bullish statement of just how dominant the team are, even when their squad is on the ropes. Del Toro has since signed a contract extension, confirming their intention to lead into the next generation with the Mexican prodigy.

Remco Evenepoel riding the Grand Tour of his life – legitimately the second-best rider in the race. Climbing at his own pace and finding a rhythm that he could maintain and keeping his composure. Remco 2.0 – or perhaps more like 4.7 or something, given the amount of times he’s been down and gotten back up. The self-belief this performance will instill in him, his undeniable resilience, the fact he has a couple of years on Tadej Pogačar – I can genuinely see Remco just waiting for Pogi to retire, and winning a Tour de France then. He just has to hope Del Toro and Seixas don’t improve too rapidly.

Oh, and Sepp Kuss not dying. Yeah, that netting was a pretty big hero of the day. I’ve never felt a sense of relief like when I saw that replay, realised what could have happened, and watched Kuss get back on his bike and ride away unharmed.

The final stage was so good, yet again. Even better this time around, with a few extra kilometres added to the final stretch to give the sprint teams a chance to catch up to a rampaging Pogačar and van der Poel.

The stage is an epic one-day race, a kind of turbo criterium in the most perfect of outdoor arenas, it deserves to be raced a hundred times just like that, same route, same run-in. The shortening of the stage due to the local wildfires just meant that we cut to the chase more quickly.

Fred Wright, resplendent in his British national champions jersey, charging up Montmartre with zero regard for the quality of the field behind him was arguably my favourite image of the day. Decathlon switching seamlessly back from mountain train to sprint support on behalf of Olav Kooij made the race what it was. The Spring Classics titans going head to head was the cherry on top of an entertaining final week, and the final outcome made perfect sense. Of course Pogačar would love to win on the Champs-Elysees. But MVDP winning there, having spoken earlier about watching from his sofa in 2025, as his long-time rival Wout van Aert raised his arms in the first iteration of stage 21 2.0, just felt right.

The ability of MVDP to dig in and put himself into a hole, combined with his obvious skill and power, is what gave him the edge on the day. Well, maybe that and the fact that Pogačar had been quite busy in the mountains the previous few days. Still, watching him laid flat out, pain etched into his face as he tried to find some oxygen to replenish his depleted muscles, just showed how hard he had to work to overturn his Classics rival. It was a fantastic ending worthy of the prize of best stage of the Tour, for the second year running.

The end, for another year. Chances missed for the French teams, and for France in general without a stage win for only the second time in history. Netcompany-INEOS without the leadership of Oscar Onley, floundered. Mauro Schmid was immense, and Q36.5 have found a true gem in the Swiss all-rounder who claimed a stage win and two second places. And plenty more food for thought, as the dust settles and we look ahead to the final Grand Tour of the season.

I hope you’ve enjoyed side-questing with me - stay tuned for more thoughts in the coming days and weeks. And thanks for reading - I appreciate you all!

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Hey there, cycling fans, hope you’re all well and enjoying this riveting edition of the Tour de France Femmes thus far. The women are really shouting loud this year about why you should be watching the Femmes. It’s a no-brainer at this point: it’s riveting stuff, and for some reason you’re not watching, go back and start from the beginning and you can thank me for it later.

Some admin to begin with.

I’m ever so British on here, usually, apologising for taking up your time and filling up your inbox, and then doing so again when I’m late or inconsistent. I really do mean it today though – I made a commitment to be here throughout the Tours and haven’t been able to manage it. Work and life piled up and ironically, not having much Tour-based paid work led to some actual real life things, and then some work on the Femmes landed – bountifully – at the last minute.

Nevertheless, I’m here, and a stickler for completion, I’ll be rounding out the men’s race with some thoughts, based on haphazard notes I kept a fortnight ago, what could possibly go wrong? I was going to lead with that because – you know – chronology and all that, but have changed my mind. The momentum is with the women’s race so let’s begin there. The men’s reflection will follow. If you’d like to support my endeavours, paid tiers are reduced until the end of the Tour! Just click below.

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We are halfway through this year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as I write this reflection. It’s likely to be post-Ventoux by the time it makes it to your inboxes, but I’m in the moment now, in which the race still hangs in the balance. I’m writing this intro from that moment; isn’t it a refreshing place to be? Not knowing exactly how a race is going to play out? A time trial, placed expertly in the middle of the race, changing the complexion of the whole thing, and flipping everything we thought we knew about this outcome of this year’s edition.

This race has been a timely reminder, lest we forget (in case last year’s jaw-dropping World Championship road race already slipped our minds), that women’s cycling is always loaded with unexpected twists and turns. It always keeps us guessing, with a completely different agenda to the men, and it’s consistently unpredictable. After last year’s supreme display from Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, there was perhaps a looming sense of inevitability about her repeating the feat this year. Her withdrawal from racing to prepare signalled her intent, and I don’t think there was any suspicion that she wouldn’t arrive in the same form, if not better.

The reality has proven that you can never make assumptions about anything in this sport. The time trial was an eye-opener. The Frenchwoman spoke afterwards, about the position she rode; of course it was developed with the best possible output in mind, but it looked uncomfortable, awkward, and not suggestive of speed or aerodynamics at any point. The longer that time trial went on, the further away our expectations slipped. Exactly how much time could she realistically make up in the mountains?

The answer was rendered moot before the peloton even made it that far. The decisive hilly stage 5 – a master stroke by the route designers who’ve played a blinder this year, it must be said – put an end to the hopes of a repeat performance. There was a moment on stage 5 when Ferrand-Prévot was labouring in the third or fourth group on the road alongside Anna van der Breggen. It made for a poignant reminder – two of the greatest riders in women’s cycling history being left behind, when it seemed at moments last season as though they would haunt their younger colleagues for quite some time to come.

It was not to be for either of the veterans – barring a major upset, this race looks set to come down to three of the greatest riders of the current generation. Yesterday’s finale was such a perfect demonstration of how lucky we are, as viewers, to be watching this boom in women’s cycling. Three riders of such different characteristics, with such different personalities and riding styles, all three doing what they do best. Demi Vollering, attacking from the front, exposing the weaknesses of any rider who couldn’t hack the pace, not shying away from hard work, even though perhaps she could have. Demi loves to show her strength, and isn’t afraid of leading, putting herself in positions which would be the end of other riders, but psychologically, it’s a statement.

The statement was received by Marlen Reusser, and duly filed under ‘OK, sure. What else you got?’ Where Demi races with her emotions (and her legs), Marlen races with her head. Even with the yellow jersey on her back, she didn’t feel the need to show herself. She didn’t need to after all – the pressure was on her rivals. She had the cushion she earned by virtue of her smoothly-executed time trial victory, and it was up to them to take it from her. She admitted herself that stage 5 wasn’t her favourite type of stage and that a steadier climb like Ventoux might be less of a challenge, ironically – this should strike fear into her rivals. By that logic, she’s already surmounted her toughest hurdle. It’s a waiting game now – and she has already made it clear she has a plan for Sunday. Watch out world. We may have a fifth different winner of this race, in Nice.

As for the third member of the trio, Kasia Niewiadoma is so often counted out of the major head-to-heads when it comes to stages like this. She remains undeterred, putting in strong attacks to ensure she would be in a position to fight for victory, both on the stage and in the race itself. She has the toughest job ahead of her, despite putting in one of the time trials of her life to keep herself in contention where the likes of Ferrand-Prévot faltered. Kasia is all heart and hope and relentless effort, and when she took off a few hundred metres from the line on stage 5, the same thing was probably going through all of our heads: we’ve been here before. She can’t beat these girls, not like this. But wow, did she come close. She had just a little more punch in her sprint, and just a little less desperation in the effort.

It almost came off. It made me believe she will win a race from one of these late, hopeful efforts one of these days. I really hope she does. In terms of the race as a whole, she’s got a mountain to climb, but she’s on the mountain at least – she will need to dig incredibly deep to have a chance of repeating the feat she managed in 2024 and actually winning – but if we know anything about Kasia, it’s that she can dig.

The inevitability of Wiebes, and other stories

The rest of the race deserves some attention. The first two stages were dominated by the Dutch powerhouse Lorena Wiebes. Despite the unpredictability of women’s stage racing, there is one area in which the women’s side of the sport is absolutely predictable. Wiebes isn’t just top of the list of favourites for sprint stages; she IS the favourite. End of.

Of course, stage 1 gave us more. It was a supreme effort from the rest of the bunch to shed the looming presence of the fastest woman on two wheels. But they couldn’t shake her. Wiebes’ skill on Classics-style courses means she can hang on where other sprinters drop away, and as a result, she sealed her sixth win at the race, took the yellow jersey, and extended the record of Team SD Worx-ProTime at the Tour de France Femmes for the most stages won, and the most spent in yellow. They are team on a downward spiral when it comes to their overall stranglehold on women’s racing; yet in Wiebes, they have a guarantee of consistent success at any race she participates in.

Outside of the sprint queen, there was joy for Norway and Uno-X, following a superhuman breakaway effort from Sigrid Haugset. Every year at this race there’s a rider who elevates themselves into the public eye. Last year it was Maëva Squiban, with her consecutive swashbuckling stage wins. The year before it Cédrine Kerbaol and her demon descending. Every year without fail a rider steps up and demands attention; this year, the Norwegian champion redefined the long solo breakaway, spending over 80 kilometres labouring alone at the head of the race. With Lotte Kopecky breathing down her neck, it seemed inevitable that she would run out of steam or be caught. Yet she dug deep and not only took a stage win, but spent a day in the yellow jersey for her efforts.

Then, to bring us up to date, the thrilling breakaway battle on stage 6, as some of the other top non-GC riders clashed on another brilliantly designed stage. The likes of Kerbaol, Puck Pieterse, Kim Le Court-Pienaar, Liane Lippert; these are girls who aren’t here to win the GC, but who back themselves to be able to take the bull by the horns, should the opportunity arise. With the GC group keeping their attention on one another, the star-studded breakaway threw punch after punch. I’m not going to lie, I really hoped Riejanne Markus could hold on. It seems unthinkable that in five editions of this race, Lidl-Trek still lack a stage win, let alone a distinctive jersey. Markus is aggressive and consistent, and she has animated this year’s race on several occasions.

It wasn’t to be. Just as taking Wiebes to the line meant a guarantee of second place at best for the lead group on stage 1, Le Court-Pienaar’s presence in the final group on stage 6 spelled trouble. Her powerful finish and tactical nous put her in prime position, and she struck fast and true. Kerbaol came extraordinarily close, to my surprise - sprinting from a small group has been a notorious weakness of hers in the past, but it was damn close. A superb finale to a breathless stage.

Outside of the racing, there have been some less positive moments, the bra padding controversy to state the most obvious one.

I kind of despair sometimes. We don’t even have full coverage of the race yet, and here we are, sidetracked by yet another thing that is taking attention away from the racing. It really is one battle after another. I had four separate requests from different radio outlets to talk about this issue (I usually only get these sporadically). One producer told me it would be good to get people talking about women’s racing. I wanted to roll my eyes but the worst part about it was, he had a point.

And then we saw the pictures of a male commissaire checking the front of the riders’ tops. The UCI are their own worst enemies. Fanning the flames of an already contentious issue by somehow managing not to take the most basic measures to avoid self-sabotage. Having female commissaires to carry out both checks was surely not too much to ask? A spectacular misfire and one which will certainly be discussed long after the race is over.

The race has been brutal, with high tension causing a number of early crashes, illness beleaguering certain teams, and the high temperatures playing havoc. It’s been savage and yet brilliant, another fantastic advert for women’s cycling, as year on year, this landmark event continues to improve.

(Spoiler alert: if you’re not up to date, it gets even better…)

More from me next week on the conclusion of the Femmes, and a round-up of the end of the men’s race will be along in between. Enjoy the rest of this spectacular race, and do consider upgrading your membership by clicking below if you’re enjoying my coverage - paid tiers are still reduced and will stay that way until I finish writing about the Tour. So probably midway through September… :)

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I’m back. This newsletter spans a fascinating and race-defining weekend of action in the mountains, a rest day, and a time trial, to bring us bang up to date with just five stages remaining until jerseys are awarded in Paris and we all have a few days to lay flat on our faces and recover before starting all over again for the women.

We’ve hit that point in a Grand Tour, post-second-rest-day, where time feels a bit like a soup; swim around and you bump up against Mads Pedersen’s breakaway win which feels like a month ago, Olav Kooij’s maiden victory which might be about six weeks hence, or the sizzling team time trial in Barcelona, which I think might have happened before covid times.

Such is the nature of a three-week sporting event. Trying to place such intricacies as minute-by-minute breakaway battles, KOM scraps, GC jostling and sprint team positioning alongside the regular passage of time begins to feel meaningless. The act of being deeply immersed in top level sport disrupts the moment, and arrests your attention, to the detriment of normal life. This is true of a one-day race or event; compound that by weeks, and yes, I’m drowning in soup.

Some outcomes have etched themselves into inevitability ever further, and even the unpredictable parts of the race still ahead have gained an air of scriptedness - surely Richard Carapaz will have his day? Quinn Simmons, Tobias Johannessen or Tom Pidcock will strike out in search of glory; Baptiste Veistroffer will launch one more intrepid attack in the name of super-combativity (probably on the Champs-Élysées, just for vibes). Surely the race will have one or two side-quests left to surprise and enthrall us? In the meantime, here’s a less than accurate rendering of a few days of racing in France.

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Stage 14, in which the crowds dazzled, the rain fell, and French things occurred

So far these round-ups have included the details of the day. The way the stage unfolded, a word or two for who was in the break, a summary of the notable moments. Something about stage 14 leads me away from the usual pattern of chronological recounting. The stage evolved in a predictable fashion and continued to run along those lines throughout. To describe it blow-by-blow would feel a bit like repetition.

What if instead, we just focus on the details that elevated it from the regular run of a Tour de France mountain stage, and go beyond the fact that Richard Carapaz was doomed once again, and that Tom Pidcock’s effort to get in the breakaway caused him to drop back on GC a day after launching himself up to fourth, and the fact that Tadej Pogačar is now just ten wins away from equalling Mark Cavendish’s record number of stage wins at the Tour.

How about the fact that after 13 stages without any French success, the day concluded with Frenchmen wearing half of the distinctive jerseys available? And that we were treated to the Tour de France at its most real, and vivid, and memorable? Oh, and also it rained. Poured in fact. Not for long, but still.

It should have been Bastille Day. Valentin Paret-Peintre’s quest to make the polka dot jersey his own echoed that of Lenny Martinez’ efforts in 2025. A noble battle that saw him use his incredible punch to drive toward each summit with singular focus. A focus which saw him end the day second in the standings behind Tadej Pogačar. Not quite matching my hope for the jersey prior to the race, but at least a rider who’s targeting the KOM competition like it actually means something.

Not only that, but Decathlon CMA CGM proved their mettle when it came to being a GC team. They led the charge on the final climb, shredding domestiques from other teams, Nicolas Prodhomme arguably the support rider of the day. From there, Paul Seixas proved the equal of Jonas Vingegaard on the climb, and was able to outsprint him at the finish to take four more bonus seconds – most significantly, he finished clear of Juan Ayuso, taking enough time to move into the lead of the white jersey competition. He becomes the youngest rider in the history of the Tour de France to wear a distinctive jersey – it’s the beginning of a beautiful journey and one which I am already way too invested in.

The two Frenchman weren’t the only riders that caught the eye. Tobias Johannessen was also an impressive sight riding his way back to Carapaz despite the doomed nature of the effort – he is so close to snatching that big win – if a breakaway manage to make it at any point on a mountainous stage, I’d be willing to bet on him to actually do the job. On the flip side his teammate, Anthon Charmig, became the first rider to time out of the race, finishing some 18 minutes down – Uno-X Mobility really seem to suffer from karma more than most teams. Torstein Træen takes yellow, then crashes. Søren Wærenskjold win a stage, then crashes the next day and now they are cursed by the broom wagon. Johannessen must surely rise in the final week?

And finally, a word for the crowds. The Col du Haag featured for the first time on the race and it has earned its place in Tour legend already. The natural amphitheatre caused by the races twists and turns and sweeping hillsides drew out swathes of fans. The noise was incredible, the atmosphere for the riders must have been on another level. Even the Thibaut Pinot ultras came out, on the GOAT’s home soil, reminding us of the good times. It was a day to savour, one to define this edition of the Tour, if not the race itself, which didn’t change shape in any major way.

Stage 15, in which there were ups, downs, and surprises

There were two breakaway killers on the final stage of week 2: first were EF Education-EasyPost. Banking on the strong form of Richard Carapaz after his near miss the previous day the team rode in time trial formation at the front of the bunch to chase down the early moves, ensuring the GC teams could sit back and take it easy, and dooming everyone out front in the process.

The second was Tom Pidcock. It was his third day in a row stirring things up from the front – Friday it resulted in his second podium finish and a leap up the GC standings; Saturday’s effort was ultimately fruitless, as he failed to make it to the front group, which itself was caught in the end anyway. With lower ranked GC teams keen to preserve their places in the standings, Pidcock’s presence in the lead group once again may have proven its partial undoing, as they were not given as much of a gap as perhaps they might, had the irrepressible Yorkshireman perhaps have given it a miss.

In the end it was Friday’s winner Mauro Schmid, and Lid-Trek’s Quinn Simmons who were the instigators of the final plays of the day, heading towards the biggest climb of the Tour, the Plateau de Solaison. Just before that point it had been Visma-Lease a Bike on the offensive, just over three minutes behind, Davide Piganzoli at the head of the group, ready to take it to Pogačar on a key battle ground. That was when it all went wrong. Jonas Vingegaard crashed out coming around a piece of road furniture. And the race changed shape from there.

From a racing perspective, with Vingegaard out of the race, and Visma’s offensive tactics nullified, Remco Evenepoel’s ability to remain with the UAE pair of Pogačar and Del Toro as they struck out up the final climb was a fulcrum on which any remaining entertainment the race might hold rested – if the Belgian rider was dropped, we would be left to watch a procession. While Pogačar’s solo raids are predictable and absolute, they exist because he’s the greatest rider in the sport and he is capable of doing them time after time, regardless of the competition. Something about seeing two of them do it together, would break my spirit in new ways, reinforcing UAE’s financial dominance and putting us all in our places – how dare we hope for anything but them flaunting their wares on all the biggest stages. It was too depressing to contemplate.

What we saw instead, was a reprieve - for now, at least. The best version of Remco that we’ve ever seen, a manifestation of all the hard work that he and the team have invested into this Tour de France GC bid – a first, in terms of his ability to stay with Pogačar on a climb. Pogačar was clearly riding within himself, in order to elevate his young teammate, but nothing can take away from the fact that Remco was equal to both of them, and not only that, had enough left in the tank to win the sprint for the stage – his greatest Tour stage win to date; the only one he’s achieved on a road stage rather than in his specialist discipline the ITT.

It was a conclusion none of us expected at the start of the day, and yet, the GC is even more over than it was before, in terms of the yellow jersey – and the remainder of the race will continue to be a scrap for the podium spots, with UAE likely to switch to a defensive strategy to protect Del Toro. This could open up opportunities for breakaways, or may even see the likes of Juan Ayuso, Lenny Martinez or once again Tom Pidcock do something special, if they find their best legs.

