It won’t have escaped your attention, I’m sure, but the Tour de France begins tomorrow. The real thing is here. Forget about the FIFA World Cup for a second, because the world’s biggest bike race is here to take over your lives for the next three weeks.
In April every year, I’m convinced that the Classics, the crescendo of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, are the best races of the year. In May, you find some hipsters suggesting that the Giro d’Italia is where it’s at. The truth is, however, that nothing beats the Tour de France. July starts, and something changes. It’s all I will care about until August, and then it’s the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. My friends might not get much of me until after that.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport in The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
It’s 10 years since I first saw the Tour in person; my Mum and I went on a trip to Cherbourg after I’d finished university to get a glimpse of the famous race. We only fitted in one stage, but we were blown away by the whole spectacle, after not really knowing what to expect – I envy anyone who is going for the first time this year, and gets to see the madness. The caravan, the speed of the riders, the cavalcade, and just the sheer enormity of it all. I had to check, Peter Sagan won, but I think I was just as excited to see Mark Cavendish in yellow that day.
This Tour will be my seventh as a cycling journalist, and the fifth consecutive race I’ve been to in person. Sometimes, sitting far from the action, cynicism about how exciting something is easily found, but up close, when you’re there, there’s nothing like it. Saying the Tour is the world’s biggest bike race is an almost self-fulfilling prophecy, but it really is.
This year’s race is tantalising. Sure, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) is the favourite for the race, and it would be a surprise were he not to win the race, but it’s not at all implausible that Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) could mount a stern challenge. He’s the only rider to ever beat Pogačar at the Tour, after all, and won the Giro d’Italia this year; his and Visma’s contention is that he’s better in the second Grand Tour of the year, and we will see if that’s true, and enough to win.
That’s exciting enough, but the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe duo of Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz is intriguing, and might well provide some moments of entertainment, if nothing else. Then there’s Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), the 19-year-old who is aiming to become the first Frenchman in 40 years to claim the yellow jersey. There’s a lot in the GC race, and there’s more that I haven’t mentioned, but there’s more to the Tour than that.
This Tour route is back-loaded, but that doesn’t make it any easier. There will be day-after-day of start-to-finish gripping action. This might well be the Tour of breakaways, with teams like Soudal Quick-Step, Netcompany-Ineos and EF Education-EasyPost seemingly fully built around maximising the most of those hard days. With Pogačar so far above most other riders, there will be such a fight to make the most of punchy days, those stages where things are up in the air. There’s going to be racing from the gun that you won’t want to miss. Even if things to end in a bunch sprint, it won’t have been easy.
All of this makes it even more heartbreaking, and frustrating, that this is the first Tour de France that won’t be shown live on free-to-air television in the UK, after the demise of ITV’s coverage, and live coverage moving to TNT Sports. People have found workarounds, whether that’s through using VPNs, or watching it in Welsh for certain stages. There will also be highlights on 5, so all is not lost. However, I fear for the casual fan, the person who would switch on the Tour for hours every July, who is now lost. We can try and convey the action through words, but in 2026, it’s not quite the same.
I wish I could change this. Cycling on television is beautiful. A bike race like the Tour shows a whole country, in a way that no other sport – barely any other thing – can.
That’s enough moping, though. This Tour will be thrilling, I can feel it. Watch what you can, and follow along with Cycling Weekly for everything else. It’s time.
