Dali! Hemingway! Picasso! Er, Elton John! Things get surreal as the Vuelta a Espana heads to Salvador Dali country, and little - if any - of it is related to the racing of bicycles. Doncaster celebrates a Grand Tour victory, presumably while Visma Lease-a-Bike were too busy filling in the insurance paperwork after their entire fleet of race bikes evaporated so we wonder just how hard can it be to fit a decent bike lock. Almost as hard as fitting a GPS tracking device in Romandie, it would appear.

Photo: The Team Time Trial is one of the most spectacular sights in cycling, as demonstrated by Team Sunweb as they power through the equally spectacular salt lakes at Torrevieja on the way to a third place on stage 1 of the 2019 Vuelta. Credit Zac Williams/SWpix.com

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France is still where it’s at as David, Chris and Gary look back on another historic Tour de France Femmes, but is the race grand enough not only for its name but for the women who light it up every summer? We have thoughts! Red Bull Remco Evenepoel opens our perennial salary cap discussion and we start passing the envelope around for Tadej Pogacar’s retirement collection. Don’t worry, it’s still a while off!

Photo: Anna Van Der Breggen on bottle duties, back at the Dutch team car during the 2021 UCI World Road Championships. The 157.7km run from Antwerp to Leuven would be won for Italy by Elisa Balsamo, who held off Van der Breggen’s team mate, a charging Marianne Vos, in the final. (Photo by Kristof Ramon - Pool/Getty Images)

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The Champs Elysees is dead. Long live the Champs Elysees! After 3 weeks, 21 stages, 3302km and 14 stage winners, Gary, Chris, David and John actually find 5 things to talk about that aren’t Tadej. But he gets a mention anyway.

Photos: The first and the latest riders to win on the Champs Elysees, the similarities between Walter Godefroot’s 1975 season and Wout Van Aert’s 2025 prior to them winning in Paris are striking. Busy Classics season and early stage races had yielded very little by way of results for either racer until the biggest race of the year arrived in Paris. (Credits: Getty)

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After 8 stages and 947km of racing, last year’s Tour de France Femmes came down to just 4 seconds on the Alpe d’Huez. With an extra stage and more names in the frame for the GC battle, Gary Fairley previews this year’s race.

Music: A Month of Sleep - “So Alive”, courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

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Greg Lemond’s first Tour de France victories are writ large in the history of the race; his duel to the (almost) bitter end with team mate Bernard Hinault in 1986 and then snatching the Yellow Jersey from Laurent Fignon by a mere eight seconds 3 years later.

Twelve months on from that momentous, historic afternoon on the Champs Elysees, Greg Lemond won his third Tour de France and in doing so joined an exclusive club alongside Philippe Thys, Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault. 

Gary Fairley looks back at an edition of cycling’s greatest race that passes almost unnoticed in the shadow of Lemond’s other 2 wins.

Music: A Month of Sleep - “Starry Eyes”, courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

Executive producer: Chris Sidwells

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Stunned by actually calling the second week’s play correctly, the team are both full of admiration for the Rumena Majica and just a little bit full of themselves. Collective back-slapping aside, Chris, David and Gary try to remember the last 5 stages while simultaneously keeping one eye on the Tour's upcoming final week. Whither Remco Evenepoel? Whither Jonas Vingegaard? And should pro cyclists have a 15 minute time-out between finishing a stage and speaking to the media? Lidl-Trek probably think so!

Photo: This year’s Tour began in the Hautes-de-France region, birthplace of Amédée Fournier, seen here taking a well-deserved rest during the 1939 edition. Fournier won the opening stage from Paris to Caen and again on stage 5 from Lorient to Nantes. We reckon this photo is taken in Toulouse after a gruelling 311km stage 9 trek across the Pyrenees to Pau. The race would be won by Belgian rider, Sylvère Maes - the second of his pair of Tour wins. It would be 3 decades before another Belgian would with the Tour de France. Yes, you guessed, Édouard Louis Joseph Merckx. (Credit: AFP, Tour map (inset): ASO)

Links

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Crosswinds, crashes and chaos marked the opening few stages of this year's and there seems to have been no let-up in the crazy ever since. Walker from Yellowstone wins a stage and leads GC but will things be more Rip Wheeler than Beth Dutton in the second week?

Gary, Chris, David and John look back at a most atypical first week and ponder wether in trying to improve his Tadejness, has Jonas lost some of his essential Jonasness and for just how long will Irish eyes keep smiling as the battle for the Geansaí Buí picks up as the Rás na Francach moves into the Pyrenees?

Photos: The Angel of the Mountains, Charly Gaul, takes it easy, no doubt dreaming of Alps and Pyrenees. The Luxembourger won 10 stages of the Tour between 1955 and 1961 and won the race in 1958. Credit: unknown.

Tour de France Map (inset): ASO

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Richard Oakes was a successful junior racer before pursuing a high-flying business career. He returned to top-level competition in 2019 in a personal quest to see how fast he could go. In the course of doing so, he has won masters titles on the track at national and world level and in 2023, at the age of 54, set a new Masters Hour World Record.

In 2025 he published The Equation, co-written with our very own Chris Sidwells. Richard sat down with Chris recently to talk about the book which isn’t so much a memoir but a manifesto you build for your life.

You can buy The Equation on the Ohten or Cycling Legends website:

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In April this year, the world of cycling lost a giant and the Cycling Legends family lost an uncle, a friend and an inspiration when legendary British racer Barry Hoban passed away at the age of 85. 

Barry rode no fewer than 12 Tours de France between 1964 and 1978. He would go on to win 8 stages along the way, setting a British record that would stand until Mark Cavendish surpassed that total in 2009

In 2022 Chris Sidwells sat down with Barry to record a series of chats about his first experiences of riding cycling’s iconic races.

In this episode Barry talks to Chris about riding his first Tour de France, in support of no lesser name than the great Raymond Poulidor in 1964. That year’s race would be eventful for both riders, but I’ll let Barry tell you about that.

So enjoy the chat. Vive le Tour and vas y Barry!

Photo: Barry Hoban (number 15, nearest) would spend his first Tour in the service of no lesser talent than Raymond Poulidor (number 19). Both would go on to have an eventful race. (Credit: via Chris Sidwells/Cycling Legends Collection)

Episode Music (title/closing): A Month of Sleep - “Starry Eyes”, courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

Book: Barry’s autobiography, Vas y Barry! is available now from the Cycling Legends store

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Is it all over before a wheel has turned or will there be some twists and turns on the road from Lille to the Champs Elysees, 50 years after the peloton first graced cycling’s second-most famous cobbles?

Join the team and a very special guest to preview the 112th Tour de France. No matter what, we think it will be a cracker!

Image: ASO

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