Innehållsförteckning för September 2021 från Procycling

There can be no doubt that the strongest rider won the 2021 Tour de France. Tadej Pogacar has been displaying Merckx-like tendencies and consistency in stage races ever since he won last year’s yellow jersey, and his passage through this year’s race looked almost serene. He won the first time trial and the two hardest summit finishes of the race, and there was one single tiny moment of weakness, so close to the top of Mont Ventoux as to make no difference, in the three weeks. Pogacar was not just the strongest of the pre-race favourites. He was also the only one to get through the complicated first week unscathed. One by one, the contenders fell by the wayside as crashes and more crashes piled misery on the peloton in…

“I’m glad I don’t have to do Mont Ventoux again this year” Ben O’Connor reflects on his one off-day at the 2021 Tour, page 114 NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 3.9.21 TOUR DE FRANCE 2021 Cycling’s success gap keeps growing There was a very clear divide between the successful teams at the 2021 Tour de France and the also-rans. The wins were concentrated in a small group of outfits. In recent history, there tend to be between 10 and 12 teams who win stages; however this year only eight teams did so. Four teams won 15 of the stages between them, leaving slim pickings for the rest of the field. And with Tadej Pogacar winning the yellow, white and KoM jerseys for UAE Emirates, Mark Cavendish of DQS taking green, Jumbo-Visma’s…

I was born in Lithuania but I come from a Polish family. The place where I was born connected me to Lithuania, but all my family is Polish; one grandmother came from Belarus. Until I was six or seven years old I lived in Lithuania and then I started school in Poland. I was living with my grandparents for a few years, because my mum was working hard in Poland and trying to find a better life for us. My grandparents took care of me very well, but I missed my parents. We moved to the south of Poland to a little village, Turnitsa - this is close to the city of Rybnik or maybe you know Katowice. There I got a new family, a second father, and then later…

Following the nationals and my announcement that I would be retiring, I needed to drop everything, without thinking about the bike, or the pros and cons of my decision. It’s weird when, after several weeks of hard training, recons and racing, things come to a halt. Announcing the end of one’s career is liberating, but actually being at home, facing up to the decision and thinking about the future is a different thing. You have to consider the next steps in your life and put yourself in the shoes of a man who is no longer a pro cyclist. It’ll be different from what has become the norm for me over the last 10 years, but I’m also looking forward to it. I’m a bit nervous of life off the…

The first time I saw Tadej Pogacar at the grand départ in Brest; I recall how he rolled onto the stage to great fanfare, though not as great a fanfare as the Breton riders, of course. Even then, I had to remind myself that off the bike, Pogacar’s probably a normal 22-year-old kid, liking memes, spending his time in WhatsApp chats and hanging out with his girlfriend. But when he’s on a bike, he’s someone - something - else entirely. I settled on the analogy of royalty pretty early on in my writing about him because I felt it fitted. As he stood there on a stage occupied by breakdancing French children not too long ago, his eyes peered out at all of us, his face the picture of relaxation,…

During the campaign for the 2007 French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate for the incumbent Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party, is reported to have said, “Je m’en fous des Bretons” (I couldn’t give a sh*t about the Bretons), which might explain why his opponent, Ségolène Royal, carried three of the region’s four départements. It’s easy to imagine that almost all of the GC favourites for the 2021 Tour de France might have expressed similar or even stronger sentiments, if not about the people of Brittany, then about the region, its roads and the all-pervading sense of chaos that permeated the opening four days of the race. The 2021 grand départ was marketed as a homecoming for cycling to one of its heartlands, and after the eerie and…

2014 PARIS CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES 89KM THE FIRST EDITION It was fitting that the rider to win the first edition of La Course was someone who played an integral part in getting it created. Marianne Vos was part of Le Tour Entier, a group who campaigned and petitioned ASO to create a women’s race at the Tour, and she also won the race’s inaugural sprint in Paris. Held on the same day as the final stage of the men’s Tour, the race featured 13 laps of the famed Champs-Élysées course, with Vos beating Kirsten Wild and Leah Kirchmann to the line. LEAH KIRCHMANN “I still remember how big that event was. The whole lead up was so big with the petition and I think it really showed a lot. The riders really…

