The Tour de France has always made it to Paris on schedule, but Covid-19 means this year’s race will be on a constant knife edge Of all the world’s great sports events, the Tour de France is the only one that goes out to its public. As the late Geoffrey Nicholson wrote, it is the only form of international conflict other than war that takes place on the doorstep. During a global pandemic, the edition that should start in Nice on Saturday is uniquely significant and uniquely risky. The conditional says it all: the 2020 Tour has been in doubt since March, it was postponed in April and it will be on a knife edge as long as it lasts....
Since the summer of 2012, there have been six overall wins and 27 stage wins achieved by British riders in the Tour de France. That domination is now at an endThe abrupt eviction of Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas from Sir Dave Brailsford’s Tour de France lineup ensures that, for the first time in several seasons, this year’s race will begin without a past British yellow jersey winner in the peloton.Since 2012, British champions have dominated the three-week race, through Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas. That serial success has been interrupted only in 2014 and 2019. Related: Team Ineos: Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas dropped for Tour de France Continue reading...
Bjorg Lambrecht’s death on Monday was the eighth of an international rider since 2016. Is the sport really worth it?It is almost 25 years since I stood in the French town of Pau on a July afternoon in 1995 and watched the six members of the Motorola team, including a young Lance Armstrong, ride into the Tour de France stage finish a few hundred metres in front of the peloton. It remains the single most impressive and affecting memory I can summon up in over 30 years of following cycling.The men of the Tour had taken eight hours to ride that day’s mountain stage over some of the race’s greatest ascents at the pace of a funeral cortege, in honour...
Egan Bernal bloomed in yellow while unique Alpine dramas unfolded as a wonderful Tour rode towards its conclusionThe most meaningful touch of the 2019 Tour de France was not the slap Luke Rowe gave Tony Martin after the German had tried to run him into the gutter, leading to the expulsion of both riders from the race. It was the touch of hands between Julian Alaphilippe and Egan Bernal as they rode in the peloton towards Paris, a salute from the man who had brought the race to life to the one who was about to take the spoils: a moment summing up a race that, over the course of three weeks, had rekindled old enthusiasms and enraptured new audiences.What,...
A nation must wait for a successor to Bernard Hinault after their hopes disappear in the Alpine mistsWhen Thibaut Pinot fell into the arms of his teammate William Bonnet by the roadside 36km into Friday’s stage of the Tour from Saint Jean de Maurienne to Tignes, the scene was heart-rending but familiar. Pinot, and the Tour, have been here before. The dramatic, tragic story of a Frenchman who has captivated the home crowd and is forced out by ill fortune and great physical suffering is a plot-line the Tour has written many times. Related: Waiting for the peloton: Tour de France fans - in pictures Continue reading...