When Lenny Martinez was asked over the winter what advice he'd give compatriot Paul Seixas about how to handle a sharply increasing weight of expectations this year – and now in the Tour de France – he barely had to think twice.

"I'd tell him not to listen too much or too hard to what the outside world is saying," the Bahrain Victorious racer said. "Never go on social media and start reading what the people are saying; think about yourself and what you like as a racer; don't get hung up about things.

"If you can win - great; if not, then, so be it. And finally, don't get pulled in too many different directions at the same time."

That Martinez knows what he is talking about is obvious: just a few years ago, he was being held up by home fans as France's next big hope to re-conquer the Tour and put the host nation back at the top of the cycling world.

Now that unofficial role, and all the stress that goes with it, is centering much more on Seixas. However, no matter who the star that gets put on a pedestal, the issues that lie beneath it about managing expectations remain the same. And as top riders get younger and younger, it becomes increasingly important to ensure they have the right strategies and the right protection from their teams to shield them from excessive pressure.

Asked what his favourite tactic is to avoid getting overwhelmed, Martinez says, "Motivation is my biggest resource. If I'm motivated and the team has lots of faith in me, whatever happens, that helps me to do better.

"They tell me to do the best I can, and if I don't get the win, then that's just how it is. Then if I do win, then so much the better."

Given Martinez is only 22 and set for the Tour de France for a third time this year, he recognises his squad offers him a lot of critical support in handling those expectations. And so, too, does teammate Antonio Tiberi, another key young hopeful who will carry a lot of Italy's expectations on his shoulders this July.

"The thing I need the most from a team is tranquillity. If they transmit calm, if they show they believe in you, that's the most important thing, because then when you have that mental stability as your base, you perform much better," Tiberi tells Cyclingnews.

"When your work is valued, and the technical support is there as well, it automatically allows you to boost your performance level. It makes you think as clearly and as well as possible. It helps the team stay calm as well.

"So the team has to give you a lot, but you have to remember to give back something to them as well. It's always 50-50."

A two-way street between rider and team

If handling that two-way street of communication and mutual confidence-building between team and rider is increasingly important, that's where a staff member like Bahrain Victorious performance manager Rod Ellingworth can be key. And having taken on similar responsibilities at Ineos, Sky and British Cycling beforehand, Ellingworth recognises that keeping the younger riders like Martinez and Tiberi free from excessive expectations and pressure currently forms a critical part of his job.

"For one thing, I don't allow any outside influence to affect me at all," Ellingworth says when asked to explain how he walks the fine line between keeping the pressure at bay, but not getting the riders to sleep on their laurels, either. (He too – and it's surely no coincidence – is a keen believer of Martinez's recommendation of not following social media at all.)

"All I'm interested in is encouraging the team around me, the staff, coaches and sports directors to do their absolute best to support the bike riders, so that's one part of the job. Are we doing our best with what we've got? Do we wake up every day and do our best? Yes or no?

"Then the other side of the job is to get the riders into a position where they understand what's expected of them, so they understand what it's going to take, they understand the gaps that they have now to where they want to be.

"After that, then it's about the negotiation of 'What's it going to take you? What's going to stop you from being able to achieve that goal?'"

Originally brought in by Bahrain to work most closely with Martinez, who feels he has benefited from their relationship – "He sees lots of things I don't," Martinez says – Ellingworth took on a much broader role at the team at the end of 2025 to handle a lot more of the performance side. Since then, he's been heavily involved in the process of establishing clear expectations without overstating them.

In the case of Bahrain, that began back at the first training camp for 2026, when the entire squad spent what Ellingworth calls "a massive session" regarding the country's reasons for sponsoring the team.

"When you look at what the sponsors value, it's things like the WorldTour rankings so you can't ignore that, either, and it helps guide us a little bit on what the expectations will be and how to tackle the season," Ellingworth says.

Then it comes to the biggest target of them all, the Tour de France. Ellingworth says that with someone like Tiberi or Martinez, part of handling the pressure in July is not even in the race: riders will manage it better if they have gone for other goals beforehand. And that strategy helps keep the team on their toes as well.

"It's not like, we're just gonna aim for the Tour de France, and that's it, and you get there, you crash, and you have nothing for the season," he explains.

"No, it's like from day one, come on, bang, let's go. Let's get racing. At the end of the day, we're a bike racing team, nothing else. More than numbers or the training, we're a bike racing team, and that's what we've got to do."

'A lot of people do the talk, but it's about the action you take'

Yet if Ellingworth is working on both keeping pressure at bay and helping riders achieve their goals, it might surprise some to hear that an important component of his management of those processes is by not being lax about discipline, either.

It's true that Ellingworth was also once famous back in the 2000s when he was running the British Cycling Academy for overseeing its notoriously tough 'boot camps' for young riders barely in their twenties. But whilst not intended to heighten the pressure, as Ellingworth explains, both now and back then, "The riders also set their own consequences. They signed up for it. They knew exactly what it was about."

Woe betide anybody turning up late for training rides, then, which has exactly the same consequences at Bahrain as it did back at the Academy training camp. The team, having warned the riders, will leave without whoever fails to be punctual.

"There's no bullshit in that, is there?" Ellingworth replies rhetorically when Cyclingnews asks whether he still stands by the same principles as back in the early noughties, in general, and that rule in particular.

"It's more about just setting expectations. I've been talking a lot about that with the riders, and I've been telling them – have some high standards for yourself. Set some rules and then let's just go for it, because if we're talking, a lot of people do the talk, but it's about the action you take."

Back at the Academy, Ellingworth says, "They were a group of young men you'd got to whip into shape a little bit. There's got to be some discipline within it.

"Here they're a little bit older, but there are still rules, and they'll still abide by the Bahrain Victorious way of doing things."

He gives a couple of examples where he pulled riders aside during a training ride and said: "Come on, tell me why you're doing that, I don't agree with it." One during what was supposedly a 15-minute all-out effort: "One rider comes past me, and he's got his phone out."

"I mean, they're all capable of doing an effort and looking at something on their Garmin, but this guy had his phone out. Well, he explained to me what had happened, and I go 'Yeah, I get it'. But I said I wanted to know and I brought him up.

"I didn't just sit and bypass it and think 'Oh well, it doesn't matter'. It does fucking matter. Because it's about applying yourself, and also – all these lads on their phones, all the time. It's like, no. Have a standard."

Yet it is always a two-way street for Ellingworth, to the point where he handed out an anonymous questionnaire this winter to the team's riders. "Because I want them to know what the direction is, and I want them to be part of the decision going forward. I want them to feel happy and comfortable enough to give me that honest feedback."

This year's Tour de France

On a specific level with Martinez, Ellingworth says, the raw material he had already shown huge potential. The Frenchman joined the squad at the beginning of 2025; he impressed with his level of progression, particularly how the young Frenchman won races in three different ways. That versatility "showed that he's a real winner, and he's got that killer instinct." But Ellingworth was also impressed by Martinez's willingness to move into a completely new kind of team.

"We were really happy with how he integrated. If you think that he's been with French teams his whole career before that, then he had the guts to come out of that and go into a very international team where of our 28 riders, we've got 16 different nationalities. And in 119 staff, there's 26 nationalities too. I don't know if there's a more international team," he says.

"For me year one was just about getting wins on the board as early as you can, but understanding the team as well. Yet also [before Bahrain] he said he's never had anybody talking to him about performance planning, all the 'how do you get the best out of yourself, how do you take the team with you' and so on.

"Slowly but surely he's getting it, but it takes time, doesn't it? And progression is just taking all that to another level."

So Martinez has shone in a lot of levels in 2026, yet while Ellingworth says he's hoping for a stage in the Tour de France this year, to call last year's Tour performance erratic would be no understatement. Dead last on stage 1 into Lille, Martinez slowly turned things around in the days and weeks to come, and that, Ellingworth says, is what makes him optimistic about the young racer for 2026.

"The first stage of the Tour, he was in pieces. He was just not on it, and it was not physical, purely a young man sort of trying to find his way through life a little bit. Looking at him, a French rider going into the Tour, there were five or six things you'd put together and go 'OK, there you go, you understand why. So God, yeah, he took a hiding at the Tour the first few days, but it just shows you his strength.