On the longest day of the year the Earth’s axis tilts towards the sun to its highest point, providing the most daylight of any time. According to the Latin translation of summer solstice, the sun literally ‘stands still’. The axis of the Tour de France definitely felt like it was shifting on the longest day of the 2021 race, also the longest for 21 years, on stage 7, as the peloton travelled 249.1km from Vierzon to La Creusot, although standing still was the last thing anyone seemed to have on their minds. With four climbs in the final half of the route, the stage was always predicted to be a day for the breakaway, but few would have bet on the yellow jersey being among the A-list riders who got…

THURSDAY JULY 1 Tours › Châteauroux 160.4KM The Loire valley is full of chateaux, many of which are largely ornamental, that were built in the 16th and 17th centuries by the richest people in France, including one in Amboise occupied by the royal family. Ornamental is what we thought Mark Cavendish might be at this year’s Tour de France, a decorative turret on a Deceuninck-Quick Step team without Sam Bennett. Yet the 36-year-old proved himself to be the best sprinter at this year’s race with his second stage win in a row, comfortably beating Jasper Philipsen and Nacer Bouhanni in Châteauroux. It looked straightforward in the end, as Cavendish switched onto Philipsen’s lead-out train and then outpaced everyone else. Incredibly, the Manxman has won three out of the four times…

SATURDAY JULY 3 Oyonnax › Le Grand-Bornand 150.8KM A raging storm hit the 2021 Tour de France as the race arrived in the Alps for the first real test in the mountains. The rain that soaked the peloton almost all day did nothing to dampen Tadej Pogačar’s parade as he unleashed a long-range, 30-kilometre solo attack, blowing away his rivals by over three minutes at the finish line and storming into the yellow jersey. The Tour’s first mountain stage is typically a cagey affair, as GC riders daren’t play their cards too early. But with the day again characterised by any lack of real order, the first 80km were instead marked by repeated attacks. Even Pogačar got in on the act. At one point he ended up in the breakaway…

The Rhône Valley city of Valence, which straddles France’s greatest river on the border of the baked plateaux of the Ardèche and Drôme départements, is a relatively modern addition to the Tour’s itinerary. It only made its first appearance in the Tour in 1996, and the 2021 visit was only its fifth, which is curious because it is perfectly positioned as a waypoint between the Alps and Pyrenees - on a clockwise Tour, it’s an ideal distance for one day’s racing from the Alps, and then you can turn right into the Massif Central or left down the Rhône and into the Languedoc. It’s also the chef-lieu, the departmental capital, so you’d think the Tour would have visited more often, but the city has obviously had a complex relationship with…

Who knows how that day on Mont Ventoux would have gone had Jack Haig and Geraint Thomas and Primož Roglic not crashed out of contention? Had it not felt like the rest of the race was simply a coronation for Pogacar after stage 8? Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard may have well been pulling for their leader, disposable and yet indisposable, shielding him from the wind, all lined out in their wasp colours, as the threat of attacks loomed. Instead, on the day, they find themselves in unusual conditions. Van Aert, not known for being a particularly gifted climber - though he is more than competent - is perhaps among the least likely candidates to contest a Ventoux stage, much less a double Ventoux stage, and yet the man…

My helmet is far too big and I have to knot my hair in a bun to get it to be snug around my face. The driver speaks no English, but he’s good to me anyway. I zip up the jacket, pocket my phone, which is all I’ve brought with me. I’ve never done this before. Being on the back of a motorbike seems illegal but isn’t. Zip zip zip over the rolling hills and the only thing keeping you from certain death is some handles near your butt and the force of the air coming at you, giving you some stability, some false sense of security that’s easily reset every time you come to a speed bump. We stop at kilometre zero, pull off, and watch them gun it…

SUNDAY JULY 11 Céret > Andorra la Vella 191.3KM The thin air, well maintained roads and low taxes of Andorra have drawn pro cyclists in their hundreds recently. According to one estimate, 37 Tour starters alone live in the principality. Many, therefore, knew exactly how hard this first big Pyrenean stage of the Tour would be. This was the day the pattern of the 2021 Tour solidified into its final shape. Tour followers had seen Tadej Pogačar‘s brief moment of weakness on Mont Ventoux and wondered if Jonas Vingegaard could prise open the small gap that he opened at the top of the Giant of Provence. The answer came today, in the negative. Pogačar’s UAE team still didn’t quite control things in the way that the Ineos Grenadiers did, and…