As for Vingegaard, the drama and devastation of the Tour de France once again wreaks its havoc on Team Visma-Lease a Bike, who seem to suffer more than their fair share of bad luck at the hands of this race. Vingegaard already has one Grand Tour victory under his belt this season, but that’s not likely to ease the sadness and frustration at being unable to complete the Tour – always the main goal of the season for the Danish rider. The Tour can turn on a sixpence; one wrong move, split-second decisions the difference between staying upright or clattering out of the race, even for the absolute best. It’s sad for any rider, and for the wider cycling community, but when it’s one of the key figures in the biggest race of the year, it’s particularly lamentable.

Stage 16, in which Red Bull were dealt a mixed hand

A short word on the race’s only individual time trial. A balanced course with a long climb, some descending and a bit of flat, it was a course that invited speculation as to what type of rider would come out on top – the specialists, or the GC favourites. First to top the table was Josh Tarling. He was modest in his post-race interview, feeling as though he had something left in the tank and the pacing strategy was a bit off, which perhaps cast doubt over how good his ride actually was, but former world champion Filippo Ganna was unable to overturn his lead, finishing four seconds behind his younger teammate, proof if it were needed that Tarling is an absolute beast against the clock.

It was former French champion Bruno Armirail who unseated the young Welshman, shaving 6.3 seconds off the time to move into the hotseat, a lead which he retained until Mattia Cattaneo became the fastest of ‘everyone else’, ahead of the arrival of the top GC guys.

And boy, did they arrive. First up was Mattias Skjelmose, putting in the performance of his career against the clock to finish in third on the day. Tadej Pogačar was impressive, despite a wobble coming around a corner; he lost 28 seconds to the day’s overall victor Remco Evenepoel – the world and Olympic champion stamping his authority on his favoured discipline and winning back-to-back stages. It wasn’t all delight for Red Bull however, as their co-leader Florian Lipowitz was forced to retire after coming down heavily on a corner and colliding with the barriers; it was just confirmed that like Jonas Vingegaard, Lipowitz suffered a broken collarbone.

Paul Seixas proved yet again that he is a beautiful time trialist, winning back a few precious seconds on Isaac Del Toro leaving him just 20 seconds shy of the Mexican in the fight for 3^rd place, and the white jersey. That is surely the underdog story of the final week – can the teenage sensation overcome the combined power of the best team and the best rider in the world, to finish his first Tour on a high? It’s hard to say. Perhaps the fatigue will finally get to his legs in his first ever third consecutive week of racing, which follows on from his first ever second consecutive week. All of France is with him. And many more of us besides.

Side-questrian of the week: Huub Artz

I’ve banged on enough about Baptiste Veistroffer (and will have words if he’s not given the super-combativity award on Sunday) but it’s time to recognise the achievements of another rider. Sometimes at a Grand Tour, a team leader crashes out or falls sick and the team’s entire focus must shift. For Lotto-Intermarché, this was an immediate reality as their main hopeful for stage wins, Arnaud de Lie, withdrew from the race after just two stages.

While Veistroffer may well have done what he’s been doing with or without De Lie’s presence, less expected was the breakthrough performance of their teammate, Huub Artz. The recently crowned national time trial champion of the Netherlands, Artz raised the bar early on in today’s time trial, finishing 16^th in the end – an impressive result given the competition – but perhaps more impressive is his performance in the bunch sprints – he’s managed to record four top ten finishes, including narrowly missing out on a podium with a fourth place in Pau on stage 5. The team are drawing attention despite being down to five riders now - can they make an impact in the final days?

That’s all for now - a reminder if you’re feeling generous you can support the Substack for a discounted rate if you upgrade your membership during the Tours. More to come soon, thanks for reading.

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Writing about a sporting event that’s continually unfolding is a particular skill. Taking it day by day, like the riders themselves, feels simple enough in the moment. Keep notes, look out for talking points, and most importantly - don’t get behind. Unfortunately for me, real life is continually intruding on my ability to produce up-to-the-minute content, and I’ve slipped into a sort of journalistic gruppetto. Sure, I’m behind the rest, but I’m that one who’s doing wheelies on the climbs and keeping you all entertained even though the main action has already happened and the leaders are heading back down the mountain.

Hey, at least you still get to enjoy ‘terrible shots of my laptop screen’ as I narrate some of the key moments from the last four stages - the middle of the race, if you will. As a novelist I’m often hearing about ‘saggy middles’ - keeping the action high when you’re already past the intrigue of the opening, and still a way from the climax - it’s about continually introducing obstacles for the cast of characters to overcome. And there was plenty of that in stages 10-13, so much so in fact, it’s taken me until now to finally finish this newsletter. Have I made it within the time limit? I think, if this email lands in your inboxes before the start of stage 14, I’m going to count it as a win.

If you’ve been enjoying my posts, and don’t mind hanging out with me at the back of the bunch, consider upgrading your membership to a paid tier - discounted throughout the entirety of the Tour! Then let’s crack on with some analysis.

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Stage 10 - (Nearly) all to play for

The Massif Central, Bastille Day.

It wasn’t long ago that the race visited the finish climb of Le Lioran – just two years in fact. Last time, Jonas Vingegaard beat Tadej Pogačar to win the stage, apparently following an untimely hunger flat. Pogi ultimately went on to win that year, but it was one remaining battleground where he hadn’t made his peace, and there was a sense that this perceived wrong would be put right, on stage 10.

Ben O’Connor was the first to break rank as the breakaway formation phase raged. He tried his best but it all came back together, Lidl-Trek taking control once again for the intermediate sprint. Max Kanter was the only rider giving Mads Pedersen a run for his money, but the pursuit of the green jersey is all running very smoothly for Mads so far; as it so often does for Lidl-Trek when it comes to jersey chasing, team work makes the dream work.

The breakaway battle restarted after that – so many riders tried their luck, whether for themselves or to launch a teammate. But UAE were unerring, keeping everything close, allowing more riders to get across the slender gap and subsequently making the breakaway’s success look less likely with every passing kilometre, despite the best efforts of the French riders to fight for national pride on Bastille Day.

A big group finally made a move but they only secured half a minute’s grace before the first climb, and things broke up with XDS-Astana among the teams pushing on. Once again UAE kept the gap painfully tight – just 55 seconds – and one again we were treated to the sight of Nils Politt’s grin-mace (my new name for whatever that face of his is trying to express).

Long story short, UAE were ruthless, and Movistar’s Javier Romo was the last man standing at the front of the race, while Valentin Paret-Peintre and Alex Baudin offered an exciting French side-quest by way of a battle for one of the KOMs, so that was fun. Then we were all back together, and it was down to the most swashbuckling baroudeur climber of them all, Richard Carapaz, to throw down a move on the penultimate climb, the Puy Mary. Decathlon took charge for the descent – presumably Paul Seixas may still be feeling a bit sketchy about going downhill after his crash at the Dauphiné. It proved to be with just cause – the surface appeared to be a bit loose and both Tom Pidcock and Chris Harper crashed in the same spot moments apart from one another on the descent.

Heading onto the final climb the group was being shredded, with Carapaz nursing a 1:10 lead. It was to be a fruitless endeavour – Pogačar launched at 15.5 kilometres to go, and that was that.

In terms of the yellow jersey at least. But then, we already knew that. What went on behind was perhaps interesting enough to fuel the fire for the rest of the race.

A select group led by Jonas Vingegaard attacked the climb a way behind Pogi. Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz; Juan Ayuso and Matthias Skjelmose, and Paul Seixas were there, while Isaac Del Toro, Tom Pidcock and Lenny Martinez dropped behind. This is the shape of our GC top ten. Very neat. The order in which these riders end up when they arrive in Paris can be a fascinating side quest to the already clinched maillot jaune, if we allow ourselves to be enthused by such things.

Remco Evenepoel looked to be sliding out of contention, dropping on the climb as his teammate Lipowitz stayed steady – perhaps finally making the decision for Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe. Except, the stage didn’t end on a climb. It ended with a couple of kilometres of descending, before a slight kick up to the line.

For me, this is way more interesting than a summit finish, when you have a collection of riders of this calibre.

It was enough time for Remco to work his way back, and not only that, to pass the chasing group and sprint for second place. Nobody saw it coming. Paul Seixas followed, snagging his first Tour de France stage podium and retrieving some glory for France on their national day. Most interestingly of all, everyone’s nailed-on second place finisher, Jonas Vingegaard, was distanced on the final kicker, finishing in seventh and losing vital seconds to his rivals.

Is it too soon to say that second place is in play? Probably. Vingegaard is a class act and undoubtedly the second-best climber at the race. Whether it was a blip, or fatigue from riding the notoriously gruelling Giro-Tour double starting to set in, remains to be seen. But it adds a little salt to proceedings, lifting that podium battle from mere side quest into the main headlines.

There were a couple of days off for the GC teams, after that…

Stages 11 & 12: A twist in the tale

“Could be one of those Kasper Asgreen days.”

This was one of my first notes for stage 11, as the peloton rolled out through Vichy on wet roads, a sight which in itself was hard to reconcile after weeks of baking heat. I thought perhaps the drop in temperatures would precipitate one of those surprise breakaway days, the kind where everyone is waiting for the inevitable sprint, until it becomes clear they’ve underestimated the break and there’s a last-gasp rush but it’s too late and Kasper Asgreen wins.

It didn’t work out quite like that in the end – a day or two too early, given the shape of this Tour – and when the four-man break did get away, I didn’t have faith that they would make it all the way (whether in spite of, or because of the fact that it contained Julian Alaphillippe, I don’t care to speculate, as it might make me a bit sad at this point).

Jasper Philipsen inspired some hope, winning the intermediate sprint from the bunch, and any hopes of a breakaway day were dashed by the fact that the peloton had once again shackled the lead group with a measly time gap that only ever made it up to about 1:15. Everyone was in such a hurry, in fact, that the first half of the stage was on track to be the fastest ever: 51.9kmph was the average speed for the first 75km.

Alarm bells might have been ringing for Soudal-QuickStep fans as Tim Merlier admitted prior to the stage that he had been suffering the previous day. He was noticeably far back from very early on, and told reporters he ‘exploded’ and couldn’t get water when he needed it. Apparently it was only the second time in his career he needed teammates to get him through the stage within the time limit, which tells you a lot about the capabilities of the man, but also gave a hint as to how the day might play out.

As the stage drew rapidly towards Nevers, Decathlon added their strength to the chase, and there was a crash involving Georg Zimmermann, Ben O’Connor and a couple more.

With 5km to go, the break was caught. The bunch were packed in across the breadth of the road, and once again, the tension was through the roof, with a final chicane heading toward the finish line piling additional anxiety on top of the high speeds. Everyone made it through the narrowing of the road and with a kilometre to go, Alpecin and Decathlon were in pole position.

It wasn’t to be a straightforward finale though. Olav Koooij’s lead-out man Cees Bol jumped the gun, pinging off the front a bit early and causing some hesitation, and in that moment of indecision Uno-X Mobility’s Søren Wærenskjold struck out, and despite the heat of Kooij and Philipsen bearing down behind him, the big Norwegian held on, powering to the line, and taking the stage for Uno-X Mobility – the same stage number (11) that they won in last year’s race.

Despite the late hesitation the stage easily surpassed the previous record (set in 1999) to become the fastest ever in Tour de France history, with an average speed of 50.9km/h. It was a sprint stage with a surprise ending – a trend which was set to continue the following day…

Stage 12 began on a Formula 1 circuit, in keeping with the need for speed that had instilled itself in the peloton the previous day. Despite plenty of early attacks somehow, by way of some sort of witchcraft or something, it ended up being just Baptiste Veistroffer alone off the front once again, like some kind of intrepid French pioneer.

He did finally find some friends, a trio of riders joining him after the intermediate sprint, which was once again won by Mads Pedersen, despite some quibbling with the race director over deviation.

Veistroffer quickly decided one friend was more than enough, and it would have to be a French friend – Ewen Costiou formed a duo with him but there wasn’t much hope at all for the pair, as once again the peloton really didn’t offer the breakaway any rope at all. The proximity of other humans proved too much for Veistroffer in the end though, so he went off solo again. He really is my favourite thing at this Tour de France.

Probably my next favourite thing was the hell that broke loose with around 35km to go on stage 12, though. It was absolute madness. With one small categorised climb still to come, the race opened up again, and it seemed that half the peloton thought they might as well have a go at winning the stage. What transpired was one of the most fun blocks of racing I can ever recall at a Grand Tour, partially because it was so unexpected, and probably also because of the timing – if you’d turned on the TV you would have been forgiven for thinking you were watching the breakaway formation, with 130-odd kilometres left to race, not 30. There was no control, only attacking. It was bloody brilliant.

Of course, the sprint teams still had strength in numbers, despite Lidl-Trek instigating much of the chaos, probably on account of wanting to defend Mads’ green jersey from the pure sprinters, who he has yet been unable to find his way around at a stage finish. The sprint teams’ patience, and the sheer weight of them as a combined force, won out in the end, and it was a third win for Tim Merlier, who navigated the chaotic finale including a big crash that wiped out Fernando Gaviria, Jenno Berckmoes and others, to score a hat-trick of wins. Olav Kooij finished second again – he has finished every sprint stage on the podium. And Philipsen built on his improving form with another third place, though he’ll be gutted once again at his inability to deliver the finishing speed needed to get around the king of the sprints at this year’s race.

Sure, if you’d looked at the results without watching the stage you’d have imagined a nice quiet flat stage. It was anything but. The Tour de France can frustrate and delight in equal measure, and stage 12 was particularly delightful.

Stage 13 – The odd stage that delivered

The profile of stage 13 had me scratching my head at first glance. The longest stage of the race at 205km, it was flat for 160 of them, with a couple of climbs including the not insubstantial Ballon d’Alsace at the end, followed by a descent off the climb. It would need serious power to breakaway from the bunch on the flat land, but surely only a strong climber could prevail in the end? How would those two contrasting requirements play out on the day? And would Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG actually allow the day to play out in a fun way?

The questions were answered fairly quickly. Despite an initial group of five getting away early, including the ever-dangerous Asgreen, it was a giant group that fractured from the bunch in the end, around 40 riders finding space and fairly quickly being allowed to leave as the GC teams settled in for a day riding tempo. It still took 50-odd kilometres, and even then, there were teams still trying to strike out, last gasp efforts as the gap moved out to a minute – hopefuls throwing themselves into the fray trying to bridge across the gap. They coalesced into a sizeable chase group, which included Mads Pedersen, anxious to catch the lead group which included a cunning Jasper Philipsen who had sneaked off in the hope of poaching precious points at the intermediate sprint.

He managed it too. Though the chase group did in fact manage to join the lead group in time, Philipsen took another victory and boosted morale as the race headed towards the business end. Pinarello-Q36.5 were the team everyone had their eye on. With four riders in the original group, they had Fred Wright to work on the front, and Tom Pidcock protected among its number – as we all well know, Pidcock is a rider capable of climbing very well, and descending even better.

Behind, the peloton were over seven minutes down when Bahrain-Victorious were ordered to the front, protecting Lenny Martinez’ ninth place on GC from a rampant Tom Pidcock, who stood to gain more than just ninth place, if he was to stay away.

The final portion of the race was once again incredibly entertaining. Ben Healy, Jordan Jegat, Maxim van Gils, and Tom Pidcock all attacked at different points and the group gradually reduced as the climb progressed. Another team with multiple riders in the group was Jayco-AlUla, and it was this team who were able to play the numbers game to the greatest effect. The cream rose to the top quite literally, with Luke Plapp and Mauro Schmid taking turns to attack, and though Pidcock attacked 800m from the summit of the climb, he wasn’t able to make enough of an impact to move into the lead and nine riders were left heading into the descent.

The games began after that, and Harold Tejada and Mauro Schmid were able to move clear. They worked very well together, by contrast to the chase group, trying and failing to make an impact with not enough cohesion. The rest were catching as Tejada and Schmid began to slow down and look at each other, but the pair had enough room to go head-to-head in the sprint. Unlike on last year’s stage 11, this time, Mauro Schmid was victorious.

The big gap behind caused a significant change in the general classification for the first time in a few days, with Tom Pidcock rising to fourth – now very much in the mix for the podium battle which will unfold this weekend, and into the final week of the race.

And breathe… no saggy middles here. Hopefully that’s brought you all up to date just in time for a weekend of GC action. Catch you all again just after the second rest day, when we’ll find out what side quests we can look forward to in the final week of the race.

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Welcome back to this Tour de France special edition of the Substack, in which I’ve been rounding up the action, with a focus on the peripheral stories that have surrounded the main narratives at this year’s race. Prior to the race I highlighted a few things that might prove interesting – one week in, have these side-quests come to fruition? Or have others surfaced, that might be more worthy of our attention? Also, what’s gone on these past three days – it’s time to get up to date, so let’s start there, with a brief summary of the action.

Stages 7-9: Normality, with a side order of sweat

Stage 7 offered another nailed-on chance for the pure sprinters, and to confirm this a breakaway of just two riders was established early and kept on a chokehold of a lead, just one minute as Alpecin-Premier Tech and Soudal-QuickStep shared custody of the pace-setting at the head of the bunch.

The duo? Jakub Otruba from Caja Rural, and my bestie Baptiste Veistroffer, who is apparently a glutton for punishment.

Fast forward to, er, basically the end. Aside from a couple of flurries of activity from Uno-X Mobility, who were attempting to get in amongst it following the departure of their GC leader and former yellow jersey Torstein Træen and their subsequent freedom, literally nothing else happened.

That’s not to say it wasn’t stressful. It was actually. Very much so in fact – a narrowing of the road with 7 kilometres to go caused a squeeze for the bunch, but thankfully, everyone stayed upright. My palms were sweating as the race entered the final, lined out along the road. Sprinters were distanced and found their way back to the front again but in the end, we had ourselves a clean sprint, which was won by Tim Merlier. He really is very fast at riding a bike. Stay tuned for further incisive commentary from yours truly.

A second consecutive flat stage, stage 8 was basically a copy and paste of stage 7. Except we had a trio of breakaway riders, and none of them were Baptiste Veistroffer. The day was a beauty to watch, as the race wound through the picturesque landscape of the Dordogne, and it’s a good job really, as nothing happened in the race until the very last minute. Veistroffer may have been absent but his teammate Liam Slock was flying the flag for the Belgian team instead, and he launched a late attack on final climb, to instigate a solo man-versus-peloton battle which raised our hopes for a while, before it became clear he would be caught.

Liam Slock, in case you aren’t aware of him, took his first pro win recently at GP Gippingen in the most incredible fashion – see the post from his team here. But in short, it finished with him celebrating, crashing, and sliding across the line, thankfully staying in contact with his bike to ensure the victory. Amazing stuff.

The final was pretty heated, with a battle for position through the final few corners, and later penalties for intimidation were issued to Biniam Girmay and Olav Kooij, but ultimately it didn’t matter - once again, Tim Merlier proved he was the strongest man on two wheels, completing two wins in two days for his Soudal-QuickStep team.