"OK, we didn't win a stage. But he bounced back in some areas; he made mistakes in others. I said to him, 'You can't fail here, maybe it looks like you're failing to the public, but in terms of your experience, it's invaluable, isn't it?' I think it's his time in his career where he's learning about who he is, what he can do."

When it comes to Tiberi, already much better established in the GC targets and with a hugely impressive win and spell in the lead at the UAE Tour this spring, Ellingworth is equally sure of his possibilities in his Tour debut this summer.

"For now, Antonio, it's up to him. He's got the potential, it's all there. He finished fifth in the Giro, so he knows how to survive the three weeks. We're all here to support him, and it's up to him to now really commit to this and show that it's not just potential, there's actually something in there. And I think he's capable of that," Eliingworth says.

"I had a tough year, a special one, in 2025, lots of highs and lows, and I didn't have the feeling I had in previous years," Tiberi says.

"There were some good moments like in Tirreno and the Tour de Pologne, but then in the big objectives of the Giro, where I crashed, and the Vuelta, where I was sick, I couldn't perform as I wanted to.

"Fortunately, I learned to handle this to take things as calmly as possible, try to be up there as much as I could and not make too many mistakes. So that was what gave me more courage and determination to look at 2026 with more willpower."

If it sounds as if Tiberi is more sure of himself, he, like Martinez, warns against the dangers of listening too much to over-expectations, but in this case, Tiberi warns against the riders themselves getting too ambitious, too soon and putting themselves under too much pressure.

"It's not easy. You need to be a bit diplomatic and sometimes you are scared to express yourself too much, then you could get criticised or attacked, about what the objectives are, and sometimes for not getting them. Of course you want to do the best work possible, but obviously, we're all human, too; we can have problems," he says.

"We're doing a sport where you have to be at 100% to get your objectives, so it's normal that thousands of things can affect you. A normal person gets a cold, for example, and that's it, but in our case it affects your oxygen intake. So even if it's just five per cent, that five per cent is what, in battles like ours, can make all the difference."

As for the rider with a key position in Bahrain's Tour hopes and coming back to the pressure he and Seixas now feel in France, Martinez says simply "I do what I can." But he also points out that he has faced an ever-rising tide of expectations.

"People always want more and more. But if you do achieve more, then people always act surprised and say 'What could he do on top of that?' Anyway, I know I have to concentrate on myself and not look at others.

"I learn more from victories, because you gain in confidence. When I took a stage win like in Paris-Nice last year, for example, then I knew I could do more. Each time you win something, you realise it's something more you can do."

And be it Paris-Nice or the Tour de France, that's as true in one race as it is in any other.

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Some editions of the Tour de France mark the start of a new era in the sport, when a new generational talent emerges or years of dominance suddenly end. Tadej Pogačar first made his mark on the Tour de France when he snatched victory from Primoz Roglic in the La Planche des Belle Filles time trial in 2020. In 1986, Greg LeMond ended Bernard Hinault's reign and stopped him from winning a sixth Tour.

Bradley Wiggins was the first British rider to win the Tour de France in 2012, but then Chris Froome did even better in 2013, going on to win the Tour four times. Pogačar is the favourite to win this year's Tour, but there is a sense we are about to see the start of the Paul Seixas era as the 19-year-old French super talent makes his Tour debut, with his potential set to be tested this July.

In 1996, there was a similar moment in cycling history. Miguel Indurain had won five consecutive editions of the Tour but was brutally dethroned by Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich as Team Telekom suddenly became a super team.

In 1997, Ullrich won the Tour, inspiring a boom in German cycling, but then the Festina Affaire exploded in 1998. Marco Pantani won the yellow jersey but then was disqualified from the 1999 Giro d'Italia after failing a UCI haematocrit test. It was the peak of the EPO era. Lance Armstrong transformed into a Tour de France winner and often defeated Ullrich at the Tour before the house of cards collapsed into scandal.

Renowned cycling journalist, television interviewer, and podcaster Daniel Friebe wrote the definitive biography about Ullrich's life and career: Jan Ullrich - The best there never was.

Friebe tells the story of Ullrich's rise from his East German roots, his breakthrough ride at the 1996 Tour alongside Riis, his 1997 Tour victory, and his battles with Pantani and then Armstrong. It also delves deep into Ullrich's links to Dr Fuentes and Operación Puerto, and into his troubled post-racing life that almost ended in self-destruction, before Armstrong helped his rival get his life back together.

"The 1996 Tour was a seismic moment in the sport. We all thought Indurain was invulnerable, and to watch him crack was incredible," Friebe says as he helps Cyclingnews understand the 1996 Tour and the story behind the Team Telekom squad that won the race.

"Few people thought Riis and Telekom would be the ones to win the Tour, but by the time they reached Paris, with Riis first, Ullrich second and Zabel winning the green jersey, Telekom were a big emerging power."

The success, lack of morality and ultimately the downfall of Team Telekom was overseen by Walter Godefroot and Ullrich's mentor and sports director Rudy Pevenage. Both came from the old school of pro racing in Belgium, and both facilitated the work of the doctors and riders to keep the millions flowing from the huge German mobile communications giant.

Riis pulled on the yellow jersey in Paris in July 1996, only to confess to doping a decade later. Many of his Telekom teammates soon did the same, a confession that helped them stay in the sport, but Ullrich held onto his lie for fear of losing his Tour victory. He eventually turned his life around and, in 2023, confessed as part of his rehabilitation.

30 years on from the 1996 Tour de France, Cyclingnews investigates where the Team Telekom riders are today and how their dominance in 1996 subsequently impacted their careers and lives.

Bjarne Riis

Bjarne Riis had already raced for 10 years and was 31 when he joined Telekom for the 1996 season. He had finished third in the 1995 Tour while with Gewiss-Ballan and was determined to complete his transformation from domestique to Grand Tour winner.

Friebe captured Riis' sense of ambition in his book, but also the doubts of his new teammates. "During the pre-season team presentation, Riis told the media: 'I'm going to win the Tour.' The other riders heard from an adjacent room and all burst out laughing," Friebe tells Cyclingnews.

"Riis' self-belief became a running joke on the team in 1996, but he proved to be right."

Indurain's demise in 1996 was a surprise, but it began on stage 7 to Arc 1800. Then Riis famously dropped everyone on stage 16 to Hautacam after slowing to look his rivals in the eye before powering away in a huge gear. Ullrich pulled back two minutes on Riis in the final Bordeaux time trial and finished 1:41 behind in Paris. He was a loyal teammate, and his Tour victory would come in 1997.

11 years later, Riis confessed to doping after revelations by soigneur Jef D'Hont and an investigation into the work of the team doctors who were part of the Sports Medicine Department of the Freiburg University Clinic.

There were calls for Riis to hand back his yellow jersey, but due to the 10-year statute of limitations, he could not be formally suspended, nor could his victory be cancelled from the record books. Riis showed some remorse but was allowed to stay in the sport.

He became the manager and driving force of Team CSC and then Saxo Bank-Tinkov for a decade, trying to take on Armstrong with Ivan Basso and Tyler Hamilton. He was accused of knowing that his riders doped and of doing little to stop them, but he worked with teams until 2020.

In recent years, Riis has become a television and media pundit in Denmark. As a team manager, he was known for his long silences and scowls during interviews but is now frequently in the headlines for his bold comments about Jonas Vingegaard and pro cycling.

Rolf Aldag

Aldag was a long-time domestique and core member of Team Telekom, racing for the team between 1993 and 2005. He was part of the 1996 and 1997 Tour-winning teams and doped like many of his teammates, but confessed and apologised in 2007.

When Bob Stapleton took over as team manager and tried to clean up the team, he wanted Aldag as a sports director and rider mentor. Aldag's character and experience meant he played a key role in Mark Cavendish's early years with the team.

"We drew a line and said, this is the past, and we draw the line here and make sure this never happens on this team," Aldag told Cyclingnews in 2008.

Aldag left the sport in 2011 when the team folded, but returned in 2015 and linked up with Cavendish once again as the Performance Manager at MTN-Qhubeka. He rose to become Chief of Sports at Bora-Hansgrohe but was replaced in 2025 after Red Bull came on board. He is now the Director of Sport for the women's Canyon-SRAM team and is based in South Africa when not at races or team camps. Aldag will commentate on the 2026 Tour de France for Eurosport Germany.