WEDNESDAY JULY 14 Muret › Saint-Lary-Soulan Col du Portet 178.4KM The road to the Col du Portet is a beautiful one. Lower down, the D123 climbs steep and straight over the Vallée d’Aure from Saint-Lary-Soulan. As the road rises above the treeline, the final stretch, paved for the 2018 Tour, rises through green meadows. But the sublime backdrop does not hide the fact that this is the hardest climb in the 2021 Tour. Though he had a five-minute lead, had already won the time trial and looked to have the race won, Tadej Pogačar still had unfinished business as the race contemplated the penultimate summit finish of the 2021 Tour. He still had not won a road stage, nor had he ever won a stage while wearing the yellow jersey.…

Israel Start-Up Nation It sounds strange but you get used to suffering. Of course, the body gets very tired. In the time trial [stage 20], for example, I think I did a quite good and hard effort but you just feel your heart rate doesn’t come up any more. You can go, let’s say, where your threshold is, or a little bit over it, you can ride for a long time, you get used to suffering, but you miss little bits of freshness, you cannot go so deep any more, and go out for one or two minutes all-out. When my body is like this, I know when I’m pretty tired. Also mentally, you spend nearly a month away from home. Last October I became a father, and my son…

Astana-Premier Tech This is my seventh Tour, my 16th grand tour, and what’s hitting me particularly hard at the end of this particular race isn’t day-today tiredness. It’s mental fatigue, starting with the exhaustion you feel when you’ve seen it all before. Unless a team has something special to celebrate like a stage win - and this year very few have, and we’re not one of them - each day feels exactly the same: breakfast, bus, race, bus, hotel, massage, eat. sleep, repeat. Again and again and again. Then there’s the same pressure of being in the Tour, the same huge level of expectations, the realisation just how important it is for the sponsors and the team. Add the lack of changes in your daily routine and no wins, and…

FRIDAY JULY 16 Mourenx › Libourne 207KM Due to a lack of controlling sprint teams and so many teams being without a win at this year’s race so far, the penultimate road stage of this year’s Tour had an anarchic quality to it. A small early breakaway of six went up the road and it looked like it would be reeled in order for the bunch sprint that the largely flat stage called for. However, after the intermediate sprint things kicked off in the peloton. After numerous moves, a group of 14 joined the others already up the road. One of the original six was Matej Mohorič, already a stage winner at this year’s race, and again he simply proved too strong for the others. With a break this powerful,…

SUNDAY JULY 18 Chatou › Paris Champs-Élysées 108.4KM The fairytale was not to be for Mark Cavendish in Paris, as he was beaten into third by Wout van Aert in the bunch sprint, denied a chance to win a recordbreaking 35th Tour stage win. But the Belgian has been busy writing his own story this Tour, and in adding a bunch sprint win to his mountain and time trial stage victories at this year’s race, he has produced one of the most rounded set of results the Tour has seen for a long, long time. If a fairytale is a story of wonder, it felt like we had very much still witnessed a bit of that on the Champs-Élysées. STAGE RESULT GENERAL CLASSIFICATION POINTS CLASSIFICATION KOM CLASSIFICATION YOUTH CLASSIFICATION TEAMS…

Instinct, pure instinct is what I saw in the last kilometre of stage 18, which finished in the Pyrenean ski station of Luz Ardiden. There was no reason to hit hard. Tadej Pogacar’s lead was comfortable with more than five minutes over the surprise of this Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard. The day before, Pogacar had won the stage on the Col du Portet. His team worked hard for this one and winning the queen stage in the yellow jersey was the finishing touch on his Tour, at least that was what I thought. Now it was time to divide and conquer. That’s what I learned growing up watching the Indurain Tours, and later the Lance Armstrong era. Even in the Tours I’ve ridden, things worked mostly like this. The…

What was going through Matej Mohorič’s head when he celebrated his victory on stage 19 of the Tour de France? Crossing the line, he appeared to zip his lips and then put his finger to them, in a silencing gesture. It was undoubtedly linked to his team, Bahrain Victorious, being raided by French police in Pau and put under a preliminary investigation into doping allegations. The Slovenian said it was “just a sign to show to people that question our performance to be mindful that we are making huge sacrifices with our work, with our nutrition, with our training plans, with our race plans, with all the time we spend away from home in training camps”. Mohorič was understandably displeased with the treatment of his team, but his reaction and…

