SUNDAY
Coutances The Tour passes through the Normandy town where, at the Café de la Gare, the journalist Albert Londres met the Pélissier brothers after they had abandoned the 1924 race. The brothers, Francis and Henri, railed against the demands made by the race organisers in a stream of consciousness captured by Londres in an article entitled Les Forçats de la Route, “Convicts of the Road”, a term still used to describe the men of the Tour, although fortunately their successors no longer describe their toenails falling off or the use of “cocaine for the eyes, chloroform for the gums”.
MONDAY
Angers After the Grease video, the mountain bike stunts and the cryptic one-liners, Peter Sagan gets serious, echoing Mark Cavendish’s complaints about the dangers of the sprint, with the overall contenders plus their team‑mates getting in the mix. Cavendish names Sky as culprits. Dave Brailsford tells the sprinters - in brief summary - to lighten up. The organisers point out – reasonably – that if overall times are taken any distance from the finish to keep the yellow jersey favourites out of the sprints, the public will be confused. This will run all the way to Paris and beyond.
TUESDAY
Limoges The stage leaves the city of porcelain (and the eccentric 1994 world champion Luc Leblanc) via Saint Léonard de Noblat, the home of Raymond Poulidor, whose elbow-to-elbow battle on the Puy de Dôme with Jacques Anquetil remains a defining image of cycling’s golden age in the 1950s and 60s. “Poupou” is 80 this year, never won the Tour, but remains one of France’s most popular sportsmen, proof, as a glowing tribute in L’Equipe notes - without a hint of cynicism - that “what you win counts for less than the image you project.”
WEDNESDAY
Le Lioran Today’s winner and yellow jersey, Greg Van Avermaet, epitomises cycling in his native Flanders in one key sense: family ties matter in a very small world. The BMC Classics specialist’s grandfathers, Aimé Van Avermaet and Kamiel Buysse, raced as professionals, so too his father Ronald, not to mention his brother-in-law, Rik Verbrugghe, the only possible family issue being that Rik is a directeur sportif at rival team IAM Cycling.
THURSDAY
Montauban Mark Cavendish’s 29th stage win victory is a statto’s delight but Dan McLay’s third place underlines how rare it is for two British sprinters to contest a Tour stage; Ben Swift managed sixth on a stage to Cavendish in 2011, while John Clarey - moustachioed, lanterne rouge and sponsored by a small British bike company - finished fifth to Barry Hoban’s second on stage nine in 1968, the last Tour contested by national teams.
FRIDAY
Lac de Payolle Day after day through the first week, the camera placed behind the peloton has shown the same image: 35-year-old Steve Cummings “punching tickets” – as the cycling jargon has it – in last position in the string, for mile after mile. This goes completely counter to all cycling wisdom, which holds that the front is the place to be. Cummings, however, feels it is less stressful sitting “last wheel” as he will avoid crashes. Who can argue with that after his win today?
SATURDAY
Luchon L’Equipe runs a buttocks-and-all snap of Oleg Tinkov, the banker who sponsors Alberto Contador, having a fresh-air shower after taking a mid-Tour bike ride. A flunkey with a watering can standing on the team car provides the shower, while a camera films the scene. We are a million miles from Albert Londres’ “convicts”.
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This article was amended on 15 July 2016 to correctly place Coutances in Normandy, not Brittany.