Udo Bölts

Udo Bölts was one of the hard men of 1990s German cycling and rode for Telekom between 1991 and 2002. He famously finished 12 consecutive editions of the Tour between 1992 and 2003.

During the 1997 Tour, Bölts famously shouted "Torture yourself, you pig!" at Ullrich as he suffered under the pressure of Richard Virenque's Festina team's pace-setting. Bölts helped save Ullrich's Tour victory, and the phrase became a sporting aphorism. Bölts even copyrighted the phrase and still uses it today to sell merchandise.

True to character, Bölts still rides a lot, mixing mountain biking with gravel and working as a guide at the Pfälzerwald Mountain Bike Park in western Germany. He has won Masters titles at the Cape Epic mountain bike stage race and UCI Gravel World Series events, and was third at the 2025 Masters Gravel World Championships.

Christian Henn

Henn turned professional with the legendary Italian Carrera Jeans team in 1989 after winning a bronze medal in the road race at the Seoul Olympic Games. He raced for Telekom between 1992 and 1999.

He retired after testing positive for testosterone but still found a place in the sport, working as a sports director for the equally troubled Gerolsteiner team that exploded in 2008 after several team leaders tested positive for the second-generation EPO variant CERA.

Henn was a sports director with the German Lotto-Kern Haus Continental team until 2021 but is now semi-retired.

Jens Heppner

Like Ullrich, Heppner came through the East German school of cycling and turned professional with Panasonic-Sportlife in 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He raced for Telekom for a decade, often sharing a room with Ullrich at major races.

He worked as a sports director for Team Wiesenhof after retiring in 2005. While many of his former Telekom teammates confessed to doping in 2007, Heppner continues to deny he doped, perhaps because of Heppner's close links to Ullrich.

However, in 2013, he was one of 18 riders named in a French Senate report that linked their 1998 samples to EPO in retrospective tests. The UCI said those results could not be used for disciplinary action. Heppner, who has never admitted doping, left his role at Team NetApp shortly afterwards and never returned to professional cycling. He now occasionally works as a cycling guide in Mallorca and South Africa.

Brian Holm

Holm was the chatty Dane amongst the more reserved German riders at Telekom. He was a friend of Riis but impressed Belgian team manager Walter Godefroot, securing his place at Telekom thanks to his results with the Roland and Histor teams.

Holm was a kind of bridge between Riis and the German core at Telekom, his sense of fun helping to lift the mood during the fatigue of the 1996 Tour. He retired in 1998 and so avoided the first doping scandals. He confessed to taking EPO at Telekom in 2007 when the Freiburg investigation exposed the true depth of Telekom's doping.

Ironically, he returned to Telekom as a sports director in 2003, shocked at Ullrich's lack of love for racing in the final years of his career. Holm soon bonded with Mark Cavendish and stayed with the Manxman for long spells of his career.

Holm was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2004 and was elected as a right-wing councillor for the wealthy Frederiksberg municipal council in Copenhagen, but worked as a sports director for QuickStep until 2022.

He is now a race analyst for Eurosport in Denmark and was in Italy to witness Jonas Vingegaard's victory at the Giro d'Italia.

Mario Kummer

Kummer was the veteran of the 1996 Telekom team, turning professional with Chateau d'Ax in Italy after winning the gold medal in the team time trial at the 1988 Seoul Olympics with East Germany.

Kummer only survived two stages of the 1996 Tour after crashing on stage 1 and fracturing his collarbone. His early loss highlighted how Telekom dominated the Tour even with just eight riders.

Kummer retired in 1997 but would work with Telekom as sports director until 2005. He joined Astana in 2007, but unlike several former teammates, he did not confess during the 2007 revelations. Kummer then worked for SRM and Uvex after he left pro cycling and now runs a holiday and coaching business, often staying at the same Robinson-Club Cala Serena holiday resort in Mallorca, where Telekom gathered for their winter training camps.

Erik Zabel

Zabel's sprint success in the 1995 Tour convinced Telekom to invest massively in pro cycling, leading to the success of 1996, Jan Ullrich's career and the eventual doping scandals and investigations that still cast a shadow over the sport in Germany.

Zabel famously won Milan-San Remo four times, 12 stages at the Tour and six green points jerseys between 1996 and 2001. He was forced to confess to doping in 2007 but claimed that he only took EPO once in 1996. Zabel raced until 2008, ending his long career with Team Milram. His son Rick would also become a pro rider.

Zabel was a sprint coach with several teams but was dismissed by Katusha and the Canyon brand after eventually making a much fuller doping confession in 2013, admitting to foul play between 1996 and 2003.

The German has been Canyon's Pro Sport Manager since 2017, acting as a conduit between the bike brand and its partner teams.

He arguably benefited from what could be called the Armstrong paradox. The Texan doped and was banned for life, but is still disliked and considered 'persona non grata' in the sport because of the way he bullied his rivals, the media and sponsors. Zabel is the opposite. He confessed a little, kept quiet, stayed friendly and kept a role in the sport.

Jan Ullrich

Jan Ullrich, like most of his Telekom teammates, eventually confessed to doping after going through a rollercoaster career that included taking EPO for the first time in 1996, helping Riis win the Tour and then winning himself in 1997.

Ullrich suffered and doped in silence as he battled with Lance Armstrong, the Texan's dominance and personal issues stopping Ullrich from ever winning another Tour de France. His struggles against Armstrong, with weight and his personal life, somehow made Ullrich relatable to millions of Germans and cycling fans around the world.

"He comes across as a kind of likeable guy. He's no Einstein, and he doesn't profess to be. He's a kind of simple guy, and that helps to endear him to people," Friebe tells Cyclingnews.

"There was forgiveness, and there could have been sympathy because he was seen as a pawn in a bigger game. He was this kid who was thrust into the East German system and then into a German cycling craze. I personally felt sympathetic towards him too while writing my book."

Ullrich is now 52 and has gone through some incredible highs and lows in his life.

Friebe spent almost a decade researching and writing his book on the man from Rostock. Ullrich was a talented East German teenager who won the amateur world title in Oslo in 1993, the same year that Armstrong surprisingly won the elite world title. He confirmed his talents by loyally helping Riis win the 1996 Tour and then dominated himself in 1997, beating Richard Virenque by over nine minutes.

He lost to Pantani in 1998 after suffering in the cold and rain on the stage over the Galibier to Les Deux Alpes. Then Armstrong came along, and not even a blood doping programme created by Eufemiano Fuentes could help Ullrich defeat the Texan. A gold medal in the road race at the 2000 Sydney Olympics ahead of Telekom teammates Andreas Klöden and Alexander Vinokourov was of little consolation.

Armstrong retired in 2005, but Ullrich raced on until the Operación Puerto scandal exploded in the summer of 2006. He was named and shamed before being stopped from riding the Tour de France on the eve of the race in Strasbourg and then sacked by T-Mobile. His DNA was later used to confirm that blood bags stored in Fuentes' fridge were for 'Hijo Rudicio - Son of Rudi'. Ullrich's code name was linked to his sports director and mentor, Rudi Pevenage.

Despite all the evidence, Ullrich went into denial, even when the Court of Arbitration for Sport found him guilty and retroactively banned him for two years and cancelled his results from May 2005 until his retirement in February 2007.

"I sat in the car driving home from Strasbourg thinking: That was it. It is all over. And it was. I was right. For the next four years, I sat in my house and looked out of the window," Ullrich told Rouleur years later.

A move to Mallorca with his wife Sara proved disastrous, and she soon left with their children. Ullrich lost control of his life due to alcohol and drugs, and in 2018, he was treated in a psychiatric hospital unit. Fortunately, Armstrong felt compelled to make an intervention to help his former rival and flew to Germany.

"I had big problems, and then you came to see me. I was so glad you came, and yes, I was just like Marco Pantani… nearly dead,” Ullrich admitted a few years later in one of Armstrong's podcasts, after a slow process to get his life back on track.

That journey to redemption included a full confession, and Ullrich eventually came clean in 2023.

"If I had told my story, I would have had many wonderful years. But I didn't have the courage. Now it feels good to admit my guilt," he told the German media.

Ullrich still believes he deserves to be considered the 1997 Tour de France winner, despite confessing to doping. Armstrong lost his seven Tour victories because of the so-called 'fraudulent concealment' and because his 2009–2010 comeback reset the clock.