For various reasons, I won’t go on about the very enjoyable, pressure-free subject of whether or where, I have a job next year. Instead, I thought I’d talk about something that a lot of people don’t consider because it doesn’t tend to happen to the biggest riders often and so isn’t on the front pages. As pro cyclists we have a lot of goals in the year, sometimes even to be on form for all the race days of the year, so 60-odd big goals in a season. But sometimes it’s much more precise than that. For example, I know a lot of riders who spent months planning and then preparing for the Tour and the Olympics Games. This normally gets you in peak form for at least the moment…

1st Stage, Tour of Algarve 2019 Tour of Algarve 2019 Stage, Tour of California 2019 Tour of California 2019 Slovenia National Time Trial Championships 2019, 2020 Stage, Vuelta a Espana 2019 (3) Stage, Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2020 (2) Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2020 Stage, UAE Tour 2020, 2021 Stage, Tour de France 2020 (3), 2021 (3) Tour de France 2020, 2021 UAE Tour 2021 Stage, Tirreno-Adriatico 2021 Tirreno-Adriatico 2021 Stage, Itzulia Basque Country 2021 Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2021 Stage, Tour of Slovenia 2021 Tour of Slovenia 2021 2nd Stage, Basque Country 2019 Stage, UAE Tour 2020, 2021 UAE Tour 2020 Slovenia National Road Race Championships 2020 Stage, Tour de France 2020, 2021 Stage, Tirreno-Adriatico 2021 Stage, Tour of Slovenia 2021 3rd Stage, Tour of Slovenia 2019 Vuelta a Espana 2019…

SATURDAY JUNE 26 Brest › Landernau 197.8KM Chaos derives from the Greek word khaos, meaning a vast chasm or a void. In the modern vernacular, this has evolved into a term that describes disorder or confusion. Bike racing is used to the latter, especially in the opening days of the Tour de France. The two huge crashes which brought down many riders were examples of the disorder that can be caused at any moment, by a touch of wheels, or a fan holding a sign which Jumbo-Visma rider Tony Martin simply could not avoid. Yet every Tour begins with the original type of chaos - khaos - too. The biggest bike race in the world begins with a vast chasm of infinite possibilities, which the riders are tasked with filling.…

MONDAY JUNE 28 Lorient › Pontivy 182.9KM The first week of the Tour de France has long been chaotic, a collection of days more manic and more stressful than any other during the season. Still, few days during the grand départ have descended into disorder in such a way as this. There were multiple crashes and high-profile abandons as the peloton wound through Brittany on what should have been a straightforward first opportunity for the sprinters. Five-time stage winner Caleb Ewan abandoned with a broken collarbone after hitting the ground hard in the final kilometre. Bahrain Victorious leader Jack Haig went home with the same injury in a separate incident a few kilometres before on a narrow, twisty bit of typically Breton road, while Jumbo-Visma’s key domestique Robert Gesink was…

It must be the sound that comes first when a big crash happens. The screeching of brake pad on disc, the clatter of carbon fibre against carbon fibre, the dull thud of bodies hitting the ground. While light travels quicker than sound, for those unsighted behind the incident, it must be the noise that hits them first, causing the peloton to brace, brake hard, and hope for the best. When the bunch is travelling at any speed, there is little time to react. These milliseconds must be scary. The crowd silenced as the seriousness of the situation becomes clear. Maybe there are cries of pain, maybe professional riders are simply used to being thrown against the ground against their will. This year’s Tour de France seemed to have an unusual…

We use the phrase ‘animating the race’ quite a bit in cycling journalism, to describe a kind of stirring, a moment of excitement, rather like uncorking a bottle of champagne or whacking a wasp nest with a broomstick. Beneath the surface of the term lurks the implication that a bike race is often static, something that requires a certain activation, a tension needing release. In the modern day peloton, that’s perhaps more true than not. For years, we have seen the increased professionalisation of cycling. Once a sport of individual glory, now it’s more a game of brinkmanship and marginal gains backed by technological, nutritional, and tactical arms races. Cyclists ride to control the race for their leaders, who often wait in the wings for hundreds of kilometres until their…