Stage 9 was shortened following consultation with the rider’s union, with the extreme heat still a major cause for concern. Dropping from 185km down to 155, it was straight to business for Lidl-Trek to control any early attempts to form a breakaway on behalf of Mads Pedersen, with the intermediate sprint arriving after just 13km of racing. They totally bossed it, proving that UAE aren’t the only team at the race capable of exerting their authority when required. Pedersen duly collected the full 25 available points, and the games could begin after that. As predicted, it was a feisty one, with appearances from plenty of riders who we’d kind of forgotten were even at the race, given the first eight days had been almost entirely dominated by GC riders, and in the latter stages, sprinters.

A five-rider group spearheaded by Julian Alaphillippe found space for a short while, but it took a lot longer before a proper group was established, and even when there was a move, UAE Team Emirates immediately set about clipping their wings, giving them only just over a minute of lead – a risky situation in terms of managing further attacks, and the reasons behind the excessive stranglehold would themselves be unclear later in the day, when Mauro Gianetti was questioned, and his answers were different to a number of his riders.

The group that eventually made it clear contained some real quality: MVDP, Tobias Johannessen, Quinn Simmons and Derek Gee-West, Tom Pidcock, Lennert van Eetvelt, Alex Baudin, and Pablo Castrillo. Winners for sure. But if UAE’s stifling presence wasn’t enough, Netcompany-INEOS came to join the chase - whether protecting Egan Bernal’s GC position or fighting for the team classification wasn’t clear, but the upshot was the gap coming down to just over 40 seconds.

The lead group were coming apart and on the final climb it was Van der Poel who detonated, with Johannessen and Baudin following. Pidcock suffered a mechanical at the worst possible time but somehow managed to retrieve his position to make it a quartet at the head of the race. The four riders worked well together, with the peloton just keeping them at close range rather than reeling them in; it was an odd sort of stalemate that demanded a top, top performance from the breakaway riders, but when you have a rider like Van der Poel in the mix, the odds are ever in your favour. Or his, at least. He led the sprint out from the front, delivering enough power to keep the rest at bay as the peloton rushed in behind, finishing just six seconds down on the winner.

Revenge of the side-quests

Now we’ve gotten all that pesky racing business out of the way, let’s check back in on the stories I proposed in my preview piece, to see how many – if any – of my suggested side quests have borne fruit.

MVDP: It was a quieter start for the imperious Dutchman than many of us expected. Then again, there are a vast array of big names who have been anonymous so far this race, with the GC teams smothering most of the opportunities, and our first true glimpses of the former world champion were in his designed driver role, leading out Jasper Philipsen on the two sprint stages. Ultimately these efforts were in vain as Philipsen continues to search for his best form, but Van der Poel took matters into his own hands on Sunday, storming to a hard-fought stage win despite extreme heat (both from the climate, and the heat from UAE and Netcompany breathing down their necks).

Decathlon dynamics: my question, mooted prior to the race, was how Decathlon would balance the two halves of their squad, and two competing goals. So far, despite a couple of minor issues for Paul Seixas, things have run pretty smoothly. One stage win courtesy of Olav Kooij has more than justified his late inclusion in the squad, and the focus on the sprint side of the team has deflected a little of the intense spotlight focused on Seixas, at least for a day or two. There was never any real need to provide the young Frenchman with a full seven-man support team in what was always going to be more of a learning experience than a full-out GC bid, but both the team and Seixas have acquitted themselves well so far, and there’s no sign of any internal politics.

The sanctity of polka dots: my hopes for this point were twofold: (a) that we’d see pure climbers contesting mountainous stages, ahead of the GC teams and (b) that someone might actually win the polka dot jersey, or at least have a strong run at it, outside of the GC leaders. Neither point has come to fruition yet but it’s early days. Part of my frustration with the UAE regime and the current era of having to lead from the front is that we miss out on the ‘two races’ scenario we often see with breakaways battling for victory first, following by a GC assault a few minutes later. Pogačar wants to win it all, therefore the race necessarily collapses down to one point of interest. As such, we’ve only had one real mountain stage, but the result of that proved fairly categorically that the polka dot jersey is probably only going one way this year, despite having two previous owners, both called Alex: Baudin and Molenaar. There are in fact three more Alexes in the race - Kirsch, Aranburu, and Delettre (he’s an Alexandre), but they’d have to be pretty impressive to mount a late assault on the KOM competition.

Speaking of names, there is both a Ramses (Debruyne) and a Vlad (van Mechelen) at this year’s race. This is the kind of factual info that really pleases me.

As for pure climbers on mountain stages, I remain hopeful.

The Grand Départ: the excitement of the opening stages of a Grand Tour should be off the scale - unpredictable, crazy racing, moments that live long in the memory. The Yates twins head-to-head, Victor Lafay’s coup de kilometre, Frenchman crashing on cobbles to fight for a single mountains point, Bardet’s breakaway, Vauquelin’s break-though, early crosswind drama, GC rivals battling it out or falling behind early on. All of these have stayed with me from recent editions of the Tour. While the TTT provided a spectacle and Catalunya a stunning backdrop, this one wasn’t one for the ages, for me.

Firsts and lasts: riders taking part in their debut Tour have impressed so far, and there is a fair bit of crossover with the final point – as for those riding their final Tour, Damiano Caruso has been anonymous, likely because he’s riding purely in a support role. By contrast, Magnus Cort has been lively – expect to see more from him in the coming days.

Dark horses: from my selection of dark horses, Baptiste Veistroffer has unsurprisingly been the highlight. Clément Braz Afonso has been very active and Marco Frigo somewhat less so, but they are there, and I have hopes for week three.

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New side quests: is there any hope of breaking free of Pogačar’s gravity?

The sheer weight of Tadej Pogačar and his all-consuming UAE team feels oppressive this year at the Tour. Even the mighty Mathieu van der Poel only scraped a stage win by a hair’s breadth on Sunday, and their stifling presence looks set to continue as we begin week 2 shortly. Perhaps the Tour de France is the wrong place to look for side quests? The central storylines are so all-encompassing, they leave little room for notes in the margin. Quirky side characters are pushed into two dimensions, crowded out of the story, falling into plot holes that never get sewn up.

Week 2 will continue to see the GC war rage, along with Mads Pedersen charging at everything containing a sprint point, but what hopes are there for breakaway riders? There are two flat stages, one hilly stage and three with mountains in week 2. Surely UAE aren’t going to control every single one? Honestly, they probably won’t, but it does raise questions about the nature of such super-teams – undoubtedly their number one commitment is to their leader, but assuming he extends his lead and needs minimal protection, do they then control the bunch to try and go for second on GC with Del Toro? More stage wins, with, well, any of their team? Even the team classification seems to be on their radar, put forward as one of the reasons behind their overbearing presence on stage 9.

Patience will be key, for fans and the peloton alike, but if there’s hope, who are we hoping for?

We’ve already seen some engines warming up – the likes of Jonas Abrahamsen, Kasper Asgreen, Tom Pidcock, and Lennert van Eetvelt; both Netcompany-INEOS and Movistar will want to play a greater role in the race moving forward, and neither have a GC rider to look out for. Lenny Martinez has found himself in contention on the general classification so may not be the breakaway contender in the mountains I’d hoped for but I could still see him purposely losing time to go for breakaways in week 3. And how about a name that we haven’t mentioned yet - someone to keep an eye out for, taking matters into their own hands and breaking free of expectation and springing a surprise? Here are three for you: Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost); Ilan van Wilder (Soudal-QuickStep); Emiel Verstrynge (Alpecin-Premier Tech).

I’ll leave you with that, and head off to turn on the broadcast as we hurtle headlong into week 2. See you in a few days.

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It hit me somewhere between the Aspin and the Tourmalet today, that if I’m planning on staying on top of writing about this Tour de France and not drowning in days-old details that don’t make sense anymore, that I need to adopt a more day by day approach, much like my username, or the riders themselves who so often assert as much in vague post-race interviews. I don’t remember the last time I heard a rider say ‘we’re taking it three days at time.’

It’s a million degrees everywhere in Europe and while here in the north-east of England, it’s less extreme than elsewhere, I’m still fatigued by it. And I’m just sitting behind a desk. The canicule [heatwave] persists in France, with plenty more searing temperatures in store, and is clearly taking its toll on riders, and will continue to do so even if the temperatures drop, as recovery from the heat will take time and that’s one thing these athletes don’t have. And nor do I, so there’s not much point complaining about it - let’s try and remember what happened three days ago, shall we?

Stage 4 – The Great Dane

After two days of utter domination from UAE Team Emirates, the big question ahead of stage 4, with Tadej Pogačar already resplendent in yellow, was could they restrain themselves from striking yet another blow to the heart of the rest of the hopefuls within the bunch? The stage profile was perfect for a breakaway, and a huge number of riders were up for the challenge. After a few efforts to establish something, a massive 40-strong crowd of riders were waved off up the road as the peloton put on the brakes.

This was a big, big group. Strength in number perhaps? But was it too grea a threat to the status quo? There was plenty of radio communication from Nils Politt who took up his familiar position at the head of the bunch and we waited to see how much rope the group would be given, as presumably sports directors did frantic checks to see exactly who they’d let go.

And there was some real quality in the front group. Michael Matthews, Romain Grégoire, Mathias Vacek, Kévin Vauquelin. Plenty of teams with more than one representative. The gap settled at 3:30. Too low to guarantee anything, but higher than we’d seen at any point since the start of the race.

The sprinters were along for the ride, and at the intermediate sprint there was further success for Biniam, who took another small victory over Philipsen and Pedersen, and the Eritrean slid back to the bunch with the Dutchman in tow, while the irrespressible Dane took on his next challenge: breaking away. The gap was out to over 4:30 as the first of the day’s two category 2 climbs began, and Michael Matthews was looking hungry, leading the charge onto the lower slopes.

It was hot. So, so hot. Kévin Vauquelin gave the camera a shower with his bidon, while the crowds in Foix were rained on by local fire crews. The pair of Jan Tratnik and Mathias Vacek moved clear on the next climb and they became a trio when Alex Kirsch joined them. It wasn’t a harmonious working relationship however, Mathias Vacek testing the patience of his two companions, an anchor at the back claiming he had Pedersen in the group behind so couldn’t ride. His presence in the group was part of Lidl-Trek’s master plan; with Pedersen and Quinn Simmons in the group behind, they had all the cards to play.

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The strength in the second group overpowered the leaders with 40 kilometres to go, and from there Lidl-Trek put the next phase of their plan into action. With the peloton decreeing they were out of the game a while earlier, all they had to do was to deliver Mads Pedersen to the finish line, which they duly did. From there, with no other riders within the group who could even hope to match his flat speed, Pedersen sprinted unchallenged to claim the stage.

His ability over all kinds of terrain makes the fearless Dane a force to be reckoned with on days like this - a true tough guy of the sport, combining resilience, power and speed with a rare ability to endure the kinds of gradients that would have most of his green jersey rivals dropping like stones.

Not only was it a popular victory, it won Pedersen the green jersey - for now at least - and with a massive 13 minute gap to the bunch, the yellow jersey would be loaned out. The recipient none other than Uno-X Mobility’s Torstein Træen; a rider who has already been in this exact situation, at last year’s Vuelta. With a lead of 7:53 over the rest, the day reshaped the GC temporarily into something that looked as if it could be a lot more interesting. And allowed the Norwegian his moment in the spotlight - a moment which his roommate, Anders Johannessen, took full advantage of…

Stage 5 – Anything but flat

Ah, the sweet release of a flat stage, a balm on the fractious mind, ever tormented by the tantalising hope of some other outcome on the GC. Isn’t it just what we all needed?

The altered perspective on the first sprint stage, having been withheld from us for what felt like forever in Grand Tour terms, was so refreshing. Settling in for a day where I could have the race on in the background without needing to actually pay attention to what was going on. A day when we were treated to copious shots of the fans and their excellent signs and hilarious escapades. A slow, languorous day, the likes of which everyone complained about last year when they had the audacity to fall on a weekend, and which no-one cares to pay much attention to when they comprise two-thirds of the opening three stages, was just the tonic.

Of course it was a slow start, and of course there was very little interest in being part of the day’s early break. So little interest in fact that one man found himself out front alone – who was that one man, I hear you cry? It was my pre-race tip for breakaway shenanigans no less, French baroudeur Baptiste Veistroffer!

As Christian Prudhomme pressed the flesh with French rugby legend Antoine Dupont at the roadside, Veistroffer expressed his mild displeasure at being given such a measly time gap by the bunch given he was a lone leader. Nevertheless, he still says ‘yes please’ when he’s offered ice. My heart melts instantly. Such a nice, polite boy. Manners cost nothing, y’know? He ended up having a great day despite the solitude – no less than 144 kilometres spent labouring alone, and yet he claimed it was what he dreamed of as a kid. Of course, he took away the combativity prize for his troubles, and his Lotto-Intermarché bosses and sponsors would have been delighted.

As is so often the way with these stages, it was a whole lot of nothing much and then everything happened at once. There was a late, fruitless attack from a trio of riders, before the bunch finally caught everyone with just under 15km to go. There was an even later crash, which strung out the bunch and caused Tim Merlier to lose touch with his lead-out riders. And there was a long-awaited bunch sprint. While the bunch in question was really rather small as a result of the crash, pretty much all of the big names were up there, and it was a maiden victory for Olav Kooij. Riding on debut, and taking his first tilt at a sprint, to take victory was a huge deal for the young Dutchman who was finally able to justify the price tag Decathlon paid for him, lifting his team in the process.

It was a victory enjoyed by a broad section of cycling fans, with Visma-Lease a Bike providing a classy response, congratulating the first rider from their development squad set-up to go on to win a stage of the Tour de France. For Decathlon, the intense spotlight cast on Paul Seixas would only relent for 24 hours, but it would be a welcome relief, as the youngest debutant could enjoy the celebrations of his older teammate. It was a reminder that for Decathlon, the original plan was to go for green with Kooij, with Seixas only an option on the table. Now those tables have turned, and with the Tourmalet beckoning the following day, Kooij’s moment of glory would hopefully inspire the team as they headed for the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile, in further ‘Torstein Træen is having the best time’ news, this.

Stage 6 – Poetry and pain

The lone Pyrenean stage began falteringly, with a break that wasn’t really a break, Victor Campanaerts gamely attempting to play the satellite rider game but finding no-one would take the bait and join him, other than Mads Pedersen who was there with singular purpose: to take the intermediate sprint points and bolster his green jersey tally.

A second rush saw Remco Evenepoel caught out following a poorly timed nature break, Tadej Pogačar forced to work for himself, and Visma-Lease a Bike up to their old tricks, in amongst it and trying to cause some hijinks, looking to rattle the cage of their arch rival.

Side-quest of the day: the prize for best nominative determinism goes to Max Kanter, who won the intermediate sprint from the bunch at a… er… trot. (I’m here all week).

A new wave of attacks followed causing splits in the bunch, Visma aggressive, feisty, pushing the pace and the peloton snaking out along the road. Ben O’Connor’s solo attack stuck but he was only given a minute and by the time all that was resolved, the day’s major climbs were approaching and UAE exerted their characteristic stranglehold beginning with the white-teethed nightmare Nils Politt charging forth like a proper sadist.

There was a flurry of excitement at the summit of the Col d’Aspin, a double attack of diminutive French climbers as first Valentin Paret-Peintre, then Lenny Martinez engaged in a full-on sprint for the KOM, with Martinez narrowly snatching the victory on the line.

Onto the Tourmalet. UAE’s pace was infernal, unforgiving, and while they stood strong with numbers at the front, support riders for every other team were dropping like flies. With 10.6km of climbing still to endure on one of the Tour’s most iconic peaks, Træen lost touch with the group, and his day would only get worse from there.

The group had been whittled down to just 16 riders with 7km still to go on the Tourmalet. UAE still had four riders; Paul Seixas was alone. Yet as Del Toro kicked away, Pogačar in his wheel, and the pair detonated the GC group as they emerged from a tunnel built into the mountainside, Seixas was one of the few who followed close behind. It was Jonas Vingegaard who settled into his customary position chasing the Slovenian, while Del Toro, Lipowitz and Seixas joined up behind. My heart may have sunk at the crushing inevitability of the unfolding outcome, but it also lifted at the mettle shown by the 19-year-old. The scales will tip, in a year, or three, or even five. They will tip, and that moment of balance as they swing, will be tantalising. For now, we wait.

As for Pogačar, he cruises up the remainder of the climb. Relentless, ruthless, a demolition. Dismantling all resistance. The perfect entanglement of man and machine defying the laws of physics. A honed athlete. A clinical executioner. A fluid description of ascension over all others rendered in sweat-soaked white and rainbow stripes. A realisation of sporting perfection. The only man who evokes this combination of emotion – frustration, admiration, incredulity – and impassionate indifference, in me, and yet, forces me to seek out new words and ways of putting them together, to try and capture his singular brilliance. The undisputed king.

As always, I made notes on the details of the stage as they unfolded, including the names of the chase group that coalesced in the wake of the two greatest cyclists of their generation, in the hope that one of them might be the one to claim the final podium spot; the fractious moods of Remco Evenepoel, the gung-ho contributions of Paul Seixas, the wily avoidance of Lidl-Trek to do their perceived fair share, and the dogged resistance of Lenny Martinez, the other lone Frenchman. And the strong ride of Egan Bernal, finishing two minutes after, riding alone, ahead of the rest of the GC hopefuls. The pain of Torstein Træen, already distanced by a gobsmacking 15 minutes, later finding out he had broken four ribs in a crash and finished 22 minutes down on GC, a remarkable swing of almost half an hour from the beginning of the day as he finished over 10 kilometres behind Pog, his 48 hour dream well and truly over. It doesn’t really warrant a blow-by-blow recount; rather a sombre reflection on the eye-watering standards that the world’s best has ascended to, an echo of Tignes in 2021, when Pogačar made it clear there would be only one. That was stage 9, though. And even that felt painfully early to call time on the race. Five years on, we are inured to it.

My final, brief conclusions from the day are as follows: Jonas Vingegaard is an exceptional bike rider. Tadej Pogačar is a devastatingly exceptional bike rider. Paul Seixas is going to be an exceptional bike rider. And the Tour de France is over, as a contest.

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Welcome subscribers old and new, to the first of my Tour de France recaps – hope you like the temporary title. It’s a throwback to my preview post, in case you missed it. I’m attempting to find the bits and bobs from the Tour that might otherwise escape notice, as part of my round-up of each stage. For those new to the newsletter wondering what atrocity of an image I’ve led with, it’s the return of a feature known as ‘terrible screenshots of my laptop’. Blame the WBD group for making it impossible to screenshot properly.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re drowning in these kinds of emails (I know I am) so if you choose to take the time to read this one, know that I truly appreciate you. If you’d like to support my solo quest to bring you a different kind of coverage, paid tiers are discounted throughout the race, just click the button below!

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Stage 1: When is a team sport not a team sport?

The stage was set. The sun baked down on the streets Barcelona as this year’s race began somewhat uniquely, with a team time trial. Only the second time in the race’s history has the discipline kicked off the Tour, and not since 1971. Cycling is already the most curious of sports when it comes to team versus individual, but the last remaining bastion of securing a team result could arguably have been retained in the team time trial. A chance for a team to succeed together; an honest challenge of a unit. This time, though, the nuances of the UCI’s rule changes concerning finishing times mean that the spirit of the TTT, for the purists at least (me) was compromised.