"I know what I have achieved. Personally, I think I deserve the title. Others have to decide that. But in my heart I am a Tour de France winner,” Ullrich said.

A return to riding his bike helped Ullrich get his life back on track, and he is now a popular figure in Germany.

He has 460,000 followers on Instagram, a new podcast with Rick Zabel and is the star of an annual Jan Ullrich Cycling Festival. His agent and PR people offer him as a corporate speaker, claiming he "stands for attitude, honesty, and the strength to get back up after setbacks." His doping is rarely mentioned, while he is still considered the only German Tour de France winner.

"I've been surprised since he has come clean how quickly public opinion has flipped," Friebe, who is based in Berlin, told Cyclingnews.

"I think time is the biggest healer. Until 2022, there was a sort of tension between Ullrich and the German public and German media. Everyone was desperate for him to confess, and until he confessed, he wasn't going to be allowed back into public life. Now he is."

Much like the appearance of mince pies on supermarket shelves, it seems that races that are nominally Tour de France warm-ups get earlier every year. Even with this preparation creep, I cannot remember a year when any race before Opening Weekend had the eyes of the world on it, viewed through the lens of La Grand Boucle.

The Tour this year starts with a team time trial, a format that according to Alex Dowsett, Performance Engineer at XDS Astana, has been on the decline for the last half decade. Choosing to open the biggest race of the year with this underutilised discipline, rather than slotting it at, say, the end of the first week, allows teams the chance to bid for the coveted yellow jersey immediately, and as such there has been renewed focus from many teams on specific preparations.

Paris-Nice featured a TTT, flying the flag for the unorthodox newer timing format where each rider gets an individual time, rather than the whole team given the time of the fourth or fifth rider, and not to be outdone the Critérium du Dauphiné (or the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, if you must) also featured one this year, no doubt in a bid to lure the biggest riders to its roads for a final tune-up, though an unsuccessful one.

The preparations for many teams, however, started in January, at a small series of one-day races in Mallorca, one of which was a TTT. I've already brought you a tech gallery, housing details of three unreleased (at the time) TT bikes, but I also took the opportunity while I was on the ground to sit down separately with Alex Dowsett, and Jonny Wale, Technical Performance Manager at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe to take a deep dive into the format, dynamics, and preparation needed to do justice to this most specialist of disciplines.

A resurgent discipline

Sitting in a hotel lobby in an out-of-season beach resort, I asked Dowsett his thoughts on the demise and recent resurgence of the TTT as a discipline.

"I think the reason TTTs took a back step was because it really showed the difference in rider rosters between teams in strength and depth, the depth of strength. And a team time trial really accentuates that," he said.

"You could say it's more like if you have a climbing team with riders more predisposed to be riding at 350, 400 watts on the front, because they're between 50 and 60 kilos, and you've got all of those versus a team who are 70 to 80 kilo riders who are riding 500 watts on the front… That, in a team time trial, is going to be a huge difference in time. And I think the reason that they took a back step is they were having almost too much influence on races, in terms of overall race results and the individuals who would win or lose races."

The ebb and flow of the popularity of the TTT seems to have been on Wale’s mind long far in advance of his joining Red Bull, along with Dan Bigham. A relative drought in the usage of the format, much like a suspicious lack of earthquakes in a tectonic zone, likely means something seismic is on the way.

"It's kind of why, when me and Dan first came to the team, we did put this big emphasis on it because you kind of see there's been nothing for three or three four years now…so oh, we're probably going to get one," Wale said. "I don't want to feel like an oracle, but one appeared. I'm almost certain this year and next year we'll have quite a few, and then it'll probably die back down again."

A new format

Usually the team time for a team time trial (try saying that fast three times) is taken on the fourth rider to cross the line, or a similar point back in the roster, and all the riders who finish get that time (those who were dropped earlier would still lose time).

This year, though, for the opening stage of the Tour, the format has been shaken up, with each rider receiving an individual time rather than a collective one. The team that wins is the team whose first rider finishes the fastest.

The popularity of this as a format varies from team to team, with Dowsett being in favour.

"I like the concept… I do think that's better than the minimum finishing requirement. It encourages a little bit more creativity too with pacing, which is nice, and with less consequence and less risk. So yeah, I think it’s a good thing. I think it eases the pain of the difference between big teams and small teams."

Wale, on the other hand, is less of a fan, and is of the opinion that it reduces the ‘team’ part of the discipline.

"Personally I'm not a fan of the rider time taken on the first rider approach. I think it's a spectacle, but I think the beauty of team time trialing is you have to finish with four or five, or however many they want to finish with, but you know, it's that you have to strategically, tactically maximise the seven or eight riders."

Team selection

As the TTT occurs on stage 1 of this year's Tour, the reward is not just the stage win, but the yellow jersey too. This, surely, will have an impact on team selection, though perhaps as times are individual it may be a case of simply delivering one's GC leader to the foot of the final climb for the short-ish sprint to the summit.

Team selection for the Tour is as much a factor of budget as it is the ideal squad. Dowsett outlines the difficulties of trying to factor a TTT into signings and rider development.

"Some of that then comes down to budget as well; [rider] salaries are the highest cost, and we've seen, now more than ever, that the salaries of a lot of riders are going up. Not all teams could afford this and sometimes have to be really smart with their signings; targeting youth, targeting potential rather than heavy hitters… Expensive hitters," he explained.

"And what then happens and when you must finish with four, you might have two super talents, and then they might be carrying two riders, whereas you might have another team with four super talents that can run to the finish. And the reality is, if you are at the final quarter or third of a team time trial, and you are those two really strong guys, you would likely be faster by yourselves than having to carry the other two."

For Wale, who likely has access to a greater number of 'expensive hitters' at Red Bull, Tour selection will be based to a not-insignificant degree on TTT performance, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.

"Yes, team selection will be dependent on team time trialling performance. If you've got two guys, they both do the same role equally as well for the 20 days, but the first day one guy will do a better team time trial, then you would bring him," he said. "But it's also a motivating tool once these guys understand what the demands of the event are, and what we're going to expect of them, then they've got six months to do their homework."

Curiously, despite having Remco Evenepoel in the squad, the focus appears to be primarily on the riders lower down in the roster. Riders who, it seems, can make or break the result.

"It's your, I'll call them 'second tier' riders within time trialing in these Tour squads, they're the guys that almost win it for you, because it's seven or eight guys.

"If you put Remco with seven, eight climbers who never ride a time trial bike, you're not going to win. So that was initially, when we came in, we really put that big focus in, even last year. That was all towards the Vuelta team time trial. It's aero testing these second level guys, and building the culture of it as well."

Collective benefits

Having a TTT on the cards from a long way out, with several opportunities to practice, means team selection (the long list at least) takes place further in advance of the Tour than usual to allow time for practice, be it in training or in these warm-up races.

While this has additional challenges in terms of rider management, according to Wale it also presents a brilliant opportunity to truly build a team atmosphere, rather than a collection of individuals working towards a collective goal.

"When you add that team element to it it really bonds emotionally with a lot of people. It makes them do the dirty work they don't want to do. They don't want to do a team time trial session on the turbo and in the rain, or they don't want to ride it two, three times a week. If you give them a purpose, because it's their mates, it's that collective bringing people together.

"It's not as simple as having the right watts per kilo; in the Tour you need eight boys that really believe in each other. And opportunities like these [in Mallorca] are the training sessions. Even the little things like spending extra time together in the cafe, in the restaurant, in their rooms, you know? It brings them together and builds that team culture."

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Hello again everyone!

When my coach informed me, after my performance at the Tour of Romandie, that instead of racing the Tour de Suisse I would go to the Dauphiné… my bad, the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (or TARA, as I will call it for the rest of this piece), I was initially quite apprehensive.

Although I had just earned my first WorldTour top 10 GC result, finishing sixth in Romandie, I felt like it was a potential step too far, due to the fact that the race is widely known amongst the pros for how hard it is, actually harder than a week of a Grand Tour.

My coach brushed it off and said back to me, "Well, you shouldn't have done so well at Romandie!" I couldn't really disagree with that, so I now had three weeks until the Tour de France preparation race, and not in my wildest dreams could I have expected what occurred.

