Sunday
We wake early on the banks of the Rhone watching huge barges slide south, before driving on wild roads across the plateau of the Haute-Loire, past the distant volcanoes of the Puy de Dôme, to Brioude, Romain Bardet’s home town. The press room goodie bag includes a perfume titled Operation Seduction in the Land of Romain Bardet, but even that can’t conceal the whiff of disappointment now enveloping the local hero.
Monday
The Tour takes on a familiar shape as Team Ineos put their rivals to the sword in crosswinds gusting across the Tarn on the rolling roads to Albi. At the finish line there are tantrums and curses as Geraint Thomas again seems the man to beat. King of the Gallic hissy fit, Thibaut Pinot, can barely speak while others around him and bien sur, Bardet, hold their heads in their hands. Only Julian Alaphilippe, still in yellow jersey, hangs tough with Thomas and co. It’s a sign of things to come.
Tuesday
The first rest day and my hotel does not do service washes. But the Tour now has its own premium priced laundry service, so I waltz into the press room with my bulging bag of smalls. There’s an embarrassing downside, though, as the Tour’s chef du linge gingerly pulls out each item, one by one, bagging and tagging, in full view of my smirking colleagues.
Wednesday
Dave Brailsford’s ill-advised comments about relishing “sticking the knife in and twisting it” as his riders fight to take control of the Tour, have predictably not gone down well in the French media. “Did he really say that?” I am asked several times. A year after Chris Froome was booed and cursed for three weeks, his words seem provocative. Things at the roadside are calm, but then this is different – a Frenchman is winning, for now at least.
Thursday
Chaos and confusion surrounds the fate of Rohan Dennis, the Australian time trial specialist who’s dramatically left the race as it enters the Pyrenees. Later he arrives at the finish line, agent in tow, fending off reporters. After a shambolic press huddle with Dennis’s monosyllabic Bahrain-Merida team manager, the team bus crunches into a Jumbo-Visma van as it leaves the scene. Louis van Gaal, VIP guest lanyard dangling around his neck, watches on, unamused.
Friday
D-Day for Geraint Thomas: the day when the defending champion is widely expected to assert himself in the individual time trial in Pau. But the opposite happens as Alaphilippe leaves his rivals open-mouthed in astonishment with an unexpected twist of that knife that increases his overall lead and causes two opposing reactions: swooning among the French and scepticism elsewhere. “I knew that a yellow jersey changed you but I didn’t know it could make you fly,” says Alexandre Vinokourov, manager of the Astana team.
Saturday
Stage 14 and never, since Bradley Wiggins’ Tour win in 2012, have the British team gone so deep in the race without a rider wearing the yellow jersey. Pressure is mounting on Thomas and his teammates as Ineos’s billionaire sponsor, Jim Ratcliffe, arrives while Emmanuel Macron also turns up, banging the home drum and bigging up Alaphilippe’s chances of ending the host nation’s 35-year drought.