The strategy is perhaps a more intricate beast, and offered interest in the early stages. But the simplicity of the old ways - the job of having to get four riders over the line before the clock stops - is what kept the discipline honest. Hamstrung GC leaders with less specialists on their team, forced teams to decide who had enough to go all the way to the finish. While those with time trialists aplenty could enjoy a temporary advantage, and give the rest something to work against. Now, while the team can stay intact if it’s beneficial, in most cases the team’s leader will launch towards the end of the course profile, and finish the job alone, almost rendering the team element moot.

It’s still a spectacle, undoubtedly. Watching eight riders flow together, even if only for a short while (and despite the array of ridiculously shaped helmets), is a beautiful thing. Observing the different strategies of teams with different strengths was illustrative: for teams like Red Bull, with a rider like Remco Evenepoel, hiding their leader away was not an option – to secure the best possible time, Remco had to do a fair whack of the work himself. At the other end of the spectrum was the Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling approach – essentially delivering Tom Pidcock to the final climb via a seven-man lead-out – the diminutive Brit used his team to stay out of the wind and preserve all of his energy for the final effort.

To the race itself, and Groupama-FDJ United surprised many by setting the early high water mark, despite losing two riders to a nasty crash – Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet and Clément Berthet crossed the line bloodied, but newly crowned French champion Romain Grégoire stormed up the Montjuïc climb to win the honour of a stint in the hotseat for the French team.

It was a turbulent day for Netcompany-INEOS. Pictured before the race taking an inventive approach to cooling, they waited for their slot with their forearms and hands resting in tubs of ice water. It was an odd illustration of just how hot it was out there. Despite being widely tipped to take the win, they didn’t have the easiest of times. Egan Bernal indicated he was done early with a clear thumbs down signal – whether by design or simply running out of legs; almost simultaneously, the team’s most likely GC candidate Kévin Vauquelin suffered a puncture, stripping a major time trialling engine from the unit. In the end, Filippo Ganna and Tobias Foss were left, a duo of national champions storming into the foot of the Montjuïc climb, and Ganna powered solo to the finish line, supplanting the former leaders on the hotseat – a very, very hot seat indeed, given the conditions, and the number of bodies forced to share it.

Later on in the day, the major GC hopefuls launched with their teams, and most of them employed a similar tactic: sending their leader into the foot of the climb with two helpers, before hammering their way to the finish line alone. By contrast with some of the other teams, Decathlon CMA CGM are not gifted with time trialling machines. In fact, their TTT unit looked pretty funny, given they brought four tiny climbers to the race. The one bigger guy among them, former Dutch national champion Daan Hoole, stood out a mile. They were one of the most interesting teams to watch in the finale; Tiesj Benoot and Matthew Riccitello accompanied Paul Seixas, Benoot swinging out of the saddle while Seixas maintained a beautiful position, finishing his team off and charging for the line.

As I predicted Lidl-Trek put on a strong display, and were neck-and-neck with Ineos – they sent Derek Gee-West and Mathias Vacek with Juan Ayuso, and the young Spaniard finished just 7 seconds down on Ganna. Meanwhile, UAE and Visma certainly lived up to their billing. Visma in the space helmets may look ridiculous, but it clearly works for them. Looking like a mad alien makes you quick, apparently.

Remco Evenepoel looked sharp in his all white rainbow skinsuit – he had Maxim Van Gils and Florian Lipowitz for support heading into the final climb. UAE were down to six before the first time check, losing Adam Yates and Nils Politt, but it made no difference to Tadej Pogačar; he and Isaac Del Toro attacked the final climb and eventually, Pogi launched for the summit alone, clocking the fastest climbing time of the day to clinch the KOM jersey outright.

(The irony is not lost on me, after my appeal for the polka dots to belong to someone other than the GC leader).

In the end though, courtesy of his team’s speed and a strong final climb, Jonas Vingegaard took the race’s first yellow jersey. Due to the individual timings, the top ten after the stage already resembled what we might imagine the final top ten to look like. Yes, the podium was a dream scenario for the race organisers. But where’s the weird order and the GC favourite who’s halfway down the standings due to carrying a few too many passengers? Nowhere, is where. It’s just a convenient way to let the guys who are going to be up there anyway take control of the race from day one. Give me back the four-man rule.

A word for Egan Bernal, who despite dropping relatively early, was the first across the line at the intermediate sprint point, and ended up in the green jersey for the first time in his career – Egan in green is the absolute definition of a side quest. It also meant that of the four special jerseys awarded after stage one, three were on the shoulders of previous winners of the race, which after just one stage, was pretty remarkable.

Stage 2: A Vulgar Display of Power

The first road stage of the Tour was never going to be one for the breakaway, with a punchy finish on a familiar circuit that would be a mouth-watering prospect for a wide range of riders, from GC favourites to Classics guys.

A trio of riders made it clear and although one of my tips for breakaway shenanigans, Baptiste Veistroffer, tried his luck, he wasn’t able to make it across to the leaders. There were a smattering of early crashes, including one for Biniam Girmay. And though Visma had the yellow jersey already, they didn’t trouble themselves driving the pace, with Pinarello Q36.5 giving it the beans for Pidcock.

The crash for Bini clearly didn’t phase him as he won the first intermediate sprint and we were treated to our first sighting of the sprinters turning the legs – they will have to wait until stage 5 to go for their first chance at victory.

After that, UAE Team Emirates ruled the roost. They pushed the pace on the biggest climb of the day, setting out their stall like a team already riding in the maillot jaune.

Speaking of yellow things…

Two of the young riders in the spotlight had mechanical issues – Isaac Del Toro and Paul Seixas both needing bike changes, which were both botched in different ways, taking longer than they should have.

The breakaway was down to two and with just under 40km to go, the pair shook hands, expecting to be subsumed by the bunch; little did they know they would be kept dangling by a bunch waiting to strike for another seven whole kilometres. Awkward. A bit like when you say goodbye to someone at a train station, then realise you’re both waiting for the same train home. And it’s delayed.

Finally though, they hit the Montjuïc circuit and UAE went to work. Brandon McNulty was the hero of the day, setting an infernal tempo which saw big names popping off the back - Kévin Vauquelin, Antonio Tiberi, Julian Alaphillippe, Cian Uijtdebroeks all suffering at the hands of one determined American.

There was a Colombian flag catastrophe for Quentin Pacher (Groupama-FDJ United), who was forced to dismount and disentangle the flag from his spokes. The trials of Arnaud De Lie continued, the Belgian rider under the weather once again and suffering at the back of the bunch. He would later be spotted keeping the broom wagon company, though he did make it over the line in time at the end of the day.

It was a typical UAE tactic at the front; keeping the pace high to thin the group and prevent attacks, yet the damage was still all being done by one man: Brandon McNulty doing a monster turn, taking the ever-diminishing bunch into lap 2 and with the tension off the charts, still no-one dared to attack. Seixas rejoined the group, and bunch of total idiots clouded the road with smoke flares.

Meanwhile, other UAE riders popped up and disappeared again, Remco did all his own riding, because he has massive all consuming FOMO, and amazing riders were shelled from the group at pace – Mathieu van der Poel, Romain Grégoire – riders who’d you’d ordinarily rate at this sort of finish. All gone.

Tiesj Benoot’s attack may have given us hope for a different outcome if it hadn’t later turned out to be a mistimed one: Seixas talking into the radio was misconstrued (by me) as him chomping at the bit to attack; it later transpired he wasn’t ready yet following his efforts to make it back to the group. So Benoot’s expenditure was in vain, and it ramped up the post-race questions marks surrounding Decathlon’s communication, after a difficult day for the 19-year-old debutant.

The first to really break the entente cordiale was Uno-X Mobility’s Tobias Johannessen, followed by Richard Carapaz – both of them were quickly regathered, and Matthias Skjelmose tried his luck, and actually found a gap off the front for a brief moment. Del Toro chased him down and then the final selection roared towards the summit of Montjuïc one final time. It was the young Mexican who led the charge, and in his wheel, the world champion. Pogačar was watchful, checking over his shoulder several times for the whereabouts of Vingegaard and Evenepoel, who weren’t far behind. Once he was satisfied with their gap, however, with the finish line in sight, his motive became clear. He hung back as they crossed the line, delivering the most precious of gifts. Del Toro took an individual stage victory at the first time of asking, on debut. It was magnanimous, from the Slovenian, but also smart. Del Toro is one of the in-form riders on the planet and though he clearly idolises his leader, there’s no harm in Pogačar investing in his loyalty early on. It lifts the team as a whole and strikes an ominous blow to the morale of UAE’s rivals, and indeed the rest of the peloton.

For a rider so hellbent on winning, it felt almost out of character. And yet it was the ultimate compliment to his young protegé, who had been riding with the aim of leading out the world champion, not realising he would be allowed to continue on to take glory for himself. A mark of respect, and acknowledgement of his prodigious talent. It was a classy move, despite how galling it must have been for the rest to witness. And it paid off, almost immediately…

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Stage 3 – Here we go again. Again.

I took notes dutifully today, even though Mondays are my busiest day. I spoke on Track Radio about the weekend stages while the breakaway antics were already underway, and didn’t catch back up until I was cooking a family dinner, having been out all day. Finally I’m sitting down at my desk, ready to put a full stop at the end of the ‘Grand Départ’ section of the race and ping out my first official 2026 Tour de France newsletter. The race passed onto French soil for the first time today and the race is still young. Yet writing about the day’s stage, I feel about a hundred years old.

There’s been much made of the unorthodox structure to this year’s race route. As if in some way, by shuffling the deck of types of stage, ASO thought they could somehow make an impact upon the all-consuming juggernaut that is UAE Team Emirates. However you roll the dice – with the possible exception of making the Tour into 21 sprint stages – there’s one inevitable outcome. This year, he wears rainbow stripes and has a dyed blonde buzzcut. He can give out stage wins one day, and take his own the next. When everyone said the route was backloaded, and the GC might end up as a cliffhanger, he sent them into battle anyway, even on a stage many had pegged as a breakaway, because really, the likes of Pogacar and Vingegaard don’t really want to be bothering themselves with yellow jerseys just yet. Who are we kidding? As if Pogacar was expected to sit back and wait for his turn.

Three stages in, two wins for UAE, one for Visma, three yellow jerseys, split between the two riders who have dominated the race for the past five years. Despite the backloading, and the intrigue constructed around the route setting, we have landed slap bang at the end of the race, and it’s barely even begun.

It’s too early for me to be losing hope, and I promised to bring you the joy of side quests – but with UAE stifling everything on the first two road stages, I’m already at something of a loss. Anyway. On with the day’s action.

The sufferfest

Watching the breakaway formation is always a joy in and of itself, and we had a prime example today, with 60 kilometres of battles before Visma finally decided they were content to let the group go. Ironically, the team that were leading the race taking so long to let anything form played directly into UAE’s hands. They had little to do with the policing, but reaped the rewards later in the day.

With wildfires in the area causing the race organisers to close off the final section of the course to fans, climate change’s impact on Europe was clear to see among the peloton too, as the searing heat continued to pick off riders throughout the day, with the worst affected still poor Arnaud de Lie. Baptiste Veistroffer – my pick for one of the riders to watch in breakaways – was tasked with staying with the beleaguered sprinter and they soon achieved the dubious honour of their own separate group timer in the on-screen data. The time from the leaders slipped further and further back throughout the day and despite his admirable efforts, De Lie was eventually forced to abandon the race. A terrible shame after everything he went through to get to this point; and before a sprint opportunity had even arisen.

There were also worrying signs for Cian Uijtdebroeks, who was seen battling to stay with the main group, and Matthew Riccitello and Romain Grégoire were both seen struggling at points through the day - the heat and illness will undoubtedly take their toll as this race progresses. A nasty crash through a town slowed almost the entire bunch; three Netcompany-INEOS were involved but it was Visma’s Bruno Armirail who came off worst, his knee clearly causing him significant pain as he struggled to continue.

After a turbulent opening, the attacks began afresh, with MVDP popping his head up for a go, and Richard Carapaz a pink whack-a-mole, relentlessly trying to make it clear - a situation that Visma were clearly unhappy about.

After about 60km a move of around 20 riders finally started to gain traction. They were given the nod and built up a lead of about two minutes but were being reeled back in before long. The problem with these long protracted breakaways from a neutral perspective is that it leaves less work to do for the big teams – by the time it was finally established, UAE saw the opportunity to pick off another win and set to work. Raul Garcia Pierna was the first to strike out from the breakaway as behind the rest struggled with cohesion, presumably wondering what was the point of it all really.

A group of six came together on the most significant climb of the day, a more cohesive group with six different teams represented. Alex Baudin took the maximum points at the KOM; the French rider stood to gain from the day if they breakaway were to remain away – at just 1:07 he was the closest rider to the lead of Jonas Vingegaard and the word on the street was the bees would be happy to hand over the jersey for a while – but UAE had other plans.

With the peloton bearing down Baudin struck out with 33km to go, and Decathlon’s Nicolas Prodhomme was able to ride with him for a while, before calling off the effort in favour of loading up on bottles to wait for the incoming Paul Seixas. Baudin was free to claim the penultimate set of KOM points, and ensure we would have another rider wearing the polka dot jersey as its outright owner. And a Frenchman to boot. Small victories.

Heading into the final climb, as the metres ticked down and the group reduced, the result looked inevitable. Yesterday the recipient of a bountiful gift from his leader, a green-clad Del Toro was more than happy to repay the favour, and Pogacar punched away from the rest and took the spoils, his 22^nd stage victory at the Tour. Equal on time with Jonas Vingegaard, he gains control of yellow by dint of finishing positions.

This era will pass; superpowers in sport come and go. I’ve reasoned in the past about my personal lack of connection to this kind of dominance, and don’t feel the need to defend my corner anymore – I’m feel flat about this Tour so far, but there are still 18 stages to go so I won’t give up hope that some of my side quests might yet come to fruition, or that more might appear unexpectedly. Until they do, I’ll just keep taking terrible screenshots of my laptop, featuring cycling fans dressed as bananas. What else is there?

Oh wait – there’s the world’s most unlikely duo – Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Offspring, hanging out with Paul Seixas. If that’s not the ultimate side quest, then I don’t know what is.

See you next time.

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Greetings fair cycling fans, and welcome to TOUR DE FRANCE WEEK! Yes the event of the year – according to popular opinion at least – is upon us, with just three days to go until stage 1 gets underway in Barcelona with the return of the team time trial to Tour proceedings.

Before we proceed a quick update - I’ve reduced memberships - if you’ve been thinking about upgrading your subscription to one of the paid tiers, now is the time! You’ll receive plenty of content during the Tour and other perks too, check out the tiers and grab a cheap subscription - prices will stay low until the end of the Tour de France Femmes.

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Before we begin my run-down of side quests, let’s acknowledge the tufted elephant in the room. While recent editions of Le Tour have been defined by the battle between Visma-Lease a Bike’s Jonas Vingegaard and his long-time rival Tadej Pogačar, the gap between the pair has been growing gradually for the past couple of years. This year Vingegaard is 1-0 over Pogi in terms of Grand Tour victories, having walked the Giro d’Italia in May, but don’t be fooled: Pogačar has assured anyone who might have been expecting an even contest this year that we’re deceiving ourselves. Last year Pogačar got the better of his Danish rival by almost four and a half minutes, and if the man himself is to be believed – and frankly, he doesn’t have a major cause to lie about such things – he’s in the best shape of his life. He recently won the Tour de Suisse by an unholy six and a half minutes; the race was only five stages long, for goodness sake! He has an elite squad at his back (well, front) and with yet another young buck threatening his dominance, he’s going to be keener than ever to impose himself on the race at the earliest possible opportunity.

I’m not a doomsayer by any means, but I’ve already made my peace with the fact that barring catastrophe, the GC is over before it’s begun. Even WITH catastrophe, Pogačar often still comes through and triumphs. So with that almost certainty stated up front – what’s the point of watching then? You’d not watch a football match if you knew who was going to win in advance, would you? Or pretty much any other sporting contest, for that matter, that relied on an element of unpredictability for fans to derive entertainment (as opposed to say, an artistic sport such as gymnastics – I’m never not watching Simone Biles crush a p-bars routine so don’t even try and stop me).

That’s where cycling thrives though: in the subtext. The marginalia. The subplots, the side characters, the incidental notes that chime in every now and again to remind you – this isn’t actually what I expected would happen. So – to whom, and what, do we look, this summer, to seek the B-plots we deserve? In short – where are all the side quests coming from? Let’s find out!

The MVDP show

It’s a strange old sport, cycling. A champion, nay, legend of sport in one arena can become irrelevant in another. OK maybe irrelevant is taking it a bit far – but I think it’s fair to say that while Dutch multi-discipline giant Mathieu van der Poel is almost unrivalled in one-day Monuments that don’t involve climbing, he isn’t the first name on your list when discussing potential yellow jersey contenders. It’s just, not the same sport – and that’s one of cycling’s many fun nuances.

When it comes to the Tour, MVDP has had his moments. He may only have two stage victories to his name, but when he arrives on the roads of France in July in the right form and frame of mind, you can be sure he will bring the race to life. From facing off against Pogačar in punchy finishes, to riding doomed breakaways efforts, to winning in iconic fashion – even if he’s only done it twice. Van der Poel surprised everyone when he almost won a time trial – only losing to Pogačar of all people, by less than a second – at the Tour de Suisse a couple of weeks ago, and in doing so he made his position very clear: he is coming to make waves and his first order of business will be to try and take yellow in the early stages of the race. I wouldn’t rule it out, but even if he doesn’t manage the feat, we are guaranteed a show, watching him try.

The only sad part about the former World Champ’s appearance at this year’s race is that he won’t have his old sparring partner, Wout van Aert, to go on daring but ultimately pointless breakaway raids with. And that’s a damn shame.

Decathlon Dynamics

The news finally dropped earlier this week that despite the immense hype surrounding Paul Seixas’ debut at the Tour, he would be sharing the limelight with sprinter Olav Kooij, who has arrived back in form just in time to make his first appearance at the race.

Lest we forget, this was mooted as the team’s original plan: Kooij would take the reins this year, in terms of leadership, with the green jersey the team’s primary goal, and if Seixas was to go along, it would be for the experience, the learning, and with zero pressure on his shoulders.

Things have changed a bit since then. Kooij suffered from an illness that kept him out of racing for a number of months, while Seixas’ meteoric rise continued through spring with victories in Portugal and the Basque Country. The focus shifted not to ‘if’ he would ride the Tour, but how well he could potentially do up against the titans of the sport, even at the tender age of just 19.

The scales may have tipped toward Seixas in terms of the team’s focus and the amount of support they will have to work with – Kooij brings just one lead-out man, Cees Bol, while Seixas has a full mountain support team behind him – but the split focus should still ease some of the pressure on Seixas’ shoulders, giving the team a secondary goal, and appeasing the Dutch sprinter in the process – riding the Tour de France was one of the main reasons for his departure from Visma-Lease a Bike. The two young stars will perhaps be able to support one another in their debut year; Matthew Riccitello also rides the race for the first time, as does Daan Hoole – perhaps surprisingly – so it’s a fresh and hungry group that will draw the eye on the roads of Spain and France this month. Can they balance the two different goals or will they become divided over the course of the race? It’s down to shrewd management and careful negotiation - but it should be highly entertaining if they can pull it off.