But before I talk about my memorable week in France, I want to bring you back to the weeks prior to the race. My girlfriend is from Denmark, and due to the extremely busy few months prior for both of us, we hadn't seen each other for over two months. I pre-planned going to Denmark to see her many weeks before I knew I was doing TARA, so two weeks out I went and visited her for 10 days.

What struck me was that practically 80% of the peloton that was racing TARA was at altitude during this period, the majority of them in Sierra Nevada. Even my own teammates that were racing as well were up on a mountain breathing thin air, and there I was at sea level, at my girlfriend's house, riding around the rolling Danish hills around Vejle. I should mention the longest hill is about three minutes, so not ideal for mountain training. Yet, the most important factor for me during this period was the mental benefit of being around my loved ones. I still did my training; I still did a few active heat sessions, but the main point was that I wasn't feeling lonely and exhausted on top of a mountain.

My time in Denmark wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. While I felt extremely good on the bike doing my long endurance rides, I was really struggling to complete any form of harder VO2 efforts. I felt as if I couldn't push my body to its limit. I felt as if my head would just give up from the pain of the efforts.

I've experienced this a few times this year, especially after the passing of my younger sister in September last year. Some days I can wake up feeling completely 'normal', eat my breakfast, roll out for my ride feeling fine, but as soon as I start my efforts, I have no motivation. I felt emotional and weak. This happened one day while doing a hard VO2 session. I got roughly five minutes into my first set, and my body just gave up. I had a bit of an emotional moment on the side of the road as I felt sorry for myself, questioning why this was happening, and stressed over the fact I was racing TARA in a week's time. I spent the rest of the day feeling miserable on the couch, being comforted by my girlfriend.

Over the next few days, I slowly felt more like myself again, and together with my coach, modified my training depending on how I felt each morning and the mental state I was in.

'I went to the race excited for the week ahead with a smile on my face'

I won't lie to you, I was now feeling even more nervous about TARA after being mentally unable to finish any efforts for the last week, but I said to my coach I still wanted to race because it was something else for my brain to focus on, and my body still felt in good condition post-Romandie.

What is great about the systems that are in place at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is that information about the athlete is shared with all individuals working with the rider. So even though I only explicitly told my coach about how my head was feeling and the struggles I was going through during this week, that information was shared with my personal directeur sportif, my nutritionist, my doctor, and the wider coaching group.

I spent two days in Girona, my old European home, between travelling back from Denmark and going to TARA. My DS, Shane Archbold, a retired former professional who was in the Bora team for many years prior to the arrival of Red Bull, also happened to be in Girona over the same period. He asked if I'd like to join him for a ride before I left again, and the conversation that we had on this ride completely changed my outlook for the week ahead.

I hadn't seen Shane for a while. The only race we had done together this year was Tour Down Under, and he had just returned from the Giro. On this ride, Shane put it simply to me. I had already exceeded expectations this year, both from a personal standpoint and from a team standpoint. My performances at Catalunya and Basque Country delighted the team, and a sixth place in Romandie was the cherry on top of that that no one was expecting. Already to finish in the top 10 on GC as a neo-pro in a WorldTour stage race was a massive achievement. I could have ended my season there and been more than satisfied with my year.

So, Shane told me to go to TARA with a free mind. There was no pressure from the team; the only pressure I had was the pressure I was putting on myself. He said to go and have fun, race with a smile on my face, find my physical limits. He said to try something crazy, and if something crazy happens, that's amazing, but if you blow up and finish twenty minutes behind the winner, that's also great. He also told me to race with my sister on my shoulder, and use the thoughts of her as motivation to get the most out of myself.

This one-hour conversation I had with Shane completely changed my feelings. I suddenly wasn't nervous anymore; I didn't feel stressed, and the emotional feelings I had floating around for the last few days evaporated. I went to the race excited for the week ahead with a smile on my face, in a clear mental space, and with no pressure. I felt free.

As I mentioned, Shane said to try something crazy, and if something crazy happens, that's amazing. And well, we tried something crazy and something crazy did happen.

The day that changed everything

I think by the middle of the race, the majority of people thought they knew how the race was going to pan out. A great victory on the first day by EF's Alex Baudin put a Frenchman into the maillot jaune on day one. The TTT confirmed that the superstar riders were ready to battle it out in the mountains. Everyone was talking about the inevitable Paul Seixas vs Isaac del Toro showdown that was going to happen sooner rather than later, but stage 6 of TARA flipped the script.

As a team, we had highlighted this stage as a seriously good chance for Maxim Van Gils to win the stage from the breakaway, so he deliberately lost time on GC two days earlier in order to go up the road without any other teams panicking. What we didn't expect was a sixty-man breakaway, half of the peloton, to be riding away from the main peloton. What we also as a team didn't expect was for me to be in that group only 1:03 down on GC. But I saw from the front of the peloton a few extra Uno-X riders bridging to the breakaway and remembered what they did on the final day of Basque Country this year.

For those who don't know, here is a brief explanation: Uno-X put their entire team into the breakaway with Tobias Halland Johannessen and rode him into third on GC. I instantly thought this was my chance to make a move for my own GC result.

And so the chaos began. I could probably write an extra two thousand words about how the stage went, but I won't let you suffer through that, so here is the short version. The breakaway instantly started working together, and the time gap kept increasing and increasing. Maxim and I were staying together in the group, and we were both feeling good. We came to the first of two final climbs, and the group immediately shrank in size, and we had a ridiculous 4:55 on the chasing peloton. I knew by this point that, all going well, I would be in yellow at the end of the stage, but in my head the priority was to win the stage. So that's what we set about doing.

On the final ascent to Crest-Voland, Maxim reduced the group to three; I bridged across myself a few minutes later to make it four and immediately started setting a hard tempo to set Maxim up for a sprint. We rounded the final bend with three hundred metres to go, and Maxim and Tobias duked it out for the stage win, and I emptied myself to the line to have as much time as possible on the group of GC riders behind, flying up the mountain.

Firstly, the joy that came over me seeing Maxim with his hands in the air taking the stage win actually made me forget for a moment about what I had achieved, but as I rolled across the line and towards my soigneurs it quickly sunk in that I was in yellow. To be honest, I only thought Seixas and Del Toro were probably only a minute behind us, but one minute became two, and two became three, and 3:15 after I finished they came across the line.

In short, I could not believe it. I was in yellow at the biggest one-week stage race in the world, as a neo-pro, with two days left and a three-minute advantage. This already felt like a win for me. Compared to how I was feeling on the side of the road in Denmark crying because I couldn't understand why I was unable to complete my efforts, to a week later standing on the podium in yellow with my first iconic lion, it was amazing. I genuinely couldn't stop smiling, and together with Maxim, we watched each other up on the podium and enjoyed the success together.

This is where I've been told I announced myself to the cycling world. I went from a relatively unknown rider to suddenly having a real possibility of winning TARA. But I wasn't too concerned about what would happen. The position I was in I could have never imagined. I felt like I had won already. I felt no pressure for the last two stages of the race. All I knew was that I would give my absolute all to try and end with the best result possible, and as long as I did that, I could be proud of myself.

I feel I don't have to give a play-by-play recount of the final two days because I am going to assume most people reading this article also roughly know what happened on those final days. I fought my heart out to keep the jersey on Grand Colombier and only had an advantage of 42 seconds over Matteo Jorgenson, and the following day I suffered like a pig up the Plateau du Solaison and somehow managed to hold onto second on GC.

This was a career-defining result. The result does change my trajectory within professional cycling. It shapes the rider I hope to eventually turn into, and my name is now more widely known. I have the memories of spending two days in the maillot jaune, and they will stay with me for the rest of my life. As I am writing this article two weeks after the race, I've had enough time to reflect on the week and the result I achieved. I am incredibly proud of myself.

But my biggest takeaway upon reflecting was the realisation of how a positive, free, and relaxed mental headspace coming into a race is equally as important as the physical shape you arrive with. A part of me wonders if this side of the sport is often overlooked in pursuit of the smallest possible gains in order to be in better form than our rivals. I wonder if there is some sort of magic in this, enjoying time at home with loved ones, recovering well from racing, not destroying yourself everyday in training, and appreciating the ups and downs of life. It also feels weird for me to comment on this after only being in the WorldTour for six months, and it's something I will continue to think about, but what I can say for sure is that a free mind equals fast legs.