SUNDAY JULY 4 Cluses › Tignes 144.9KM The past and present of cycling clashed openly on the second Alpine stage, as Ineos Grenadiers set up a mountain train en route to Tignes, in the hope of unsettling and isolating the race leader Tadej Pogačar. Perhaps, in the second consecutive day of torrential rain and chilly temperatures, Ineos were hoping that their leader Richard Carapaz could reprise one of the team’s old hits: Egan Bernal’s ascent to the yellow jersey in 2019, the last time the Tour came to Tignes. That day, a landslide prevented the stage finishing. This time Ineos came up against a different force of nature, as Pogačar took everything the British team threw at him, like a rocky mountain slope absorbing rainwater, and then unleashed his own…

TUESDAY JULY 6 Albertville › Valence 190.7KM If the first time was a one-off, and the second time was merely a win against weak opposition, then the third was proof that Mark Cavendish really is back, and that his Deceuninck-Quick Step team is the strongest at the Tour. His third stage win came as a result of a lead-out train that was reminiscent of the glory days of HTC-Highroad, with some true A-listers putting all their effort into helping the Manxman across the line in first for the 33rd time at the Tour. The French race defines Cavendish’s career, and it is fitting that the latest act of a storied career has come at the world’s biggest race. Julian Alaphilippe, in the world champion’s rainbow bands, put in a lot…

THURSDAY JULY 8 Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux › Nîmes 159.4KM The Tour really began to look different on stage 12, as the second week kicked in. With the general classification put to bed until the race hit the Pyrenees, this was a case of teams who had not yet performed on the grandest stage trying to get in on the act. What was pencilled in as a definite sprint stage was quickly reshaped as a break of 13 strong riders made it clear up the road. Once they had gone, the peloton gave up, allowing their lead to drift to almost 16 minutes by the end of the stage. Of the 12 teams represented in the day’s big break, just one had previously won a stage at this year’s race. All of Israel…

How’s the Tour going for you both now we’re at the second rest day? Danny: For me, it’s going well. The first weeks were not so good to sprint, but I’m feeling better. I’m suffering like all the sprinters but I’m feeling better and better. The last sprint I was fifth, and two more sprints to come and I’m looking forward to it. Boy: The first stages were, of course, really hectic, like everybody saw, with a lot of crashes. At the moment it’s going a bit more relaxed, not so many crashes but still racing really fast and like Danny said, for the sprinters it’s suffering on the climbs and hoping to make it to another flat stage. You’re both back at the Tour for the first time in…

When the 2021 Tour de France route was revealed last year, fans with long memories might have noted that parts of it looked like a compilation of Mark Cavendish’s greatest hits. Fougères, the finish town of stage 4, was the location of his 26th number one in 2015; Châteauroux, two days later, was an even more important part of the Cavendish narrative - it’s where his first and 17th stage wins happened. Nîmes (win no. 4) and of course Paris (nos. 10, 15, 20 and 23) were also on the itinerary. Not that anybody was considering at that point the possibility of Cavendish even being at the Tour, let alone adding any stage victories to the career total of 30 he’d been frozen on since 2016 - a lot of…

THURSDAY JULY 15 Pau › Luz Ardiden 129.7KM Of the nine riders who have won atop Luz Ardiden prior to this year’s Tour, in Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong, three are riders who not only won the yellow jersey multiple times (obviously, Armstrong’s were later taken away) but were the defining Tour rider of their era. As Tadej Pogačar crossed the line atop the same climb, the final mountain of the 2021 Tour, for back-to-back wins, it cemented his long-held position as the race’s leader and confirmed what’s long been known; the Tour has entered the Pogačar era. The last climb came down to the three strongest riders in the race in Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Richard Carapaz, even if nothing disrupted the order in which they sat.…

Qhubeka-NextHash Put it this way, one topic of conversation between me and my room-mate is that in this race’s third week, we’re so tired we’re finding it harder and harder to climb up the team bus steps, let alone anything longer. In the first week we were bounding up the bus stairs barely noticing they were there. Now I’m always counting the number of times I have to go up and down them. Having to eat food can be a big hassle if you’re exhausted, but actually here it is not so bad. However that’s more due to the team chef being very inventive and keeping the menu varied than my having an appetite. On the other hand, when you’re riding flat out for a month, there’s no getting away…