Can the pure climbers carve out a moment in the spotlight?

Things the Giro d’Italia does that the Tour de France doesn’t: lose the live broadcast because of the weather more often than we’d like; feature two-up Italian conti team breakaways for most of the first week; and often conclude with four different riders winning the four special jerseys.

It’s the latter I’m focusing on here. It bugs the living crap out of me that the KOM battle is so fiercely fought at the Tour, especially in the early stages, only for it to be gobbled up incidentally by the GC winner at the end of the race, like a crazed hungry hippo. While the Giro’s points allocation, route design and generally more open vibe allows for the maglia azzurra to actually be contested in a very real way, the maillot à pois at the Tour is rarely afforded the same privilege. It shouldn’t be a consolation prize or incidental reward. It’s the most beautiful leader’s jersey in cycling – I will die on this hill – and it deserves to BELONG TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO FIGHT FOR IT.

With that being said, there’s no doubt that the honour of simply wearing the jersey will be enough to inspire fierce battles for breakaways and in the mountains. But with this year’s route design, leaning more towards a Giro-style back-loading of serious altitude metres, will there be any chance to see some of the pure climbers enjoy the opportunity to hunt stages, or will the GC battle, and Pogačar’s insatiable desire for victory, mean that only scraps are left for them?

Look out for the likes of Lenny Martinez and Richard Carapaz vying for the points and the big mountain stages – Thymen Arensman and Ben O’Connor both proved in 2025 that it’s still possible to snatch a precious stage win from the GC favourites on occasion. As for the jersey, its final destination is inevitable - I look forward to seeing others wear it with pride along the way, however.

Grand Départ shenanigans

Remember last year? That mad battle for the first and only KOM point of the day that resulted in the breakaway duo of two Frenchmen actually riding into each other on the cobbled climb heading back towards Lille and crashing. Madness. Or the year before in Italy, when the organisers threw the hardest ever (well probably) opening stage at the riders, and Mark Cavendish got heatstroke and GC riders were already struggling but Romain Bardet won and made everything better? Madness I tell you.

The battle for the first yellow jersey is always hectic and stressful, but this year’s will at least remove the opening stage pressure cooker vibe from the mix, with the return of the team time trial. It gives us some breathing space to ease into the Tour, and the riders a chance to ride off their nerves, not that it’s going to be an easy test for them.

In contention: Team Jayco-AlUla always pull together a good TTT; UAE and Visma will hope to push each other close; Decathlon will hope to limit their losses with few TT specialists among their ranks (good luck Daan Hoole), and Lidl-Trek could put something solid together with their unit, which includes strong time trialists Derek Gee-West, Juan Ayuso, and Mathias Vacek - Mads Pedersen isn’t too shabby against the clock either.

The favourites by a fair distance must surely be Netcompany INEOS however. With time trialling units Filippo Ganna and Josh Tarling among their ranks, alongside former World Champion in the discipline Tobias Foss, and Thymen Arensman and K Kévin Vauquelin – both of whom are pretty handy against the clock – they are going to be a force to be reckoned with. How good would it be to see Ganna in yellow? Especially after his heartbreaking stage 1 withdrawal last year.

After that, the battle will begin again on stage 2, with a rolling profile backloaded with climbs that would be perfect for a breakaway if it were placed in the middle or third week, but on stage 2 will surely tempt out the puncheurs and even GC favourites – remember last year’s stage 2, with MVDP, Pogi, Remco, Vauquelin and more all fighting at the finish? Think that. But with added Pidcock, Del Toro, Seixas, and who knows who else – it should be an absolute barnstormer, and the yellow jersey could potentially change hands again.

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Firsts and lasts

There’s plenty of intrigue surrounding the range of riders taking on the Tour this year, too. While the Vuelta is famous for giving young riders a shot, there are plenty of young riders taking on their first Tour this year – not just the ones from Decathlon. Paul Seixas becomes the youngest debutant since 1937, but Josh Tarling has today been confirmed as making his first appearance at the race; so too Cian Uijtdebroeks, Mathias Vacek, and Georg Steinhauser – look out for these riders, among others, trying to make a name for themselves on the biggest stage of all.

At the other end of the age spectrum, XDS-Astana’s Aaron Gate becomes the oldest Tour debutant since Rory Sutherland in 2018, at 35. You have to look back another decade to 2008 to find the last time the race’s oldest rider was younger than this year’s oldest, Damiano Caruso (38). The veteran Italian rides his final Tour de France in his retirement year still looking to round out his Grand Tour hat-trick. A stage win may seem a tall order for the Bahrain-Victorious rider, but you just never know. Experience and tactical acumen play a greater part in winning Tour de France stages than perhaps at any other race. The two other riders on the startlist who are riding their final Tour, having announced they will retire at the end of 2026 – Ion Izagirre and Magnus Cort – are both already members of the elite club to have won a stage at all three Grand Tours. Other riders capable of completing that hat-trick this July are Juan Ayuso, Brandon McNulty, Pascal Ackermann, Filippo Ganna and Egan Bernal.

Dark horses

We know all the big names to look out for – but who else might make waves at this year’s race? Here are a list of my dark horses for this year’s Tour – expect to see these guys in breakaways, battling for early KOM points, maybe even stage wins on breakaway days, and generally agitating and trying to upset the plans of the top teams.

Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché) – absolute breakaway menace, no fear, doesn’t know when to give up – I back him to wear polka dots at some early stage of the race.

Clément Braz Afonso (Groupama-FDJ United) – if the team focuses purely on stage wins, keep an eye on Braz Afonso. A very handy climber, he’s got a great engine and if he isn’t shackled to Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet, could do something good.

Marco Frigo (NSN Pro Cycling Team) – a seasoned breakaway botherer, perennially up and challenging for stage wins.

Sebastian Berwick (Caja Rural) – has the potential to spring a surprise from the break for the returning Spanish pro team.

Joris Delbove (TotalEnergies); Joel Nicolau (Caja Rural) – no connection here really other than that both of these riders made the final selections at their respective national championships last weekend in the face of intense competition – very, very dark horses here, but don’t count them out.

Thanks as always for reading - if you’d like to stay up to date with these stories and others that may develop over the course of the next three weeks, consider subscribing.

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Hey there readers. I feel an apology is due. Every time I start a post, I feel that way. My consistency is frankly not what I’d like it to be. I could give you a list of excuses as long as the average sized human arm, because 2026 has been a bit of a shit show by comparison with your standard annum, but you don’t want to read my excuses. You signed up to read my thoughts on the world of pro cycling, and as such, I feel it’s high time I expressed some of those in the form of a Substack post. Here goes then…

Things about cycling I’ve been thinking about lately…

I’m not calling it a preview. I don’t have the time or mental capacity to put together any such thing at the level of detail required to do a decent job, and plenty of reputable sources out there are doing just that. This was going to be a post with a few random thoughts but it turns out that when you’re writing about cycling at the end of June, all thoughts lead to the Tour, no matter how random. As such, this post is divided into three: a reflection on one of the major stories at this year’s men’s race, a consideration of the contenders ahead of the women’s, and an overall contemplation of the broadcast coverage, specifically in the UK. Let’s start with France’s nascent hope…

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Seixas’ turbulent Dauphiné dress rehearsal offers more insight than a win would have

The Seixas experiment continues at pace, and with the Tour de France just over a week away now, many fans invested in the story of his meteoric rise may be unsettled by his withdrawal from the Tour Auvergne-Rhone Alpes two weekends ago following a crash that left him unable to complete the race (yes I know I called it the Dauphiné in the title, because that’s what it is, the end).

The week was billed as a dress rehearsal for Seixas, ahead of what will undoubtedly be the most mind-blowing experience of his brief 19 years, as the chaotic circus of La Grande Boucle detonates on him in July. Though he DNF’ed the race, the dress rehearsal served its purpose, in a number of more subtle ways: a greater press presence than the earlier season races he’d attended; a chance to race a team time trial, in preparation for stage 1 in Barcelona; and the opportunity for the young Frenchman to practice a prudence in his racing style that we’ve previously not seen. Following in the footsteps of the exuberant, attacking style of his primary rival Tadej Pogačar, the Lyon native’s youthful energy and raw talent has seen Seixas easily find his way off the front of races, dropping rivals at will, but in preparation to ride his first three-week Grand Tour, it was an exercise in restraint that was required in the Alps.

Three weeks of racing takes its toll and a Grand Tour is a brand new reality for Seixas to grapple with: reigning himself in will be vital, and he managed it well. He stayed close to his rivals and used his teammates effectively, keeping his prodigious talent under wraps. He wasn’t able to make the difference over his primary rival Isaac Del Toro the one time the two went head-to-head on stage 6, but it’s probably not worth reading too much into this. There was a sense of the pair waiting for the final huge double-header in the mountains to fully open the taps.

That never happened, unfortunately. The next day, disaster struck. Seixas crashed early in the stage on a descent, in a moment he described as ‘idiocy’, and spent the rest of the day fighting back to the front of the race, using his team incredibly well, then completing the final climb alone in a truly gutsy effort, one which saw him collapse into his father’s arms in exhaustion at the finish line, blood leaking from both elbows. He withdrew from the race the following morning. His injuries, though superficial, were too severe to be worth pushing himself through a difficult final stage.

His wounds will heal, and though he was hyped as the pre-race favourite, his withdrawal from the race should not be seen as a missed opportunity. The lessons learned under the strain of adversity will be far more valuable to Seixas than a week spent coasting at the front of a lesser race. The rollercoaster of a Grand Tour is an experience which cannot be replicated, but the various events of the race formerly known as the Dauphiné will go a long way to filling in some of the gaps in the French hopeful’s racing resumé.

As for Del Toro’s dominance, ahead of his debut at the Tour, it confirms - in case we weren’t already sure - that the UAE Team Emirates line-up will be an ominous prospect. With Pogačar in the best form of his life (in his words), winning by a ridiculous 6:32 margin at the Tour de Suisse last week, it’s not outlandish to state that the yellow jersey is already his, barring incident or accident. Beyond that remains a very real possibility that the team could also challenge for second place. Jonas Vingegaard has proven he’s ready, following his emphatic Giro victory, and will as usual be the favourite for runner-up. The Red Bull pairing of Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz is a bit of an unknown quantity, with Remco opting out of build-up races, and Paul Seixas is riding in his first Grand Tour with an immense amount of pressure of his shoulders. Despite the range of potential second-place finishers, Del Toro looks as good a bet as any one of them, to do a one-two for UAE.

Will this Tour be one for the ages? Personally, I don’t think so. It feels more like a step on the path to something more nuanced in the future; so long as Pogačar is in his pomp, we’re only going to see one outcome. It’s the Tour, of course – there will be many a side quest, fun moment and surprise stage winner to keep us interested throughout the three weeks – stay with me for more on my plans to bring the action to you.

Dynamics in women’s peloton continue to fascinate ahead of Tour

There’s an impending sense of doom lurking at the periphery of the women’s cycling fandom this year. Formerly the dominant force in the bunch, Team SD Worx-ProTime’s dominion has been reduced down to one dimension this year – Lorena Wiebes’ imperious and unrivalled sprinting prowess – and yet the rise of FDJ United in their stead could perhaps be viewed as troubling to fans who were looking forward to a broader spectrum of winners after the great 2025 transfer reshuffle.

Demi Vollering has followed up a turbulent couple of seasons with a rock solid first half of 2026, and with victories in cobbled Monuments, Ardennes classics, stage races and Grand Tours, she is well on her way to recording her most successful season yet, and looks almost unbeatable in days featuring serious climbing.

This record will be somewhat marred if she is outperformed on the roads of France in August, however. While Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney has had a quieter year she can never be ruled out of peaking for the biggest race of the year. Marlen Reusser is on the rise, having recently shown her resilience to win the Tour de Suisse. Anna van der Breggen has proven she is returning to her former strength, and rising star Paula Blasi is already a force to be reckoned with in her first full season as a pro. Elisa Longo Borghini is still dangerous on her day, and the likes of Niamh Fisher-Black, Sarah Gigante, Cédrine Kerbaol, Kim Le Court, and more lurk on the periphery, capable of springing surprises and upsetting big names if circumstances go their way

The greatest challenger however, for Vollering and the rest, will be the reigning champion. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s single-minded focus on winning the Tour should scare every rider in the bunch. She may not have had the spring success that she enjoyed last year in her first season back, but she still managed to record podium finishes at Flanders and Roubaix, and while she was anonymous at the Vuelta, the lack of race days on her 2026 record thus far simply means she’s been out of sight, preparing towards her biggest goal of the year. Seeing the different routes taken as the women head towards the biggest race of the year is fascinating, but speaking at Rouleur Live last year the Frenchwoman was unequivocal in her commitment to winning her home Grand Tour, and if her preparations last year were meticulous, this year she threatens to be on another level again.

Whatever happens, the women’s race promises to be far more intriguing in GC terms than the men’s – but when it comes to the Tour, there’s nothing new there.

Free-to-air ‘solution’ for UK viewers is a diluted substitute

Following the loss of the ITV coverage of the Tour de France, this week TNT announced a partnership with Channel 5 to bring Grand Tour highlights free to air for UK viewers, along with plus full coverage of the 2027 Grand Départs in the UK.

It’s good news of course. Some coverage is better than no coverage. But it’s still pretty frustrating in other respects. The way the news has been reported in some UK cycling media makes it sound like the problem is solved. Highlights are good, but it’s nothing like the level of coverage that we have enjoyed free-to-air up until this year. This diluted offering will appease casual fans, but it leaves the more committed cycling fans stranded and disconnected. We are perhaps a small minority. A dying breed, perhaps, if nothing more can be done. Across Europe, fans can watch every minute of the men’s Tour de France (not all of the women’s, granted, which is a separate issue). It’s a crying shame that British cycling fans won’t be able to watch stages in their full glory, as much of the excitement of a Grand Tour stage takes place from flag drop – personally I adore a good breakaway formation, and on those days where a breakaway fights for the win, it’s often front-loaded in terms of action. So much nuance is lost to partial highlights, and though the ITV crew were top notch at creating the narrative of each day’s action in their package, I’ve not found the same to be true from the Eurosport (latterly TNT) offering, which tends to show just the final section of the stage, often missing much of the all-important context.

I proposed a project to try and bring audio coverage to a British audience – a kind of audio-based watch-a-long type scenario – a ‘Test Match Special’ for cycling, for those familiar with the excellent BBC cricket show. Unfortunately it’s too late to pull together anything meaningful now, and in addition, the audience for it is no longer as broad, given the latest news - some fans really will be happy enough with just an hour of highlights a day, and therefore garnering the funding needed to make it a worthwhile venture will be next to impossible.

Maybe this year I will just be enjoying the race as a fan, after all. I’m planning on upping my game on this Substack though – a daily post, perhaps one every other day depending on how it goes – and I hope viewers unable to watch stages in full will find the kinds of details within these newsletters that they would miss in a highlights package, alongside broader analysis and opinion on the action.

If you’d like to support me in this endeavour, you can buy me a coffee, or upgrade your subscription to a paid tier, helping me to justify my unemployment during the biggest event on the calendar. It would be greatly appreciated - just click the button below - I’m reducing prices for the duration of the Tour de France as a special offer.

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I’m back, a little later than planned, with a second instalment of action from the Giro d’Italia. I had hoped to cover three stages per newsletter, but the tough thing about being an unemployed freelancer during a Grand Tour is that life goes on, and you have to focus on priorities outside of cycling (I know, such a notion is preposterous). So the weekend stages were watched in snatches, with insights gained here and there, haphazardly, as I tried to piece together a fractured jigsaw puzzle. Luckily, as I’m focused on through-lines rather than diving into the blow-by-blow detail of each stage, I think it’s probably fine. Except for stage 8 which was absolutely bonkers and I’ve kind of skipped talking about it - you’ll have to forgive me. It’s been a week.

Here are the stories from stages 4-9 – the race’s first week in its homeland of Italy.

The gloves are off

It was clear that UAE Team Emirates weren’t going to take their misfortune lying down, and they bounced back from their crash-induced woes in the most emphatic way possible, claiming two consecutive stage wins on stage 4 through Jhonatan Narvaez, and stage 5 courtesy of Igor Arrieta. The latter in particular was poignant – the first WorldTour level win for the 23-year-old Spanish talent, in his first ever Grand Tour – a very special moment for the rider who comes from some serious cycling pedigree.

The team added a third stage win courtesy of the in-form Narvaez on stage 8, after a completely mad day of non-stop attacking. They are on a serious rampage, not cowed by their losses but instead drawing together a little like the 2021 Visma team at the Tour de France – with no GC ambitions remaining, and a glut of strong riders left behind, the sky is limit for what they can achieve.

Alongside their stage wins, the team enjoyed a few days leading the white jersey competition courtesy of Jan Christen, who himself has been visible here and there, attempting one of his long-range attacks from a kilometre out on stage 4 – he was ultimately unsuccessful, though he proved a foil for Narvaez and the team ended up coming away with glory anyway. It’s certainly not the end for UAE, who prove that despite their bad luck, their superior levels of funding mean they have a wealth of talent and can still win at will.

No dominant force in the bunch

One of the most intriguing things about the opening to this Giro d’Italia has been the rising to the fore of a range of different teams and riders, many of whom didn’t get a mention in any of the race previews. It’s a different story to the Tour de France, where the ominous presence of UAE pulling the strings on almost every stage has become insidious to the point of exhaustion, and ensuring that the race’s stars must be present and correct at the front of the race throughout.

At the Giro, by contrast, though Jonas Vingegaard is the overwhelming favourite, Visma-Lease A Bike were reticent to take the reins until the first mountain test on stage 7, heading up to Blockhaus. Of course, this is perfectly normal – there have been three ‘sprint’ stages, and a couple of in-between ones, and they don’t have the maglia rosa yet – it’s absolutely right and fair that the killer bees didn’t feel the need to exert their authority through the race’s early stages – they will have plenty to do in weeks 2 and 3. At the Tour, any stage that isn’t a bunch sprint is a stage that Tadej Pogačar’s deems himself worthy of having a crack at, and as such, the other main GC teams must necessarily be omnipresent at the front of the race, somewhat stifling opportunities for the race to take a different shape.

Visma did indeed shift into leadership mode as the race hit Blockhaus, and the expected Vingegaard victory transpired on the first mountain stage of the race – however, it’s been nice to have the sense that not everything about this race is predestined. On stage 4, a stage that many – somewhat bizarrely – tipped to be one for the hardier of the sprinters, it was Movistar’s blistering pace-setting on the long climb ensured that it would be nothing of the sort. Tobias Lund’s pre-race confidence (‘I see myself as a favourite’) suddenly looked misplaced. The race was exploded by the Spanish team on behalf of Orluis Aular, and even Astana’s pink jersey wearer Guillermo Thomas Silva was dropped, ensuring we would have a new maglia rosa at the end of the day. The shape of the GC was changed completely, and there was a scare for Egan Bernal as he was dropped from the group, and needed to be paced back on by his teammate Ben Turner, who sacrificed his own chances to do his duty for his teammate.