See you soon,

Luke

There is an overwhelming amount of scientific and anecdotal evidence that heat training works. So why doesn't every cyclist do heat training? In fact, one could estimate that only 10-20% of competitive cyclists heat train regularly. Perhaps you've tried a block or two of heat training before, but it can be difficult to stick to long-term. Science suggests that's where the greatest performance benefits lie, so why do we stop heat training?

Some athletes are scared of it – in a way, you can't fault them. The goal of a heat training session is to increase your core body temperature to at least 38.5° C for 30-60 minutes. Some sessions may be even longer or hotter, but the fact of the matter is, you are increasing your core temperature to flu-like levels.

Is this dangerous? I wasn't sure, so I went straight to the experts to learn about the intricacies of heat training. I spoke to doctors, physiologists, trainers, and athletes about the potential dangers of heat training. Anecdotally, heat training is like magic for many cyclists. But I've had many other athletes come to me saying that heat training didn't work for them, that it made them dizzy or fatigued.

There seems to be a fine line here, the border between physiological gains and pushing it too far. I asked experts about dizziness, fatigue, dehydration, iron levels, and even the effect that heat training could have on sperm count and fertility. The answers I found certainly surprised me.

Dizziness and fatigue

One of the most common concerns I hear about heat training is that cyclists start feeling dizzy partway through their heat training session.

This can be extremely off-putting especially if you've never experienced dizziness on the bike. Thankfully, most heat training sessions are done indoors on a stationary trainer, so there isn't a risk of crashing or riding off the road. However, dizziness is still a concern.

Aline Barre, Endurance Performance Lead at CORE (Body Temperature Sensor), said that "dizziness is a sign of overdoing it." If you're feeling dizzy, it likely means that your core temperature is too high, you are dehydrated, or you are pushing at too high of an intensity. When this occurs, lower your power, hydrate, turn on a fan, or step off the bike if you need to.

But sometimes, the fatigue hits after the heat session rather than during. Some riders end up with significant amounts of fatigue after heat training. Because they're riding in zone 1, they may think that heat training sessions are easy recovery sessions. While this may be true for experienced, heat-acclimated athletes, this isn't true for everyone. If you're new to heat training, or you've just begun a heat training block, your body might not be fully adapted to the demands of heat training yet.

The first adaptations occur after around five heat sessions, said Barre. These adaptations include, "decrease in heart rate, increase in sweat rate, and better performance in the heat. Female athletes may see more changes in heart rate, while males may see more changes in sweat."

Total heat adaptation takes 10-14 sessions, and Barre provided a beginner recommendation of "three weekly sessions for four weeks."

It's important to monitor your recovery and fatigue during and after heat training sessions. Dr. Kevin Sprouse, professional cycling consultant who worked for EF Education-EasyPost for more than a decade, said, "Heat training does have its downsides. Heat is an additional stress," on the body that, when used in the right dosage, "causes super compensation." Like any other training protocol, heat stress isn't necessarily the best thing for your body, but it can certainly improve your performance.

"Most things that are going to help you peak are things we don't want to do everyday or long term," said Dr. Sprouse. "If performance is the greatest concern, then you accept the trade off."

Professional cyclists don't do VO2 Max intervals and eat 150g of carbohydrates per hour 365 days a year. But in the right dosage, these are the kinds of practices that lead to significant improvements in performance. It all comes back to the basic training principle of progressive overload: you stress the body with a stimulus, then you allow your body to recover, and in that time it overcompensates and builds itself stronger.

Heat training-induced fatigue is not unlike any other form of overtraining. The biggest mistake that riders make, Dr. Sprouse said, is adding heat training on top of the training they are already doing. Heat training is a big stress on the body, so if you are already handling a heavy training load, the addition of heat training could push you over the edge. Instead, it's best to pull back on other aspects of training to allow room for heat sessions to fit into your plan.

Altitude training is more popular than ever, but still, most WorldTour riders are hesitant to heat train at altitude. Instead, many WorldTour cyclists do a block of heat training before altitude, then continue heat training in maintenance mode at the high-altitude camp. The difference we're talking about is five weekly sessions during a big heat training block, versus two to three sessions per week to maintain the benefits from heat training.

Another one of the most overlooked effects of heat training is sleep. Heat training can affect the quality of your sleep, and Dr. Sprouse said that he had seen many riders who struggle with sleeping during a heat training block. These riders were "always struggling with falling asleep," but a cooling mattress could be used to blunt this effect. In fact, Dr. Sprouse recommended a cooling mattress all the time, not only when heat training.

To maximise the benefits of heat training, you wouldn't want to jump in an ice bath immediately following an active heat training session. But you would want to cool your core temperature down before bed time, maximising sleep quality and day-to-day recovery.

The dangers of dehydration

One of the first things that you'll notice when you first start heat training is the changes in your sweat rate and volume. These physiological changes will make most athletes start sweating sooner, and end up sweating more in total. Despite the clean up job required, these changes are a good thing. Your body is becoming more efficient at cooling itself, starting that process sooner through sweat, and continuing to keep the body cool for long periods of time.

But with sweat comes dehydration, and this is one of the most common mistakes that athletes make when heat training. You will probably need to drink more than you think. In fact, you might need to drink more than you ever have before. There are no additional physiological benefits associated with dehydration during heat training, said Barre. Not drinking enough is needless suffering.

You can calculate your sweat rate in many different ways, and Barre said the best way to measure fluid loss is to "go onto a scale naked and measure how much weight you lost during the heat session."

Weigh before and weigh after, it's extremely simple. "Avoid more than 2% body mass loss during heat training," said Ross McGraw, CEO of CORE. That can take a few practice sessions to calculate, but the math is simple.

Most riders have a sweat rate of 1.5 to 2 litres per hour, but this can vary. During heat training, the "goal is to replace 150% of your fluid loss during and after the session," McGraw said. That means if you are losing two litres of fluid during a heat session, you should replace it with three litres of fluid over the next few hours.

We cyclists also know the importance of carbohydrates, and that applies to heat training despite most sessions lasting less than 90 minutes. "Carbohydrate needs are higher at higher core temps," Barre said, and we actually use, "10-20% more carbs in a heat session." Barre recommends always fueling during and or after a heat training ride due to higher carbohydrate oxidation.

There can be other changes to your physiology as a result of heat training. CEO of Nix Biosensors, Meridith Cass, said that your "sweat can begin having a lower sodium concentration with heat adaptation." Sweat rate and volume also varies between sports and environments, so you can't always use the exact same hydration protocol. A pro's hydration plan at the December training camp will not be effective during the hottest mountain stage of the Tour de France, for example.

If and when you experience dehydration, it's best to lower your exercise intensity and take on fluids with electrolytes. It's quite difficult to overconsume electrolytes while sweating and exercising intensely, but the other side of the spectrum is the extremely dangerous threat of hyponatremia. This is caused by under-replenishing electrolytes, mostly likely because you've been drinking pure water.

It is a, "safer bet to hedge on the higher electrolytes side," Cass said.

This made me think about the consumption of salts and potential effects on our overall health. With consistent training and exercise, consuming electrolyte-rich drinks isn't a concern. But there was one other topic that I had yet to explore. It took me weeks of research to find an expert on the subject, but I'm glad I did.

Does heat training affect fertility?

You may have heard the news that repeated sauna exposure decreases measures of sperm health and motility in men. You may also have heard that multiple weeks of intense cycling training causes similar effects on sperm health. Do you see where I'm going with this?

While we don't have a study that shows a direct link between active heat training and sperm health, "we can extrapolate from what's out there. The question is: does that matter?" Dr. Sprouse has seen countless studies on heat training and sperm health, but he did not at all seem concerned about a potential link between the two.

Anecdotally, there are millions of cyclists, men and women, who are having kids. A certain percentage of the population may struggle to get pregnant, but there doesn't seem to be a strong link between this group and heat training. If there seems to be an issue, the effects of heat and cycling on sperm health are, "entirely reversible. The spermatogenesis cycle is about 60-90 days," meaning that you can cease heat training or cycling for a few months if you're having difficulties conceiving, said Dr. Sprouse.

That is good news for any and all cyclists who dream of having kids in the future.

Is heat training worth it?

Heat training is like any other form of competitive sport training – when applied correctly and in the right dosage, heat training can help you smash your PBs and achieve your peak fitness level. But if you happen to overdo it, you will suffer the consequences.