A Jumbo-Visma rider finishing runner-up to Tadej Pogacar at the Tour de France isn’t a result many were surprised by, but few expected the rider to be Jonas Vingegaard rather than Primož Roglic. To say that the young Dane exceeded expectations is an understatement, but then the foundations for his breakthrough performance were there this year. The 24-year-old was already enjoying his best season to date before arriving on the startline in Brittany, having won four races this spring. Among his standout results was a summit finish stage win at the UAE Tour, and second overall at Itzulia Basque Country, both of which came at the expense of… Pogacar. Still, Vingegaard wasn’t necessarily thought of as the rider who could step into Roglic’s shoes at the Tour. When looking at…

SATURDAY JULY 17 Libourne › Saint-Émilion 30.8KM (ITT) At last year’s Tour, the stage 20 time trial produced one of the most unexpected U-turns in the race’s history. It was a finale that was going to be hard to replicate when the GC battle had been effectively sewn up since the first week of the race ended. Tadej Pogačar even let out a friendly laugh when asked, on the eve of the stage, whether nearest rival Jonas Vingegaard could produce a similar result. As it was, the 30.8km rolling course left the top 10 in the general classification completely unchanged by the end, although Vingegaard did claw back 25 seconds on the yellow jersey. Rather, it was the pure specialists who dominated proceedings. Three-time U23 TT world champ Mikkel Bjerg…

In the mottled evening sunlight, I stand by the side of the Champs-Élysées, waiting for the first harbingers of the race to pass me for one last time. At one end is the Arc de Triomphe, through which the massive draping bloom of the French flag can be seen. At the other, the Tuileries, the gilded tip of its obelisk casting a glare in fine point. It occurs to me that this will all be over soon. There’s some criticism that the last stage of the Tour shouldn’t be so processional, as though the sprint teams don’t spend their energy pulling back whatever last ditch attempts go off in the race’s final hours. It’s fitting to me that Ide Schelling, who was in the first ever breakaways of this Tour,…

30 The number of Giro d’Italia Donne stages Marianne Vos has won, after she triumphed on stage 7 of this year’s race. The Dutchwoman won her first in 2007, and is 19 wins ahead of the nearest active rider, Annemiek van Vleuten. “Being mocked and bullied in the gruppetto today was one of the worst experiences I’ve had in a bike race” Heidi Franz speaks out about bullying in the back group at the Giro d’Italia Donne. The American, who rides for Rally Cycling, said that people were being mocked for merely trying to make the time cut. Colombian moves Although transfers aren’t officially confirmed until August 1, the rumour mill is still spinning feverishly. Sergio Higuita will reportedly join Bora-Hansgrohe at the end of this season, and is being…

If I had to compare Tobias to somebody, I would say he’s a little bit like [Tom] Pidcock, maybe. One of the new generation type of guys, who is winning a lot of stuff. He has a good sprint, he climbs well, and is explosive, coming across from cyclo-cross and mountain biking. We have been looking at him and his brother for a long time. I also have a background in mountain biking, so we always knew about them. We reached out to them, and asked if we could help them because we saw they were big talents. The development team that we have is now a Conti team, but last year was more like a training group, and did some climbing programmes. They’ve almost changed to road full time…

Adapt or perish. When things go awry in a stage race, you still have to wake up and race the next day. I avidly followed the Tour de France and was frequently shocked and intrigued by the saga, twists, travesties and triumphs. At the very same time, flying under the media radar, was the women’s Giro Italia - 10 days racing across the north of Italy to the Slovenian border in the fight for pink. With very little to no live TV nor hungry journalists lurking around the team bus, the public is rarely privy to the inner workings of the women’s peloton. It is the only ‘grand tour’ the women have for now, therefore unique stories emerge. I love the idea of taking each day as it comes, going…

The rain that soaked the 2021 Tour de France peloton in the two big Alpine stages, to Le Grand-Bornand and Tignes, was an apt metaphor for the effectiveness with which Tadej Pogacar doused the ambitions of his rivals for the yellow jersey in that single weekend. The precipitation was not as dramatic as the highlylocalised deluge that triggered landslides and a truncated race last time the Tour came to Tignes in 2019, but this time a different force of nature bent the race to its will. As the favourites’ group started the Col de Romme on stage 8, the first mountainous day, race followers could still imagine that the Tour was alive. And theoretically, at that point, it still was, though a week of chaotic racing, crashes and even UAE…