On stage 5, it was Bahrain-Victorious who took centre stage, as Afonso Eulalio battled with Igor Arrieta for the stage win in one of the most chaotic final sections of a stage I can remember (more on that later). Eulalio may not have taken the win, but he did propel himself up the GC standings, taking control of the leader’s jersey – the team’s first time ever in the maglia rosa, a milestone which rather poignantly occurred five years to the day since the late Gino Mäder won his first stage at the Giro.

Of course, the Unibet Rose Rockets have already taken centre stage, contending in the bunch sprints with Dylan Groenewegen – which will be the next unexpected team to make an impact?

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Italian icons deliver domestic delight

French pride is in evidence at the Tour de France, make no mistake. Yet there’s something so ubiquitous about the biggest race on the cycling calendar that takes the edge off of the nationalistic side of the Tour (perhaps with the exception of Bastille Day). It’s a race that belongs to everyone.

The Giro, on the other hand, still holds a sense of romance that belongs to its Italian riders in a way that’s unique in the sport, to my mind. The beauty of an Italian rider in pink and the fervour with which the home riders race in the domestic Grand Tour is something beautiful.

This year’s edition features the lowest number of Italian participants ever, at 41, yet those present are carrying their flag proudly. With Jonathan Milan’s expected dominance not yet materialising, there have been just two significant moments for the home crowd to celebrate thus far, but they’ve both been very special in their own way.

After his third place on stage 4, Giulio Ciccone took the lead in the overall classification, and took control of the maglia rosa in the process – his first ever pink jersey, and a moment of high emotion for the passionate Italian climber. Sadly, his stint in the jersey lasted just one day, and wasn’t the kind of celebration he might have hoped for – pouring with rain all day, stage 5 was a total wash-out, and the glory of the jersey was concealed almost all day beneath a rain jacket. Cicco was unable to hold on, with his teammate Derek Gee riding up to tell him (in presumably a very apologetic, Canadian way) that he couldn’t or wouldn’t work for him, in order to protect his own GC hopes. Ciccone has been active in the breakaway since, but to no avail. Expect to see plenty more of him at this race.

The second moment of joy for the tifosi came on stage 6, as the expected bunch sprint into Napoli failed to transpire due to the ridiculous course design (more on that in a bit). Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the two best-placed riders to deal with ensuing chaos on the cobbles were two Classics specialists, Jasper Stuyven and Davide Ballerini. The latter held fast to his lead to win the stage, the second for his XDS Astana team, and the first of his ten year career. Another moment of pure emotion – there are likely to be plenty more, despite the fact that the host nation’s GC hopes in Giulio Pellizzari are fading - the first could well come at the end of today’s time trial, which Filippo Ganna currently leads.

More chaotic curveballs thanks to rain and cobbles

Ah, Spring in Italy. It’s about as reliable, weather-wise as… well, Spring in Britain, to be honest. There’s always some rain at the Giro, and this year has been no different so far. As mentioned above, stage 5 was a wash-out, weather-wise, although it didn’t stop it from producing one of the most incredible finals I can remember.

The early stages of the day were a parade of people trying to put on rain jackets and take them off again, and everyone looked cold and miserable. Fast forward to the final 15 kilometres or so, which featured a two-up duel for the stage win between Bahrain Victorious’ Afonso Eulalio, and UAE Team Emirates’ Igor Arrieta, and things heated up significantly. If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember who wins this one, but if you haven’t managed to see it yet do go back and see if you can find some highlights somewhere.

First Arrieta crashes with just over 13km to go, leaving Eulalio home and dry – you would think. Arrieta remounts his bike and the chase begins. Then, with 6.5km left, Eulalio crashes; he too is quickly back up and riding, but Arrieta’s gap to him begins to fall, and few hundred metres later they are back together, and it looks as though the race is back on. That is, until Arrieta takes a wrong turn with just over 2kms to go, riding into police tape and having to change course, and he drops behind again, and then he’s fighting his way back with the stage win looking completely out of sight, and almost wipes out, his back wheel sliding on the white road markings, as he races to try and put himself back in the running.

Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. Rolling a huge gear, Arrieta claws his way back to Eulalio who’s just trying to hold on with the line looming ahead of them, and Arrieta catches and passes him, and it’s over – no stage win for the valiant Portuguese, but the race lead is a pretty sweet consolation. He later said it was like ‘two dead men’ fighting for the win, and the two of them must be part cat, the amount of lives they burned through in that crazy finish. Truly spectacular stuff.

The next day, the race organisation once again came under scrutiny, as the sprint finish into Napoli was, stupidly, planned to take place on cobbles. On a twisty, turny final kilometre and to make matters worse, it was damp. What could possibly go wrong? (Insert rolling eyes emoji here).

No, it seems that as a collective, cycling really will never learn. Heading into the final right bend at high speed, the Unibet pair of Dylan Groenewegen and his lead-out rider Elmar Reinders were the first to wipe out, with plenty more skittling down after them, including Jonathan Milan. Paul Magnier nimbly picked his way through the chaos, but it’s unsurprising that the two riders who stayed upright to battle for the win were both Classics riders.

The next day on Blockhaus it was the wind that caused headaches, though it didn’t create too many dramas – by comparison with the rest of the race, at least. No doubt there will be plenty more chaos to come, at this most unpredictable of Grand Tours - no doubt we’ll have stages shortened due to snow in the Dolomites in week 3, watch this space for developments on that front.

GC battle teeters on the verge of interesting

When I first started writing this section, it was stage 6, and I was urging caution. Afonso Eulalio had over six minutes on the GC favourites, and in the past we’ve seen teams take risks by allowing these large gaps to open up – Ben O’Connor at the 2024 Vuelta a Espana springs to mind, Primoz Roglič only able to surpass the Australian in the final couple of stages of the race after a similar kind of breakaway situation left him guarding the red jersey for almost all of the race.

A few days and two mountain stages on, and things are looking pretty safe for Visma and Vingegaard. With the long time trial currently underway, the Dane could close the gap considerably, perhaps even take the jersey today. Eulalio is still young, and untested at a Grand Tour – he DNF’ed his only other GT, last year’s Giro, and he certainly doesn’t represent the fiercest threat to Vingegaard completing his Grand Tour trilogy, but it’s not out of the question to see him finishing in the top 5, maybe even on the podium, depending on how he handles the rigours of the final week. Chapeau to him - expect to see big things from him in future.

As for pre-race favourites, Giulio Pellizzari is off the pace due to a virus, leaving his teammate Jai Hindley to fly the flag for Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, and he is looking strong. Ben O’Connor has had good days and bad, as has Egan Bernal, and both he and his INEOS teammate Thymen Arensman seem to be riding their way into form.

The primary challenger, perhaps unexpectedly, is Decathlon CMA CGM’s Felix Gall. He was able to limit his losses to Vingegaard on Blockhaus to just 15 seconds, and with a similar deficit on the stage 9 mountain top finish, the Austrian looks the clear second best at the race, with his team taking ownership of their new identity as a GC team – as they must, with Paul Seixas rising through the ranks, and changing the shape of their approach at bigger races from plucky underdog to serious contender.

Is it over yet? No, not by a long chalk. Lots can happen at a Grand Tour, and though Vingegaard remains the firm favourite, it’s certainly not a done deal just yet. Today’s time trial will give us a clearer picture of where we’re at heading into the second half of the race, when the GC race will begin in earnest. Let’s go!

I’ll endeavour to stay up to date with the race as it progresses, and in the meantime, if you’d like to keep up with my posts, please do subscribe - if you already receive my newsletters, consider upgrading your subscription to paid to support my writing - it’s hugely appreciated and I am incredibly grateful to everyone who supports independent journalism. Until next time, ciao a tutti!

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I’m back with a new feature for the Giro d’Italia, looking back at each batch of stages and drawing out the main talking points. There won’t be blow-by-blow accounts of the action, mainly because it’ll be old news by the time I manage to hit ‘publish’, but hopefully you’ll find within these posts a distillation of the main events, so that you might follow through the narrative arcs and subplots of the race, even without watching every moment.

If you enjoy these posts, please consider signing up for a paid tier, to support my ambition to continue bringing a unique, story-driven perspective on racing to Substack, with a bit of a skew towards all things French now and then. Or if a subscription is a bit too heavy on the commitment but you are feeling generous, you can always buy me a coffee instead. All contributions gratefully received.

Time to talk all things Giro - let’s begin with the Grande Partenza in Bulgaria.

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An opening defined by chaos

Looking back at the past few years of Grand Tours, there are too many occasions where the race’s ultimate shape has been heavily impacted by major crashes in the early stages. I’m thinking Mikel Landa at last year’s Giro, Jasper Philipsen at last year’s Tour, Enric Mas and Richard Carapaz at the Tour in Bilbao in 2023, and of course the infamous ‘allez omi-opi’ incident at the Tour in 2021. The ink has barely dried on the various previews, and riders expected to be challenging for jerseys are gone from the race. It always feels crueller at the beginning of a Grand Tour. So much preparation, so much time away from family, all that sacrifice, and it is wiped out in the blink of an eye.

It was sadly also the case for a number of riders at this year’s Giro following two major crashes in as many days. The nature of racing is ever thus, but the high-octane, full-throttle tension of the early days of a Grand Tour, when the first jerseys are on the line, exacerbates the nerves and elevates an already pressurised situation into something even more highly charged.

Stage 1 saw a mass crash in the final kilometre leading up to the first bunch sprint finish of the race. Most of the major contenders made it through to battle for the win, but Kaden Groves came out of the pile-up looking pretty banged up, and Matteo Moschetti was forced to abandon. The following day, on a wet descent heading into the final portion of the day’s action, the full UAE team wiped out into the barriers, taking a couple of other teams down with them. It was immediately clear that not everyone was going to be able to continue the race.

There are crashes which define races, and then there are crashes which define whole seasons. This feels like one of those, instinctively. Like the crash at Itzulia in 2024, its impact shook me, and just as in that crash, one of the first riders confirmed to be out was UAE’s Jay Vine. My heart ached for him, yet again. How is it that some riders seem to skate through their careers without any major issues, and others are blighted again and again? Vine was only just on his way back from the freak kangaroo crash that took him out of his home race back in January. He was one of the worst impacted riders in the aforementioned Itzulia crash. His team are under a curse this season, it seems. Riders crashing out of every race; squad decisions made off the back of who’s actually fit to ride – a situation we don’t see in men’s pro cycling very often. Their planned leader for the Giro was João Almeida, but he withdrew due to illness, leaving the GC bid in the safe hands of Adam Yates, who hoped to follow in his brother’s footsteps and contend for the top step of the podium. It was not to be, as he was one of the riders who came down - hard.

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The sight of Yates muddied and bloodied will stay with me for a long time. That was a man who needed to be immediately placed in an ambulance and taken to a medical facility. Instead, with the thousand yard stare of the most-probably-concussed, he was put back on his bike to try and salvage his GC bid. He finished over 11 minutes down and was later withdrawn due to – insert gasp of surprise here – concussion. The protocols were clearly applied to some riders; but the speed at which Yates was sent on his way does not fill me with any confidence at all that the proper checks were carried out. I’m not a medical professional and as such, I won’t go on about this. But I don’t feel comfortable with what I witnessed.

Questions over safety continue to plague the sport, and where F1 by contrast continues to innovate and respond in attempts to improve and maintain safety, cycling flounders with half measures and mixed messages. I honestly don’t know what the answer is. There may well not be one – not a perfect one at least – but ‘just accept it because it’s cycling’ doesn’t feel like the correct reaction. Anyway. Onto other matters.

Frenchmen called Paul who ride bikes rather well

Hey look, I’m not saying that it’s not a common name or anything, but I do feel like there’s something odd going on in France – what is it with the name Paul? This is the year in which Paul Seixas will make his Tour de France debut, at the age of 19 – the best announcement ever in the history of racing revealed the news last week, and finally put an end to the ongoing speculation over whether or not he would pop his Tour cherry this year. He will. As I’m sure you can imagine, I have many thoughts about this, but you will have to wait to hear them after the Giro is done.

In the meantime, Paul Magnier decided enough was enough – it was time to thrust another French Paul into the spotlight. He duly won stage 1 in Burgas, in impressive fashion, though not with every sprinter present and correct following the crash. More importantly, he claimed the first maglia rosa for his Soudal-QuickStep team and the youngest Frenchman to wear it since Laurent Fignon, and laid down the gauntlet for the likes of Jonathan Milan and the rest to pick up on stage 3, when the sprinters went in for round 2. It was a clean sprint that time around, no crashes thank goodness, and Magnier doubled up, this time sandwiched between a pair of sprinting colossuses in the shape of Milan and Dylan Groenewegen, both of whom looked absolutely massive and ridiculously powerful, and yet somehow the more slightly built Frenchman capitalised on his confidence to extend his streak of two sprint wins against a selection of the fastest men in the world. In his first ever Grand Tour. At the age of just 22.

Spare a thought, before we move on, for Pauls Penhoët and Lapeira, who are doing great work just being French Pauls in the men’s pro peloton, even if they may not be soaring quite as high as their Paul pals. I have high hopes they too will achieve big things in 2026, because well, it’s the rules apparently. Paul Double is the only other WorldTour Paul and he can also be an honorary Frenchie if you just say his name with a bit of flair (it’s ‘Doub-lay’ don’t you know).

A word on the GC

It’s early days, and yet it’s already difficult to avoid reaching the conclusion that the GC is going to be an open and shut case. There are plenty of riders lurking on the periphery, who might be in with a chance of making the podium, but it looks like Jonas Vingegaard’s race to lose. He is trying to win the only Grand Tour not yet on his palmares, and he opened his account with an early attack on the climb on stage 2, to give us an indication of the form of the rest of the field. To that end, only Giulio Pellizarri (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto-Intermarché) could stay with him, though it’s probably fair to say the Dane wasn’t giving it ALL of the beans.

The two youngsters may have felt buoyed by their involvement in the attack nonetheless, but it leaves other, more experience riders still waiting to have their say – we’re talking Ben O’Connor, Felix Gall, Jai Hindley and Derek Gee-West – though it should be noted that the Canadian champion came down in THAT crash, so already finds himself at a significant disadvantage. Netcompany INEOS will hope to be included in the conversation either with two-time Tour stage winner Thymen Arensman, or former winner of the race Egan Bernal, who stuck his nose in the wind to grab a couple of bonus seconds in the Red Bull sprint on stage 2. Wouldn’t it be ace to see him play a serious role in proceedings? Yes, yes it would.

It’s a case of watch this space, heading into the rest of week 1.

Breakaway business

Picture this: you wake up from a very long sleep. You’re groggy and confused. You don’t know what month it is, but you clearly remember you’re a cycling fan and the first thing you want to do is check in on the latest news from the sport. You are immediately shown stage 1 of a Grand Tour but without the on-screen graphics (they’ve mysteriously disappeared, along with your need to eat or see your family despite your long sleep - it’s a tenuous hypothetical I know, just go with it, OK?). How do you know which one you’re watching? Use this handy checklist:

• Is the break established after approximately 30 seconds of racing?

• Is it composed of two Italian continental team riders only?

• Is one of them named Bais, Tonelli or Tarozzi?

• If you answered yes to all of the above, congratulations, you’re watching the Giro d’Italia!

• If on the other hand there’s at least one World team represented, the break numbers four or more, there’s at least one French rider, and something mad happens in the desperate dash for LITERALLY ANY INTERMEDIATE POINTS well, it’s the Tour de France!

• Is there at least one reasonably strong GC candidate involved? Is Jay Vine there? Are there about 16 riders, a motley mix of sprinters and climbers and rouleurs, and you’ve got literally no idea who will win the stage? Ah, it’s a bouncing baby Vuelta stage!

Initially this was just going to be a laconic complaint about how relatively boring Giro breakaways are in the first stages of the race – but I’ve since reflected and it feels a bit unfair. It’s classic, isn’t it? We know exactly what to expect, the commentators know what to expect, the Italian conti teams send their guys out to do their jobs, and we all cross off a box on our bingo cards. On reflection, it’s fair to add that it’s usually so quiet in the early stages because of RCS’s course design, which inevitably begins with at least two or three sprint stages in the first three days, and is famed for backloading all of the climbing stages. The Vuelta is mad throughout and as such, it’s always impossible to predict what will happen in the breakaways. The Tour well, it’s the Tour. There’s so much on the line. It’s another level of intensity, and you can expect much more interest in any breakaway. That being said, on a big sprint stage, it’s as boring as the Giro, if not sometimes worse.

Fair play to this year’s victims – I mean volunteers, who actually had a really good crack on stage 3, unexpectedly taking their bid for glory to within the final kilometre – what a turn-up that would have been. They were caught in the end, but it was a spirited effort and a twist in the usual tale that can perhaps give us hope that the boring breakaways days are at an end, as we head into Italy for the race proper to begin.

An Italian Miscellany

This section is for other bits and bobs that I’ve noticed or thoughts that I feel compelled to share.

• Unibet Rose Rockets are riding their first ever Grand Tour – yes, everyone’s favourite underdog team are going for glory and they had a really strong chance of taking the leader’s jersey on stage 1 with Groenewegen – ironically, they are already pretty pink, as far as kits go. Expect to see them very active throughout the race, in their continued quest to score a place at the Tour de France - could they make their debut on British shores in 2027?

• The UAE curse continues, but they won’t go down without a fight. Expect them to feature heavily during the rest of the race, in breakaways and basically anywhere they can insert themselves into the action. Already willing to throw himself with reckless abandon at any race day, Jan Christen is now free to attack at will. Mikkel Bjerg has been chained to his leaders as a super reliable domestique for so long now he may have forgotten how to win himself but I’m willing to bet he’ll give it a go at some point. Perhaps their best hope though is Antonio Morgado, who already looked lively on stage 1, or Jhonatan Narvaez, who won stage 1 two years ago.

• If Jay Vine has a crash curse on him, then Arnaud De Lie has the illness hex - yet again at a major race, De Lie is far from his best as a result of a stomach sickness that has affected a number of the Lotto-Intermarché team caused by cow poo of all things. The “Bull of Lescheret”, as he is affectionately known, will rather rue this particular bovine connection, as he has already missed two chances to sprint. It’s the latest in a series of illnesses De Lie has suffered, and he will hope to be in contention later in the race, if he can recover. It’s not the easiest place to recuperate, let’s be honest.

• You know I love to see riders celebrating the victories of their teammates. Ever since the UCI had the audacity to outlaw the practice due to the danger aspect of taking hands off handlebars* we’ve seen a bit less of it, but I still enjoyed Christian Scaroni celebrating the surprise victory of Guillermo Thomas Silva on stage 2. XDS Astana took the race lead, and Silva recorded the first stage win and maglia rosa for his home nation of Uruguay – and the shared joy was so lovely to see. Sadly the UCI didn’t share my rose-tinted view and fined Scaroni for the action – he later claimed it was worth it. Terrible pic below!

*I know, I was banging on about safety earlier – I get this one, I really do, but I’m not always certain it’s that dangerous, compared to some of the other issues that we regularly see.

Stay tuned for more, as the race is back in Italy as we speak – the wind is high, the skies are blue, and unfortunately Kaden Groves is the latest rider to leave the race following his stage 1 crash. More in a few days’ time.