It's just like strength training, VO2 Max intervals, or altitude training. If you go to the gym twice per week and complete a cycling-specific programme, you will probably make some significant strength gains. But if you start going to the gym every day and lifting the heaviest weights possible, it won't be long until you are burnt out or injured.

The same goes for heat training. Follow the right protocol at the correct intensity and volume, and it's more than likely that you'll make significant fitness gains. There currently isn't any evidence that going 'bigger' with heat training causes additional gains. The sweet spot seems to be three to five heat sessions per week for two to three weeks to build heat adaptations, or two heat sessions per week long-term to maintain those physiological adaptations.

In fact, you could argue that heat training is even better than altitude or strength training. Some riders respond to altitude and gym work better than others. But there are actually some riders who don't respond at all. Altitude training has actually made some riders worse, so much so that they refuse to go to altitude camps in the future. CORE has tested hundreds of professional cyclists, and there have been plenty of non-responders to altitude. But those same riders were all responders to heat training. Everyone that they have ever tested responded positively to heat training. Mads Pedersen, for example, generally doesn't train at altitude but can be found riding in a CORE suit.

That is the reason that many of the world's fastest cyclists are heat training. Why else would Tadej Pogačar or Remco Evenepoel be sitting on an indoor trainer on a warm and sunny day in Spain? They could be riding around in the mountains, but instead, they are wearing a sauna suit in the backyard, spinning away at 200w and making gains from heat training.

Today is the day many Specialized road bike fans will have been waiting for; the launch of the American brand's latest flagship race bike.

But no, it's not a Venge as many predicted. It follows in its many predecessors' footsteps (tyre prints?) and is called the Tarmac SL9.

Its launch has been a typically turbulent Tarmac launch. It started, as it often does, with an early digital imagery leak courtesy of a farflung retailer and the WeightWeenies forum. It was then followed by social media leaks courtesy of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's in-team photographer (who no doubt got a slap on the wrist before he duly deleted his post).

And it was then followed up by Dauphine spy photos courtesy of our very own Will Jones, who had to go full Daily Mail paparazzi and hide in a bush to get them, and was subsequently threatened on social media by a Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe mechanic. Fun.

What's new

At first glance, and second, the SL9 looks very similar to the SL8, but having been up close with one – I have one next to me right now as I type this – it's fair to say a lot of work has gone into the bike that will probably go unnoticed.

In fact, every single tube has been reshaped in some way. The ones that stand out the most, however, are:

• The seat tube now curves rearward to follow the shape of the tyre.
• The fork legs are now deeper and thus hide the deep 'speed sniffer' head tube.
• The seatpost has a narrowed section for extra aero gainz between the rider's legs.

In brief, that leads to a bike that is four watts more aero than its predecessor. The claimed frame weight is two grams heavier at 687g (size 56cm in Raw Carbon / Gloss Amethyst Frost finish), but full builds now start at 6.5kg thanks to lighter-weight components.

Tyre clearance remains at 32mm, but the specced option has bumped up to 30mm.

For today, the only version being revealed is the S-Works model. It's safe to say that more budget-friendly models will follow in due course, but today is all about the flagship product and as we gear up for the Tour de France, the team replica framesets too.

The equation of speed

When the brand launched the Tarmac SL8, it came with all the usual claims of being stiffer, lighter, more aero and so on, but quietly tacked on at the bottom were some calculations claiming it was 20 seconds quicker than the SL7 up the Col du Tourmalet or 128 seconds over the 294km course of Milan-San Remo. Without much context on how the brand landed on those numbers, they went largely ignored by most media and readers.

Returning to the present day, those claims are no longer tacked on quietly, but front and centre. Specialized has said it before, but this time it led its presentation with the statement: "Time to the finish is all that matters."

With that in mind, Specialized says the SL9 is "Fourteen seconds faster [than the SL8] over the last 80km of the final stage of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes," which conveniently is the stage in which FDJ United-Suez leader Demi Vollering lost the yellow jersey by four seconds to Kasia Niewiadoma.

I'm told that when Vollering heard the claim, she wasn't best pleased (in a 'thanks, but I wish you hadn't told me that' sense).

Specialized says that 'Time to Finish' is a "physics-based simulation output that predicts total elapsed race time over a specific real-world course, using measured inputs from aerodynamics, weight, rolling resistance, surface roughness, environmental conditions, and rider power. It is not a slogan. It is not theoretical. It is the result of measured data applied to real courses."

And that all takes us to Specialized's 10-year 'Equation of Speed' journey.

In 2016, Specialized hired Marcel Keyser from Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 team as a Senior Engineer for Race Simulation, and in the ensuing decade, he has developed a piece of software that looks at every force acting upon a cyclist, which he calls the Equation of Speed, effectively replicating software used in Formula 1 to predict lap times and guide the design of the cars.

The aforementioned sextet of inputs (aerodynamics, weight, rolling resistance, surface roughness, environmental conditions, and rider power) are also joined by other metrics such as tyre grip and rider skill.

A neat example is that Keyser can measure a rider's cornering speed using .FIT files, assign a cornering ability score to each rider, and then advise on their appropriate setup for an upcoming race – do they need the slower, grippier winter tyre when it's raining, or can they handle the 80km/h descent on the faster-rolling summer tyre?

With this software and by developing tests that measured each of these things in isolation, such as a test that measures the rolling resistance of tyres or the CdA of each rider on each bike, he could input known variables, and it would spit out a simulation telling him how long it would take a rider to finish a specific course.

How does that relate to the Tarmac SL9?

Specialized took this software, initially created to choose the optimal equipment for race day, and applied it to designing the optimal equipment for race day.

With key races in mind, Specialized designed the Tarmac SL8, and now of course the SL9 (as well as the recently released Crux) not only to be more aerodynamic in a wind tunnel or lighter on a scale, but to be faster to the finish line on a variety of important course profiles.

You could say that it went to a lot of trouble to land on the same end goal that most bike brands aim for: lighter, more aero, better handling. But Specialized will tell you the special sauce lies in finding the right balance with a measured, scientific approach.

I feel this points us towards the resurgence of a dedicated Specialized aero bike like the Venge. Specialized argues the Tarmac SL9 can be optimised via configuration, and for the upcoming Tour de France the riders will have three wheelset options: Rapide CLX III, Alpinist CLX III, and Rapide Sprint, which they can choose between depending on various factors.

But why shouldn't it also extend to frame choice? I struggle to believe that when designing a frame with specific courses in mind, one single design is optimal for Paris-Roubaix, a flat sprint stage, and the Col du Tourmalet concurrently. I shan't hold my breath, though.

The differences, in detail

I've used a lot of words there to explain Specialized's thinking. Now let's dig into what's actually changed.

Deeper fork

The most divisive feature of the SL8 - the protruding 'Speed Sniffer' head tube - has technically not gone anywhere, but thanks to a deeper fork, which Specialized is calling the 'Flow Fork', with its further-forward leading edge, the front end of the bike looks seamless once again.

Lower down tube

Behind the fork, the SL9's down tube has also been dropped slightly to better manage the airflow coming from the fork and the front wheel.

Narrower head tube

The 'Speed sniffer' head tube shape remains largely unchanged when viewed from the side, but head on it has shrunk by 4mm, bringing its frontal area down by 10 per cent. Of course, that's just the frontal area of the head tube itself, meaning the rider's total frontal area will be reduced by a much smaller percentage.

This led to a few design challenges for the Specialized team, as the reduced space meant less room for the brake hose to pass through the head tube around the steerer inside. As a result, the fork's steerer tube actually kinks to the right inside the head tube, then kinks back to the centre again at the top of the head tube. This allows the rear brake hose to sit alongside it.

Curved 'Win Fin' seat tube

It wouldn't be a Specialized Tarmac launch without a strange descriptor of one of its design elements, and this time it's the turn of the 'Win Fin' seat tube, which curves rearward and follows the shape around the rear tyre.

Specialized says that after studying WorldTour riders during the key parts of races where breaks are formed or races are won and lost, they invariably have ejected one of their bottles and are running an empty cage. As a result, the Tarmac SL9 was designed with this in mind, and this move alone is reportedly worth 0.5 watts at 45km/h.

Narrower seat post

North of the Win Fin is a new S-Works Rapide seatpost, which, incidentally, can also fit into the new Crux, and is narrower at the top half. This is essentially to remove material in an area where airflow is accelerated as it travels between a rider's legs.

