The Tour de France starts on Saturday and there’s no obvious favourite. Primož Roglič and Egan Bernal are the two central contenders, each with very strong teams but they have questions over their fitness and form. Here’s a look at the contenders for the general classification.
Here’s a downloadable calendar of the Tour de France for your electronic diary or phone with brief details of each stage. There’s also a look at the TV coverage ahead.
Peter Sagan has owned the competition with a record seven wins only he’s not looking as dominant as before so if he wins, maybe we’ll have a contest this time. Anyway, let’s take a closer look at all the other sprinters too.
“You’re only as good as your last race” is cycling’s version of “what have you done for me lately?” and Team Ineos’s selection for the Tour de France is a clear demonstration. Out go Thomas and Froome, in come Carapaz and Amador.
Dani Martinez wins the Critérium du Dauphiné ahead of Thibaut Pinot and Guillaume Martin at the end of a thrilling final stage. Not a shock but a surprise. Primož Roglič looked the strongest rider all week but retired before the last stage, copying Egan Bernal who had also left. In this abbreviated, condensed season the Tour de France is more important than ever and the Dauphiné was both a lively and instructive five days of racing.
The third and final part of the series looking at the 1964 Tour de France is a look at what made it such a good Tour. If you’re in a hurry: it came down to a contest between two riders and was close right until the end… but there’s more to it than that.
The Tour de France’s dates have been changed with the start pushed back two months, the plan is now to begin in Nice on Saturday 29 August and finish in Paris on Sunday 20 September. The route is unchanged. It’s just that, a date change. It buys time but all talk about the race still feels like it should be in the conditional given the public health crisis caused by Covid-19.
Part II of the series looking at the 1964 Tour de France is a stage-by-stage account of the race to show race unfolding from stage wins to accidents, punch-ups to punctures. There are the oddities of the time such as using cabbage leaves to protect against the heat, and the infamous incident of a fortune teller predicting Jacques Anquetil’s death mid-race.
The best Tour de France ever? Some say 1989, take your pick. During the 1989 Tour many knew it was an exceptional edition and held up 1964 as a reference point or even the vintage edition for comparison. With this in mind here’s a mini-series to take a look the 1964 Tour. Part I below looks at the year in general, the cycling season, the race’s route and format.
It’s tempting to pick the whole Tour de France as a highlight because plenty of the great moments threaded together to make something even better. Still, let’s focus on one day and here is Stage 8 from Mâcon to Saint-Etienne.