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Hi there, subscribers. Thanks for clicking on this email – I know you’ll have been inundated with various takes on last Sunday’s incredible events in northern France, but I hope you’ll consider reading mine. If you’re new to my Substack, I usually have a bit of a ramble on about my life at the start, before getting into the meat of the cycling content further on. If you’d like to skip the meandering, you can scroll down to the next section – I promise I won’t be offended (I won’t know, honestly, so it’s fine). Thanks again for reading and if you enjoy my work, do consider taking out a paid subscription, it would mean a great deal to me, partly because of what I’m about to go on to explain…

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A few weeks back I posted this note here on my Substack.

I have been self-employed for nine years now, with a collection of income streams, which in the past four-and-a-half years has included stepping my toe into the world of freelance sports journalism. In an effort to pay the bills I’m currently, variously: a swimming teacher for babies and toddlers, an English tutor and mentor, and an aspiring novelist, alongside my cycling work which has included radio, podcasts, YouTube appearances, previews, live blogs, race reports, interviews, opinion pieces, essays and content-writing. The term ‘jack of all trades’ is probably pretty accurate, and I have at times owned it, and at others rejected it, hoping to fully embrace the life of a sports writer, but it’s sporadic and unreliable as a career path so here I am, trying to do it all, creating a life I love and maintaining family life and all that goes along with that alongside it.

It’s uncertain and unpredictable and I don’t cope all that well with those factors (see above post), and second guess my lifestyle every other day of the year, but at times also, it brings me immense joy. Do I have the skill and the ability to maintain all these separate strands of life? You’ll have to ask my boss / editors / clients / students / family / readers / subscribers that, but in the meantime, I’m going to write about a man who offers irrefutible proof that it is possible to eschew society’s intense need to shoehorn everyone and everything into a neat little box, to boldly overstep the boundaries imposed on him from external sources, and to live his true best life, doing it all. And when I say all, I mean absolutely ALL of it.

That man, is Wout van Aert.

The man who could do it all… almost

January, 2021. Still in the grip of the covid pandemic, the world was tentatively opening back up, with many restrictions still in place. Cycling’s 2020 season had been compressed into a four-month block, with Grand Tours overlapping and major races cancelled in spring being wedged into spaces never normally meant for them.

Wout van Aert shot out of the blocks like a man possessed. He took victory at the first major race to be rearranged, Strade Bianche, before following up with his first ever Monument title, at the altered Milano-Sanremo, a week later. A stage at the Dauphiné followed, along with a successful defence of his National time trial title in Belgium.

He went on to support Primož Roglič at his ultimately unsuccessful bid to win the Tour de France, taking two stage wins along the way, and still having enough left in the tank to put in some impressive pulls in the mountains, positioning his leader and climbing domestiques and proving he really did have one of the broadest ranges of weapons in his metaphorical arsenal.

The race proved somewhat prophetic in many ways. It foreshadowed the role Wout would go on to play for the team at the Tour in the years that followed; furthermore, Roglič’s shock defeat at the hands of his countryman Tadej Pogačar, still at the beginning of the stellar upward trajectory that would go on to see him be thrown into the ring as a potential ‘GOAT’, rather unsurprisingly took the wind out of the Jumbo Visma sails. After that, three significant second-place finishes followed for a Wout van Aert who had already given a great deal of himself over the compressed lifespan of the 2020 season. Second at both the World Championship road race and time trial, perhaps the toughest loss of all came at his home race, at the Tour of Flanders, as he missed out to his rival Mathieu van der Poel, another rider on the up, though heading in a different direction to his long-time cyclocross sparring partner.

It was at once maddening, and an affirmation of the ability of this extraordinary individual. To be strong enough to compete with the best against the clock; on the punchy, repeated climbs of Imola; and across the unforgiving cobbles and bergs of Flanders – in addition to his bunch sprint victories, and his tireless efforts supporting his team leader in Grand Tours? This man really could do it all. Yet the frustration of the glut of second-place finishes was hard to bear – and this unrelenting consistency without that elusive finishing touch became a thorn in the side that would persist over the subsequent years of Van Aert’s career.

The team, then Jumbo Visma, obviously recognised the immense value of the man, and extended Wout’s contract at the beginning of 2021, and released this cute, wryly humorous video celebrating what the world of cycling had come to understand about the man over the past few months: that he really could do it all.

He went on to prove the point at the 2021 Tour de France in immaculate style, winning three stages of the race – on the summit of Mont Ventoux, in the individual time trial on stage 20, and a day later triumphing on the most iconic boulevard of them all, the Champs-Élysées, in a bunch sprint. The team’s GC hopes disintegrated, courtesy of domino effect begun by the woman with the ‘allez omi-opi’ sign and compounded by Primož Roglič’s crash on stage 3, and though Jonas Vingegaard had emerged as the natural successor to the seasoned Slovenian, it was too deep into the race for the team to mount a serious comeback, so Wout was free to go for these wide-ranging chances, as the team was halved due to injuries, finishing in Paris with just four riders.

The following year, he made good on the promise he had shown supporting Roglič in 2020 by performing incredible feats in service of Jonas Vingegaard. This, in addition to his pursuit of his own goal – the green jersey. Winning three stages and making it his mission to fight for bonus seconds along the way, it was possible for the team to achieve the rare feat of claiming both yellow and green jerseys at the 2022 race - with Wout himself even carrying the maillot jaune for a period. The first nail in Pogačar’s coffin was struck on stage 11, with Roglič and Vingegaard taking turns to soften up the reigning champion, before Van Aert’s monster turn on the Hautacam on stage 18 helped seal the deal for the Dane, his first victory, and a break in the Pogačar supremacy, as a new rivalry was born at the race.

The years that followed proved turbulent for the all-conquering Belgian. Injuries, illness and bad luck kept him from being able to produce the kind of performances that he wanted to put in at the cobbled Monuments: the races in which he had always been predicted his greatest success, and those the man himself coveted most. The rise of Van der Poel and latterly, Pogačar, in the spring Classics seemed to leave Van Aert languishing in their wake, and despite his ability to consistently pull off big performances in Grand Tours, there was a sense of growing concern that his chances at the cobbled races so close to his heart were slipping away.

A fairytale ending

It’s difficult to put into words the significance of Van Aert’s achievement at last weekend’s Paris-Roubaix. I’ve been steering clear of reading about it in the media, as I wanted to come to my own conclusions, to express the truth of the experience from my own perspective, free from the influence of the lenses of others.

On the one hand, the universal outpouring of emotion speaks for itself. Wout’s win was a win for cycling. It was what Mattias Skjelmose managed at last year’s Amstel Gold Race, writ large. Not to undersell Skjelmose’s achievement at all – that win provided a grain of hope; proof positive that it was possible to overturn a rider so all-consuming that it seemed he would eat everything in sight for years to come like some kind of state-sponsored Pacman. But as brilliant a race as Amstel is, it’s not a Monument. Pogačar struck back at Liège–Bastogne–Liège the following weekend in his usual style, wining by over a minute and condemning the penultimate Monument to the fate to which it’s been cursed with for the past four seasons – a long, unanswered solo victory. He won the Tour in convincing style, then became World Champion for the first time. Not bad for a year’s work.

Van Aert had been written off by many as being past his best. There were very few who gave him a chance against either Van der Poel or Pogačar, despite the signs from the build-up that he was obviously in the best form he’s been in for the Classics for some time. His agonising second-place at Dwars door Vlaanderen notwithstanding; this was clearly a Wout on a mission.

And so to the fateful Sunday in Hell. Many analysts have written and spoken in depth about the race itself, the details of how the race was won and lost, and I will leave them to those minutiae. For me, the significance on the grandest scale is what matters to me. It’s why I didn’t rush into writing about the race, and why I haven’t really spoken about the day itself. What a day it was. One of the most dramatic and unpredictable races I can ever remember witnessing, from Pogačar’s early puncture, to the Alpecin-Premier Tech wheel change farce on the Trouée d’Arenberg, to the incredible chase efforts of Van der Poel and Ganna and the eventual head-to-head that would define the final portion of the race. Pogačar was on his own personal quest to strike one last blow at history itself. But as he tried and failed to distance Van Aert, once again the lack of elevation his worst enemy, he also found himself up against a man who knew inside himself that he was capable of doing what everyone said he couldn’t.

Van Aert’s win wasn’t just satisfying because he’s been yearning to ride to victory in Roubaix for eight years, since he tragically lost a teammate, Michael Goolaerts, on his debut in 2018, or because he’s missed out on it ever since, despite being hotly tipped in his early career to be a future winner of the race. It wasn’t just that it offered proof, finally, that he really could do everything – sprint, climb, race against the clock, help his team and win jerseys himself, and crucially – win a cobbled Monument. Have you seen Pogačar or van der Poel helping teammates win Grand Tours lately? Sure, van der Poel leads out Jasper Philipsen now and then, and can occasionally win in a certain kind of sprint, and Pogačar is very handy in a time trial situation, but despite the fact that both are incredible champions, neither possesses the complete set of skills that Van Aert has proven beyond reasonable doubt that he can lay claim to. There are no gaps, no missing pieces - he’s the full Panini sticker album. Perhaps they are great champions because they don’t try to do it all. And maybe if he had been a little more selfish, or been on a different team, Van Aert might have specialised sooner, or tried to do less, and maybe we’d be talking about his second or third victory in Roubaix. But that’s not who he is. And it’s why this means even more.

It wasn’t even that he beat Pogačar – important as that is, in terms of offering hope to rest of the men’s peloton once again, that it can be done. It was a victory for hope itself. For the idea of hope, both personal and collective. Waking up the following morning and remembering the night before (not that I slept much) was like discovering you’d switched dimensions, and now inhabited another timeline - one where anything is possible, if you believe in it, and work for it, and never give up; if you hold in your heart that flame of hope, and never let it burn out, you too can conquer your greatest challenge, or even embrace that label of jack of all trades.

Not only hope but stoicism; self-belief in the face of almost certain failure. Resilience, in response to repeated setbacks and frustrations. Stubborn defiance, of the smug voices of reason who would have had Wout written off as a has-been. A refutation of his habit of being the nearly-man. The almost meme-worthy numbers of second places that pepper his palmares like a vindictive flock of mocking swans. A reminder that he’s fucking WOUT VAN AERT. That he can tow a skinny climber up a massive Pyrenean ascent, power his way around a time trial course like a turbo diesel and then eat up a bunch of sprint specialists for dessert. It was validation, pure and simple. A just reward for himself, for his family, for the fans who stayed loyal, and a simple ‘Ik moet just niks’ to the naysayers. The phrase that translates more or less as ‘I don’t need to do anything you say’ was initially delivered in response to the many criticisms of his choices, but ultimately, these choices led him to this moment, proving that he could reach the pinnacle of our sport, doing things his way. Keeping his truth front and centre; absorbing the hits and remaining honest and real, rather than becoming embittered. Finally silencing his doubters once and for all.

They should never have doubted him; after all, what can’t he do?

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The final word, goes to the man himself.

Although it hasn’t been long since my last post, chronologically speaking, because of where we are now in the scope of the cycling season as a whole, a whole raft of ‘cycling time’ has elapsed, since my last post. I made notes about Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, planning at least two entries on the concurrent stage races, and even had a few paragraphs composed about Strade Bianche which preceded them, which now feels somewhat redundant, given it was like… three weeks ago.

I am going to talk about Strade Bianche, actually, but in a broader sense than I originally planned. My post is in fact bookended by two Italian Classics. One a Monument, one which is widely claimed should be a Monument. Set two weeks apart on the calendar, Strade Bianche and Milano-Sanremo don’t share many similarities as races, other than the fact they both take place in northern Italy. As of last season, both feature men’s and women’s races taking place on the same day. There is a kind of gender inequality in both races. In the case of Strade Bianche, it’s a case of entertainment levels. For the third consecutive year, the women’s edition of Strade Bianche has smashed the men’s out of the park. You know the analogy about goldfish growing to fit the size of the bowl? Women’s racing in its current state just ‘fits’ Strade Bianche. It’s the perfect distance and level of challenge to bring about consistently exciting, unpredictable racing. It is very much a parallel with Liège–Bastogne–Liège, which also finds itself suffering from long-range race-killing solo attacks on the men’s side, while the women’s race always results in fireworks.

Milano-Sanremo is almost the polar opposite. For the men, the extreme distance might not necessarily be that much of an obstacle. They are riding on flat roads at a relatively relaxed pace for much of the day. If the women’s race were longer, would that additional endurance requirement lead to a more exciting finale? It’s hard to say. Not that this year’s finale wasn’t exciting, exactly. But it sort of wasn’t. More on that, later. As for the men’s Milano-Sanremo though, it’s goldfish in a bowl again. It’s the perfect race. It will never, can never, not be exciting. Even in a decade or two, looking back through the lens of history, and seeing the name Tadej Pogačar at the top of the results list – the single appearance of his name (probably) is enough to mark this race out as different from the rest, where his moniker almost always appears in multiples.

At Strade Bianche, by contrast, the exploits of Tadej Pogačar are so absurdly predictable by comparison to the rest of the field, that he’s rendered the race null. He’s now won four editions in total (a record, of course, because he has to have all of those), including the last three in a row. They have been almost identical, in terms of how far out he’s attacked, with last year being a blip as a result of his crash, and Tom Pidcock’s efforts to try and stay with him. Strangely, those factors apply to this year’s Milano-Sanremo, which itself saw Pogačar seemingly hampered by a crash, and Tom Pidcock the sole adversary capable of (almost) matching the peerless Slovenian. Analysis of that too, is for later.

Back to this year’s Strade. As Tadej shot off and merrily did his thing, it was down to his lieutenant/protégé/successor (the lines are increasingly blurred) Isaac Del Toro to disrupt the chase of the only man capable of putting up a fight – Paul Seixas. The future king of France (please note that though I employ hyperbole sparingly, I do so with conviction) was a clear second-best on the day, once again underscoring two facts: that he is absolutely living up to his hype; that he’s head and shoulders above all but a small handful of riders in certain types of one-day races; and that it’s only a matter of time until the scales tip in his favour.

I am not going to take the usual digression down the Seixas trajectory, but if you’d like to read more of my musings on the most exciting young rider in the peloton, please check out this feature I wrote for Cyclist magazine, in which I clumsily employ physics metaphors to talk about how he is inevitably intertwined with the Tour de France, hopefully not with UAE Team Emirates, and walk through a number of possible ways his career might unfold from this point onwards in a sort of pre-defined ‘choose your own adventure’ type fashion. It was fun to write.

Sticking with the men, onto Milano-Sanremo. I’m dealing with the men’s races together as there was one winner to rule them all. Finally, Tadej Pogačar managed to solve the Milano-Sanremo problem, and add number 4 of 5 to his Monument tally, with just Paris-Roubaix to go. Paris-Roubaix could be said to be tougher, or easier, for him to tick off, depending on the presence, and fitness, of MVDP. With the Dutch megastar there, it’s hard to imagine a world in which he wins. Yet, MSR looked to be a trickier nut to crack, from the outside. That is, until he crashed. In doing so, he set up the ultimate paradox: a world in which he was on the floor with 32 kilometres to go, and one in which he was unwittingly making it easier for himself to win.

Of course it’s impossible to imagine what might have happened, had the crash not occurred. It feels churlish to suggest that crashing actually helped Pogačar win, when if it was any other rider – any at all – we’d be using it as a very valid excuse to explain why they DIDN’T do the best that they could. But hear me out. Not only is the guy made of Teflon, he has a proven track record when it comes to bouncing back (almost literally) from crashes in major races (see last year’s Strade Bianche, the 2024 Giro, stage 11 of the Tour last year), but ironically, it may have hindered other teams’ responses to him. We’ll never know exactly what the likes of INEOS, Visma, Red Bull or Alpecin were planning on the Cipressa, but they had all indicated their plans to attack early, or at least to place themselves at a positional advantage.

With Pogačar briefly out of the picture, along with other major favourites either coming down themselves or held up, too many of the teams with plans were forced to adapt on the fly. The peloton was split, reducing its overall power by comparison to the engine of Pogačar as he remounted his bike and set about working his way back to the group. In short, what could have been, had the crash not occurred, may have actually been more of a hindrance to Pogačar than coming off his bike. Even with his skinsuit ripped down one side and – as it later transpired – a cracked frame, he had the tenacity, the desire, and enough fuel left in the tank to shake off all but the best version of Tom Pidcock we’ve arguably ever seen.

In short, crashing probably helped him win. And now it’s done, and he’s already intimated he may not return for another crack, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if he stands by that promise – it’s clear how frustrating it’s been for him not to be able to ‘go Tadej go’ all over MSR, and just getting one under the belt will probably prove enough for him. Back to a bunch sprint next year, then? Er, probably not. With the increased power and speed of the bunch and Pogačar opening minds as to what’s possible, it’s safe to say the race has changed, and if it’s even possible, it becomes even more unpredictable – finally, I have a reason to thank the man.

Seriously though, we need to talk about Pidcock. He’s flying. He’s been given a new lease of life at Q36.5 and with that third place at La Vuelta last summer, and an excellent start to the season, the evidence is stacking up that he’s coming into his prime. Being able to match Pogačar – albeit a somewhat wounded version – on any sort of climb is no easy task. I’m not saying he’ll be able to replicate this day after day in the Pyrenees and the Alps this July, but I’m not… not saying it. Alpe d’Huez makes its first appearance at the Tour this year since 2022, and we all remember what happened the last time the race visited its historic 21 hairpins. What could he do over three weeks against the very best? It’s going to be fun finding out.

Pidcock wasn’t the only rider to have a surprisingly good race behind the unsurprising winner. Wout van Aert was a second rider who came back from that earlier crash to perform exceptionally well. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Wout at his best in the Classics – two brilliant Grand Tour stages wins aside in 2025, it’s been a pretty tough couple of years for the Belgian. He steamed ahead of the rest to finish as the best of the rest behind the leading pair and it was honestly, a bit unexpected. So too the next rider over the line, winner of the reduced bunch sprint for fourth place, Mads Pedersen. The mighty Dane returned to the peloton earlier than expected following collarbone and wrist fractures sustained during a crash in his season opener at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. Taking to the road for the first Monument of the season having been through an extremely rapid recovery seemed like a potentially bad idea. Mads proved me wrong. Oh and a shout out for Corbin Strong (NSN Pro Cycling) in fifth place – a very impressive result on paper, given who was ahead of him.

If Kasia Niewiadoma isn’t your favourite rider, you’re wrong

OK, you’ll have to forgive me for the somewhat divisive subheading. For the second time today, I’ll ask you to hear me out.

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney has made no secret of her desire to win Strade Bianche. She’s ridden in every edition of the race since its inception in 2015 and has finished on the podium four times to date (five now), making the top ten in every edition that she completed (10/12). It’s a race she loves and always animates, and she found herself with a gilt-edged opportunity to finally take glory in this year’s edition, as a group containing Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky among others took a wrong turn following a moto, leaving an elite group of contenders to fight for the win up front.

That fight was truly breathtaking. Attacks came from almost every member of the group, and it was genuinely impossible to predict the outcome, with world champion Magdeleine Vallieres’ presence in the group a rainbow-striped reminder that the depth and quality at the top end of the women’s peloton is now so significant that anyone capable of making it to the final of a major one-day race absolutely cannot be written off.