The mood at the base of the Côte de la Fosse aux Loups, the final climb of the 2021 Tour’s first stage, is electric. Whenever anything passes by, be it the police on motorcycles or an advertising float for olive oil, something sizzles and sparks in the crowd, most of whom are clad in those cheesy Leclerc polka dot shirts. Everyone is happy, thrilled to be here waiting, together after so long. Breton flags dangle and mingle with cutouts of yellow jerseys strung from roof to roof. Children in bucket hats stumble about on the hillside. People put away their umbrellas, staples of the unstable Breton weather, the mottled sky still threatening rain. Around the curve at the base of the climb is a stone berm, massive; behind it, cloistered,…

SUNDAY JUNE 27 Perros-Guirec › Mûrde-Bretagne Guerlédan 183.5KM The D767 north out of Mûr-de-Bretagne is arrow-straight and climbs in the kind of undeviating line beloved of the road builders of Rome and of French civil engineers. It rears up the hillside, direct and uncomplicated by curves or any attempt to mitigate the steep gradient. So it was apt that Mathieu van der Poel applied a similarly direct approach to racing up it. There was little finesse in his approach - he attacked on the first time up the climb and covered attacks by Nairo Quintana and Sonny Colbrelli. Riders often talk about having one bullet to fire in a race; Van der Poel had already shot thrice before the defining pull of the trigger. His final attack was simple and…

TUESDAY JUNE 29 Redon › Fougères 150.4KM The story of the day was undeniably Mark Cavendish winning his first stage at the Tour since 2016. Yet this would deny Brent van Moer the recognition he deserves. The young Belgian was in a two-man break from 138km to go, and managed to stay out in front of the peloton until 200m to go. The agony of having a minute’s advantage with 8km to go, to see the finish line, and then be swamped by the onrushing bunch, was there to see. Van Moer ended up 49th, but should not be forgotten, despite the Cavendish hype. After he had won the stage, after he had stood on the podium, claimed the green jersey and finished his media duties, Cavendish was taken to…

WEDNESDAY JUNE 30 Changé › Laval Espace Mayenne 27.2KM The first of the 2021 Tour’s two time trials was always going to provide an early indication as to the hierachy of the GC riders. But few expected defending champion Tadej Pogačar would lay down such an early marker to reclaim his yellow jersey, emphatically winning the stage, putting significant time into all his rivals and confirming his status as the rider to beat this year. Decked in the same white jersey that he wore when he won atop La Planche des Belles Filles last September, the Slovenian stormed around the 27km flat course 19 seconds faster than European TT champion Stefan Küng, who had been the favourite to take the stage and could only watch it disappear from the hot…

FRIDAY JULY 2 Vierzon › Le Creusot 249.1KM Le marteau-pilon du Creusot, the Creusot steam hammer, is a relic of the industrial past of the Saone-et-Loire city. Built in 1877, it was the world’s most powerful hammer, capable of delivering a blow of 100 tonnes. In a living demonstration of Le Creusot’s transition from industrial powerhouse to tourist destination, it is now one of the city’s most popular attractions. Race leader Mathieu van der Poel might have cracked a wry smile at Le Creusot’s high-impact machinery. He applied a blow of equal pressure to the defending champion Tadej Pogačar, whose UAE Emirates team took their eye off the ball when a 28-rider break including Van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Mark Cavendish, Vincenzo Nibali and many more very strong riders…

The speed at which the Tour de France peloton swishes through the French countryside is mirrored in the cadence of the entire circus’s daily relocation and reiteration. Within an hour of every finish, grandstands have not only been vacated but dismantled; whoops, hollers and “ooh-la-las” have been replaced by a grunting, clunking orchestra of barriers being tossed onto lorries; the race hasn’t yet physically left town, but its spirit is already being yanked towards the next destination. So it goes, day after day. Withering, relentless. I have been aware of this process, not so much witnessed it - because no one really watches - for the last 20 years. So when it is suddenly halted like it is at Tignes, you notice. I, we, everyone notices. It’s well over an…

