Sunday
In the sweltering heat of Carcassonne, just as everybody finishes work and heads off to dinner, there’s a red card. Sky’s bad boy, Gianni Moscon, is booted off the race for swinging a punch at a French rider. Cue frantic rewrites and take-out pizzas all round.
Monday
Journalists, fans (and onlookers from the supermarket across the road) crane their necks in the garden of the Carcassonne Campanile. What has Sir Dave Brailsford learned about tact and diplomacy after spending a week sledging French mayors? “Spitting – that’s a French thing, innit …” Dave blurts, as if suffering from cycling’s equivalent of Tourette’s.
Tuesday
The peloton heads into the Pyrenees for the first of three monstrous mountain stages. But before the race really gets going, protesting farmers block the road and are dealt with by pepper spray-wielding, baton-toting gendarmes. The drifting cloud reduces even Chris Froome to tears.
Wednesday
Everyone is excited about the first summit finish at the daunting Col de Portet. After the stage, plans for the riders to descend to their team buses in the ski lift are binned, which is why Froome ends up riding down and then sprawled on the road, dragged off his bike by a panicking gendarme.
Thursday
Inexplicably a flat stage, sandwiched between a triptych of mountain stages. Peter Sagan is the centre of attention, having crashed on a descent the day before. “I flew into a forest and hit a rock with my arse,” he explains.
Friday
One last day in the mountains for the unflappable Geraint Thomas to survive. The French media can’t quite figure the Welshman out. In a tortuous bid to explain to colleagues from French radio, I compare his dry, understated wit to that of Rob Brydon’s. This doesn’t really help.
Saturday
It’s my final buffet breakfast of this year’s race. Contrary to popular belief, the modern Tour is not for gastronomes. I can’t take any more flattened croissants, hard-boiled eggs or bad coffee. All the suiveurs of the Tour – the drivers, writers, cameramen and production crews – are running on fumes. Thomas isn’t though and close to the shores of the Atlantic, where it all started four weekends ago, he seals victory in the 2018 Tour de France.