Kasia’s race knowledge and experience and her sheer bloody-minded desire to win the thing put her front and centre, though her weaknesses, which include coming through in reduced bunch sprints, did ring alarm bells as the group stayed intact heading towards the final climb. The ominous presence of serial champion Elisa Longo Borghini, who can never be ruled out, was matched on the day by that of Elise Chabbey. The Swiss is a rider who we’ve seen attack seemingly without a plan up climbs for years and years to no avail, yet who has taken a significant leap forward in terms of her competitive edge since joining FDJ SUEZ. She was relentless at Strade, and as Kasia charged desperately up the Via Santa Catarina, knocking into Longo Borghini as they both sought the best line around the bend, Chabbey found herself unhindered, and was able to power to an incredible victory, undoubtedly the most significant of her career.

The women’s race was as breathless and unpredictable as the men’s was forgettable. The same could not be said for Milano-Sanremo, though not all for the right reasons…

Yet again, Niewiadoma-Phinney’s insatiable desire to win pushed this race beyond its limits. If we are to return to the analogy of the goldfish in their bowl, if Strade Bianche is a perfect fit for the women’s peloton, Milano-Sanremo is too small, and they burst right out of the tank. While it’s fine for the race to be a ‘sprint classic’ and play into Lorena Wiebes’ hands (it will not always be Wiebes, just as in the men’s peloton it will not always be Pogačar), it still feels as though something is a little off in the overall balance of Milano-Sanremo. The women’s bunch is smaller than the men’s but more evenly matched at the top, and when Kasia attacked along with a selection of others to push the pace on the descent from the Cipressa to try and drop the sprinters, it worked, until it didn’t. The sheer frustration and desperation of the women’s peloton to avoid the inevitability of Lorena Wiebes is understandable. And lord do they ever try. Even in true sprint classics, there will be rafts of attacks, and even if they come to nought, they will die trying. The worst part is, it seemed for a sickening moment as if that’s exactly what happened, at Sanremo.

The crash was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in cycling. It ranks up there with witnessing that Itzulia crash live. In the wake of a number of deaths in our sport, these horror crashes always invoke something like PTSD in me. Honestly, I turned the broadcast off at the sight of Debora Silvestri lying motionless on the ground having been catapulted over a barrier. I cried. For my own sanity, I’m grateful that I was watching the whole day’s racing on delay, so instead of having to wait agonising hours to discover news of the Laboral rider’s condition, I could immediately go and hunt down news. Find that she was conscious when she was admitted to hospital. I felt sick with relief.

I realise I’ve glossed over the details of the attacks leading up to the crash because I don’t have the stomach for the analysis, knowing how it all turned out. I went back to the race later and felt empty as I watched Lotte Kopecky take her turn as designated SD Worx rider to win a Monument, and though it was well deserved, and unequivocal, and not Wiebes, I kind of ceased caring who won when I saw the pile-up that resulted from that crash.

The image of Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney’s shell-shocked face will stay with me for a long while. She encapsulates everything that’s good about cycling, every reason to turn on a race and know you’re going to see a battle. She has an insatiable will for competition. She isn’t afraid of anyone and never knows when to quit. She doesn’t always get it right tactically but your heart goes with her every time, because she’s invariably the one who pulls up her metaphorical socks - yes, above UCI regulation height, because she laughs in the face of authority - and dares the rest ‘let’s get this party started.’ In short, she’s ace.

Sadly, she pushed just a little too hard this time. It’s not her fault, or that of the course designer, or that of SD Worx for being so strong, but it’s hard to watch any of it back and conclude anything other than the race needs to be harder, to avoid the riders having to take these kinds of risks. I know they don’t have to take the risks, but they are competitive elite athletes trying to win an historic race, and pushing the limits in these current days of speed and aerodynamics is to push against that most delicate of boundaries – the one between life and death. Or at least (because I don’t want to leave this piece on such a melodramatic note, even if it is true) the one between full fitness and major injury. Safe recoveries to all the riders involved in this and every other crash. There are still far too many of them in the sport.

Thanks for reading – I hope to be back soon with cobbled classics thoughts, until then, enjoy the racing!

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Another week, another post, and hopefully this is a sign of things to come, as the season heats up, and my writing habits settle back into a pattern. Opening Weekend came and went and by the time this post actually makes it out into the wild, Strade Bianche weekend will probably have passed by and we’ll be into the best week of the cycling year (on the men’s side at least) – Paris-Nice Tirreno-Adriatico week. More on why I love this week so much in the next post.

For now though, I’m going to break the habit of a lifetime and NOT waffle on for ages before I get to talking about cycling. I am reinforcing a new habit though – I’m going to talk about a different sport again. Don’t panic, it’s not as bad as it sounds – first off, I’m going to lead with the cycling this time, and second, the secondary sport content will link back to cycling in a roundabout way. Honest.

Anyway on with the meaty bit of the newsletter – if you’re enjoying my posts please share them with like-minded souls, and if you’d like to support the continuation of my circuitous ramblings, please consider becoming a paid subscriber – it’s a huge boost to have your support and it enables me to dedicate more of my time to exploring different angles within the sport, not just because they scratch an itch in my brain (although that is a pleasing side effect) but because different perspectives, ones that aren’t always covered in mainstream sports media, offer an alternative, one which might scratch an itch in your brain, too. That being said, let’s begin with today’s first topic: a look back at Belgian Opening Weekend.

Kuurne chameleon (you come and go)

Is today going to be governed by tenuous 1980s song references? Apparently, yes.

I’m starting out with what the kids five years ago liked to call a ‘hot take’. It may be no higher in temperature than your average quiche, to be honest, but hear me out. Every year, the hype for Omloop Nieuwsblad is off the charts. Opening Weekend rhetoric, with all of its countdowns and portents for the cobbled Monuments, necessarily casts Omloop Nieuwsblad in a far more romantic light than it sister race, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. It’s partly because it’s the first of the spring Classics, and a turning point in the season – the first day of ‘real’ racing for the traditionalists – so naturally the spotlight falls on it more heavily. And I get it – not only is it our one chance of the year to see the iconic Muur van Geraardsbergen used in anger, it also happens to feature the same sort of pattern as the Tour of Flanders, in terms of the intensity of the challenges, that are clustered in the final third of the race, leading to a more obvious build in tension. It’s a much more natural foreshadowing of what’s to come in Holy Week, and attracts many of the names that will fight it out for glory at De Ronde.

Kuurne, by contrast, has in the past been considered more of a sprinters’ classic by dint of the fact that the final ‘helling’ comes with 60km still to race, theoretically offering plenty of time for the peloton to regroup ahead of the expected bunch sprint. Despite being slightly shorter and having a much flatter run-in, Kuurne actually features a considerable amount more climbing than Omloop – just over 2,000 metres of altitude are gained across the course compared with 1,600 the previous day – and in recent years, when combined with the current trend for men’s classics to be raced harder earlier, and to open up to attacks far sooner, this has had the effect of making Kuurne a much more balanced race, in terms of entertainment. There’s a fallacy that flat finishes can be boring, but the scales are so finely balanced in Kuurne that it creates an extremely satisfying viewing experience, regardless of the eventual style of victory. In fact, of the seven editions prior to 2026, four resulted in a win for the break, busting the myth that it’s a race for the sprinters (Omloop itself ended in a reduced bunch gallop last year, so isn’t immune to a fast finish).

Kuurne’s route design invites attacking, with its many climbs clustered in the centre of the profile, including seriously tricky – and longer – climbs than Omloop, and most of them are a bit less hazardous than the likes of the Molenberg, which sees participants swing off of a main road onto a steep, narrow cobbled climb – arguably one of the most treacherous pinch points on the entire cycling calendar.

The heady cocktail of difficult challenges combined with a sprint-heavy peloton leads to a fascinating battle, with breakaway hopefuls and more versatile sprinters attacking on the climbs to try and drop the purer sprinters, whose teams must then go to work on the flat final section of the race to try and recoup their losses in time to bring about the bunch sprint outcome they desire. With some teams able to play multiple cards, the strategy involved adds yet another layer of intrigue, and when you throw into the mix the usual extraneous factors that the Belgian spring brings with it – namely crosswinds and rain – you have the recipe for a perfect race.

Of course, flat stages in Grand Tours can be a snooze-fest. When there are designated days for sprinters in a stage race it feels more pre-destined, and there’s less inclination to go against the grain, because most teams have other goals and riders to protect. With one-day Classics, there’s no tomorrow to worry about, so even the sprintiest ones can be absolutely scintillating. One of my favourite spring Classics in recent memory was the 2023 edition of Brugge-de Panne – the ultimate sprinters’ Classic – in which crosswinds, and Soudal-QuickStep, ripped the bunch apart, the weather was hideous, and it turned into an absolute slugfest between a motivated breakaway trio and a chasing group of superstar sprinters. It was brutal and brilliant in equal measure, and left many of the riders questioning their life choices following the race.

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This year’s Kuurne was just as finely poised as most of the recent editions have been. It proved that the Classics-style sprinter is a different beast. The eventual winner, British hotshot Matthew Brennan, is not only rather rapid at the finish, but he has the capability not only of hanging on over the climbs, but of using them to make the race harder, duly dispensing with much of the competition in the process. Ably assisted by an array of motivated Visma teammates, Brennan instigated the late attacks that split the group and eventually caused the likes of Jasper Philipsen to make the kind of mistakes that saw him out of position at the finish. Philipsen himself made some questionable choices during the race, attacking on some of the climbs solo; it seemed as if he was trying to prove a point, but he could surely have used his team better and saved his matches to give himself a better shot at the finale. Decathlon also rode assertively, though they were unlucky in the end, not managing to position Tobias Lund Andresen as well as they could have for the final sprint. Nevertheless, the Dane recorded the most consistent performance over the two days of opening weekend, scoring two top tens – 6^th at Omloop, and 7^th in Kuurne (other candidates for most consistent include Tim van Dijke [Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe] who finished 2nd and 13th, and the under-the-radar winner, EF’s Luke Lamperti, who recorded 10th and 9th respectively).

The other main reason why I preferred Kuurne was because of the sheer volume of brutal crashes that shaped Omloop on Saturday. Yes I know it’s part and parcel of Classics racing, but the pressure of the first major Belgian race of the spring, combined with some savage cobbled sectors, led to serious injuries for a number of riders many of whom have now been ruled out for a significant period. Stefan Küng (Tudor Pro Cycling) fractured his femur, Ben Swift (INEOS) his pelvis, and Tudor’s rough day continued on the Molenberg, with Rick Pluimers hitting the deck so hard he broke his teeth, and narrowly avoided having his head ridden over by a charging Mathieu van der Poel. And that’s just to name a few. It was a tough watch, and I find that rather than becoming inured to the savagery of this sport, for each season that goes past I struggle more with it. Perhaps because I’m invested in more riders, or perhaps because the dangers are ever-increasing, what with the pressure to perform and the higher speed of racing. Both, probably.

Long story short, Kuurne was a better race, the end. Now on to some cycling analogies, via a report from a completely different sporting event…

Little ditty, ‘bout Max and Oriane (yeah, life goes on)

It’s not often that two names vaguely fit a 1980’s pop music reference so I’m leaning into it. The Max and Oriane in question are the two winners of the inaugural Red Bull Pro Climbing League that began last weekend in London – coinciding with cycling’s Opening Weekend quite beautifully, so that I could basically watch sport from midday Saturday all the way until bedtime, and then again all Sunday afternoon. Said climbing series is a new initiative instigated by alternative sports giants Red Bull that takes the essence of competitive indoor climbing and amps it up, with a competition format where two climbers go head-to-head on identical boulder routes, side by side, against the clock.

If you’re not immersed in the climbing scene, you may have at least seen the sport represented at the past two Olympic Games, so you might have a sense of how this differs from the usual competition format common to the World Cup series and almost the same as the Olympics (once they separated out the speed climbing element which is pretty much divorced from the more technical lead and boulder disciplines). You may also recognise a few of the names – Olympic gold medalists from Paris, Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret and Great Britain’s Toby Roberts were among a group of 16 of the world’s best climbers selected using rankings and some other criteria that I’m not really clear on, but either way, this was a strong crowd. They were seeded in a qualification round, then the Saturday evening final saw them go head-to-head over three knockout rounds. While it’s safe to say the format had its teething problems (over three hours of elapsed time for probably what amounted to only around 15 minutes of actual climbing, for example), it produced two finals worthy of note.

Slovenia’s sporting excellence in recent years is notable following a period of investment in sports by the country’s government, and while most of you reading will be more familiar with the rewards of this investment reaped in pro cycling courtesy of Tadej Pogačar and a number of his high-flying compatriots, Slovenia are making waves in a number of sporting fields, and Garnbret has been arguably one of the most dominant sportspeople on the planet for a decade, since she began competing as a senior in 2016. Since then she has won gold in ten World Championship events, has won the overall World Cup series every year she has competed in it meaningfully (she exited early in 2022 to focus on other goals). She has also taken Olympic gold at both possible opportunities – she triumphed in Tokyo in 2021, on sport climbing’s debut at the Games, a title she successfully defended in 2024 in Paris.

In short, she’s basically unbeatable. To go up against Janja, is to aim for second best – just as it is for so many male cyclists as they fight in vain against Tadej Pogačar – the dominance is absolute.

Enter Oriane Bertone. Spirited, outgoing, and driven, Bertone is a rising star in the sport. Just 20 years old, she represented France in her home Olympic Games in 2024 where she finished a respectable 8^th, but she’s upped her game since then and is coming on leaps and bounds. While the problem set for the two finalists in the women’s competition was clearly not challenging enough to provide the spectacle that would have pushed the viewing experience to the next level, an uncommon error from Garnbret saw her fall part way through her first attempt on the boulder, allowing Bertone a free run at flashing the problem (completing it on her first attempt). Flash it she did, and in doing so upset the pre-competition odds and struck a blow to Garnbret’s invincible veneer.

Young, up and coming French star beats all-conquering Slovenian? Does this script feel in any way portentous? No further comment required.

On the men’s side I don’t really have a cycling analogy but I urge you to seek out the men’s final, if you have the inclination, to enjoy the best bit of the whole competition (the coverage was free on Red Bull TV but quite hard to pick through – the only YouTube footage I can find is this short summary.

The two finalists were both somewhat unexpected, with top seed Tomoa Narasaki clearly not on his best form. Instead third seed Colin Duffy, a talented American competition climber, took on Scotland’s own Max Milne, a wildcard entry who put on a show to make it through to the final, beating some quality competition along the way.

For a start, the problem they were set was far more challenging, with the pair both taking their time tackling the series of tricky moves on what was designed to be a powerful, dynamic boulder. In the end, it became a war of attrition. Milne’s diminutive height served as a disadvantage as he repeatedly manoeuvered himself into the right position, jamming his hands in between volumes, only to be unable to reach for the bigger hold that would allow him to bridge through to the hold above, ensuring he would finish higher than Duffy as the clock ran down.

Milne’s comportment throughout the final was a joy to behold. He geed the crowd up in a very British, tongue-in-cheek, almost apologetic way (they responded enthusiastically because what we Brits lack in individual confidence we make up for in collective fervour at sporting events), and his demeanour was that of someone just there to have a good time and do his best. Climbers in general are pretty chill folk, but Milne is prime among them. Yet it didn’t stop him digging so deep he bloodied his knuckles with the effort, his determination finally paying off as he inched his fingers around the hold that would make the difference, to seal the win.

The grit, resilience, skill and personality that Milne displayed in such a short space of time delivered such a bang for the buck that it made the whole drawn out viewing experience all worth it. It was a reminder of the importance of character, in an era defined increasingly by sports people who speak in soundbites and are ruled by data. Milne stands out even within a fringe sport which attracts more than its fair share of quirky individuals. It’s a further reminder, when a plethora of sporting delights compete for our attention, that fan loyalty still hinges on split second moments, forged on one feat of incredible skill, or dogged endurance, or whimsical personality. I will cheer for Max every time I see him because of those five minutes of competition. Lifetimes of loyalty can turn on a sixpence, and the hearts of sports fans can be easily won. What point am I trying to make? I guess that it’s probably not as hard as it seems, to secure a fanbase. Just look at what the Unibet Rose Rockets are doing for the perfect example of this kind of investment on a team-wide scale. When you can choose anyone to lend your support to, why wouldn’t you choose a rider or team who go the extra mile?

Hey there subscribers, apologies for another long absence – I’d love to give a fresh, exciting excuse other than ‘it’s been quite difficult to write because I’m a sad little woodland creature who doesn’t like the dark’ but that’s pretty much the extent of it. But it’s spring now and the light is back so I’m totally fine, the end.

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Welcome back to the Under the Radar newsletter, where this week I’ll be looking at some of the riders who will be hoping that 2026 is their year, after a less than stellar 2025 – whether by their own standards, or by those expected of them by the cycling world at large. Whether due to injury, team politics or simply not being ‘at the races’ so to speak, these riders were all out of sorts in 2025, and they are all characters whose talents and personalities were missed in their respective pelotons.

Let me know your thoughts, and if you think there’s anyone I’ve missed – my brain has somewhat checked out due to pre-Christmas overwhelm so there’s probably a glaring omission. Anyway, the first two riders are free to read, but if you’d like to read the full list, please consider taking out a paid subscription – it’s less than the price of a pint of beer per month – if you take out a yearly subscription, it’s even better value, and every paid subscription means the world to me as I continue to try and forge my own unique space in the cycling media landscape. Click the button below to join me!

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Lotte Kopecky

Kopecky wasn’t exactly absent last season, but she was a shadow of herself for much of the season, struggling with a lower back injury, and talking openly about the pressure she was under on social media. Despite securing a hat-trick at the race she was born to win, De Ronde, Kopecky struggled last season, dropping out of the Giro d’Italia and unable to ride the Tour de France. She rode for Lorena Wiebes on a number of occasions but the favour wasn’t always reciprocated, leaving her looking isolated and uncomfortable at Paris-Roubaix and forcing her to take matters into her own hands in Flanders.

Any rider returning to the bunch in 2026 after a less than stellar 2025 will find themselves facing a very different challenge: a peloton that includes Demi Vollering free of the SD Worx drama, Marlen Reusser in the form of her life, Kim Le Court a rising star of the Classics and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot imperious in any race she targets. The strength in depth has never been greater in the women’s peloton and where in 2024, Kopecky seemed to be aiming at becoming more of a GC rider, while still retaining her strength in tough one-day races, she may find she is forced to be more selective as the quality of the peloton improves. Formerly, she looked set to follow a Marianne Vos style career path, targeting one-day races, tough sprints and points jerseys, but with an ever-improving Wiebes as her teammate, there seems to be perhaps a little too much crossover for Kopecky to fully embrace that type of profile.

Whatever she decides in terms of her race programme, it will mostly just be good to see the Belgian powerhouse back to her best in 2026, all things being well.

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Gee is a fan favourite, not just in his native Canada but throughout cycling, and we need to see him back on his bike and fighting for wins, for a team where he feels comfortable and is happy. That’s all there is to say on this one, but here’s hoping that everything works out for the best.

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