WEDNESDAY JULY 7 Sorgues › Malaucène 198.9KM Wout van Aert has long proved himself to be the most versatile rider of his generation having won sprints, cyclo-cross races, monuments and time trials, but, still, few would have predicted the Belgian to be the rider to win the showpiece mountain stage of the 2021 Tour, featuring two ascents of the historic Mont Ventoux. The Giant of Provence has a history of producing unexpected events, and while Van Aert proved his credentials as a domestique in the high mountains last year, this was incomparable to any of his other victories, on one of the steepest and hardest climbs in France (and also a day after he finished second in a bunch sprint). Julian Alaphilippe was the instigator of the break, which swelled…

FRIDAY JULY 9 Nîmes › Carcassonne 219.9KM The sprint with which Mark Cavendish won his fourth stage of 2021 and the 34th of his career was a living metaphor for his trajectory through the year. With 600m to go, the front of the peloton was a hot mess. Cavendish’s Deceuninck team had controlled things well until that point, but their rivals knew that in a straight sprint, the Brit was much faster, so they tried to complicate things. DSM’s Nils Eekhoff attacked around the outside of a bend, pulling bodies forward and swamping Cavendish, boxing him in and putting him somewhere around 10th or 12th place. Cavendish’s 2021 has been a whole series of improbable events. He had to scrabble to get the DQS contract, then scratched around in the…

SATURDAY JULY 10 Carcassonne > Quillan 183.7KM Some of this year’s big breakaways have been categorised by the number of riders in them who with a little bit more talent, or luck, could have been general classification leaders for their team. Whether this is because of the strength in depth of this year’s peloton or the emergence of younger talent is an unanswered question. Bauke Mollema is one of those riders, having finished sixth on GC at the Tour in the past, and third at the Vuelta too, but he has never quite cracked it and, at 34, the battle for the overall appears to be behind him. His talent is not up for debate, however, and his victory on stage 14 of this year’s Tour was taken in the…

TUESDAY JULY 13 Pas de la Case > Saint-Gaudens 169KM The three-act structure of narrative divides stories into three parts; start, middle and end. The third act is meant to offer a climax to the conflict, and then resolution. Stage 16 was the beginning of the end of the Tour, the first of three days in the Pyrenees, the third and final act of the race. Except the memo didn’t seem to be passed on to the GC riders, who were content to all but neutralise the stage leading to an anticlimax. With four climbs, including the cat-1 Core and cat-2 Portet d’Aspet, the stage always looked suited to a break but there was still ample ambush territory if GC riders wanted to try. Kasper Asgreen and Michał Kwiatkowski were…

Team DSM I am feeling alright post-Tour. I’m pretty knackered, but it’s nice to have got it done, nice to be finished. However, I’ve got a hard three weeks behind me now. I don’t have any experience of other Tours, I did the Vuelta last year, obviously, and this was another level, really. I expected the first week to be crazy, and it was, but it never really stopped, it never chilled out. Every day that could have been a breakaway saw a big, big fight, and it seemed like pretty much everyone after a week or two was capable of winning a stage, and so they all fought for it. Maybe the Vuelta wasn’t more relaxed, but the level just wasn’t quite as high. Whereas on one day at…

EF Education-Nippo At this point my state of fatigue is pretty extreme, but in any Tour in the third week, operating in that area becomes the new normal. You just have to carry on because we have a job to do, and it’s the Tour too, so you find the motivation. In the third week, it’s much more a mental battle. You’re exerting yourself so much throughout the day that every little bit of extra minor inconvenience seems like an impossible effort. Doing the recon on the time trial felt like it took forever. I’m finding it particularly tough when I get to the hotel room and with all the stuff you’ve got to do it’s already 11 o’clock and you’re getting up at seven the next day. Sometimes you’d…

Grand tour cycling and test cricket have a lot more in common than you might think, for two sports that look and operate in such completely different ways. Both have a complex narrative that ebbs and flows. There is the impact of outside factors such as the road surface, the pitch, the weather, and the time of year. These affect both cycling and cricket in a way that just does not happen with a game of football, for example. One crucial part of both cricket and cycling is the mental fortitude and patience that is needed to succeed, especially if you are a rider looking for a finish high up in the general classification, or an opening batsman trying to dig in at the start of the match in order…