Spec changes

Since my review of the Tarmac SL7, I have bemoaned Specialized's reluctance to embrace narrower handlebars, but there is at last some movement and improvement in this regard.

Previously, a 58cm bike would be shipped with 44cm bars, and the solution last time was to simply send cockpits in their own retail packaging so that shops could more easily swap them out when a customer wanted.

This time round, a 58cm bike will shipped with 42cm bars, but what's even better than that is that the measurement at the base of the hoods is now 36cm thanks to the flare of the Rapide cockpit. That's much narrower than they would have been on Tarmacs of old, where a 42cm outside-to-outside bar would still be around 40cm at the hoods.

In addition, all bikes now come with shorter cranks, to the tune of 2.5mm shorter across the board.

Bikes still ship with the 15mm offset seatpost, so those looking for the 'modern' aero position with an effective steep seat tube, short cranks and narrow bars will probably be looking to swap this out, which is possible but not without the support of an amicable bike shop.

But I can see why Specialized didn't flip the well-loved geometry of its flagship bike on its head to appease a growing-yet-still-small subsection of the market. Maybe that's where the Venge fits in.

The other change I really appreciate is that the S-Works Tarmac now ships with 30mm Turbo Cotton Tubeless tyres. This is at odds with most brands who have ballooned their tyre clearance to 32 or 34mm, yet still send bikes out with 28 or even 25mm tyres.

Tarmac SL9 vs Cervelo S5, Colnago Y1Rs and Factor ONE

It's becoming incredibly common for new bikes to launch with claims of being 'better' – in some metric, but often aerodynamics – than a named competitor. And almost ubiquitously, one of those named competitors is the S-Works Tarmac.

It could be seen as a compliment, but Specialized has become a little fed up with it and has decided to reciprocate the honour with a comparison of its own.

It has benchmarked the Tarmac SL9 against the Cervélo S5, the Colnago Y1Rs and the Factor One. Given the Remco Evenepoel connection, it's not a surprise to see the Cervélo and Colnago (ridden by Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar respectively) in there, but the Factor One is an interesting addition that evidences Factor's rise to relevance over the past few years; no doubt aided by its unconventional design too.

These comparisons don't simply quote a single metric such as CdA, they input the CdA and weight into the Equation of Speed simulation to quantify the speed differences over a variety of courses.

Using bikes set up as follows:

Specialized measured each bike as follows:

Note that the delta between Tarmac SL8 and the competitors is different to what we found in our own wind tunnel tests, but within the error margin of our tests (using a real rider).

Our tests were performed at a slower speed (40km/h vs 45km/h), and the different yaw angles were weighted differently. Specialized says weighting more favourably towards zero yaw offers better real-world relevance for cyclists. Existing accepted methods – including ours – are based on the automotive standard of environmental wind speed, measured at 3m above the ground. Specialized's data argues that measurements at 1m above ground - as experienced by a cyclist - see a lower wind speed, thus increasing the likelihood of experiencing lower yaw as the rider's own forward momentum is what creates the wind.

I'll save the full breakdown, but over three laps of a relatively flat 2026 Montreal Worlds course, the differences are as follows:

• SL9 Time to Finish: '00:19:17.100'
• SL8: +3.7
• Cervelo S5: +0.5
• Colnago Y1RS: +1.9
• Factor ONE: +2.1

And in a single ascent of Alpe D'Huez, the differences are as follows:

• SL9 Time to Finish: ‘00:38:18.000'
• SL8: +5.5
• Cervelo S5: +16.4
• Colnago Y1RS: +18.2
• Factor ONE: +30.9

Early review

At the time of publishing, I still want to put more miles through the Tarmac SL9 (and put it in a wind tunnel) before I write a full review, but having ridden the SL6, SL7, SL8 and SL9, (as well as the Venge Vias, Venge, Roubaix, Allez, old and new Aethos and probably a few I've forgotten over the years), I can confidently say the SL9 retains the well-loved Tarmac handling and ride feel.

That's not to say it's exactly the same though.

Firstly, an important caveat. I am now a proud father, and two things have happened since January when our son was born.

1. I've not ridden as much as I normally would, so my fitness has tanked.
2. My willingness to rail around corners has reduced as my sense of mortality has increased.

The reason I mention this is that the perceived performance of a bike is quite correlated to my ability to ride it. It's the "all bikes feel slow at altitude" dilemma, but framed differently.

Take 40 watts off my FTP, and bikes won't feel as sprightly uphill, because my reference point of the SL8 is on legs I had two years ago. Nor will a bike feel as telepathic on descents. I'm comparing today's apples against last year's oranges.

Therefore, despite jumping onto the Tarmac SL8 in 2023 and immediately feeling like I could throw it into hairpins, that took around 4-5 hours of riding this time round, and only came on a fast descent of Coe, a spicy climb north of Morgan Hill. I was following a group of Specialized employees and locals that knew the roads inside out. Hanging off the back of the group to follow their lines helped me to judge the otherwise never-before-seen corners and let the bike shine.

And shine it did. It was stable, predictable and planted when you wanted it to hold a line around wider corners, but agile on the tighter corners and easy to accelerate back to speed on the other side of them. The SRAM Red brakes were reliable as ever for late braking into tight hairpins, and the wide tyres added a level of composure that really helped on rough and gritty roads I'd never ridden before.

The flare of the handlebars meant leverage wasn't lost when you wanted it for those tiny steering inputs on fast descents, but the narrower spacing between the hoods was perfect for getting small in the slipstream when the roads straightened up or levelled off. It really was a fun experience that, without getting too sentimental, was one of those that reminds you why you love riding bikes so much.

One thing that's not affected by my fitness, however, is the comfort and ride feel, and the balanced quality that has long shone through in previous generation S-Works Tarmacs remains abundant here. It's a lovely blend of snappy and punchy responsiveness under power, but smooth, stable and refined the rest of the time.

Price and availability

For now, as mentioned, Specialized is only launching the S-Works model Tarmac SL9.

When the lower-spec models will come is to be confirmed, but that at least simplifies your options if you want to buy one this side of the Tour de France.

Team edition colourways

Right now you can't go far on any self-respecting sports website without seeing a story about how Tadej Pogačar's goal of capturing a fifth Tour de France would see him pull off one of the crowning achievements in the sport. And they're all right, of course.

But dig back in history, and it's fair to say that a rider joining the Club des Cinq – as the ultra exclusive, four-strong circle of five-time Tour winners is known in France – wasn't always the biggest story of the race. Far from it.

Take the main end-of-race analysis piece of the Tour de France or semi-official newspaper L'Équipe back in 1974, just when Eddy Merckx was on the point of conquering his fifth title.

Written by race director and leading sports journalist Jacques Goddet, the article had an extremely downbeat headline for one thing: 'Le cyclisme pro: une malade' – pro cycling is ill. And what made it even odder was right below the headline, there was a half-page photo of the soon-to-be-crowned Tour winner and the undisputed patron of the peloton, Eddy Merckx, in full lone flight towards Orléans. With one day remaining, he'd dropped the pack in his umpteenth display of panache and power once again, and all this by a point where he was already in complete control of the race. He was certainly not looking malade at all.

Bafflingly, there was not a mention in Goddet's summing up of the Tour that just a day later, Merckx would win his fifth Tour de France of five starts. Or that Merckx had already moved well ahead of André LeDucq's record-breaking total of 24 stage wins and would push it up to a new target of 32 by the end of the race. (By the end of the 1975 Tour, it was up to 34, a record that would stand for nearly half a century.) Nor even did it seemingly matter that Merckx was only 29, so in theory at least, he could take even more records in the years to come. Goddet was still unhappy.

"The Tour de France has not brought us all the satisfactions that we had hoped for two months ago," he wrote. And that was that. Not that Goddet had anything against Merckx in particular, it turned out, whom he said had "competently handled both the way the course played out and his rivals."

Rather, Goddet's beef was that the lack of serious opposition to the all-conquering Eddy – "an apathetic peloton," snarled part of the caption for the photo of Merckx regarding the bunch he'd just left reeling in his latest attack – had left the race looking and feeling more than a little, well, bland.

Riders had become overly concerned with their own well-being and were not willing to take risks, Goddet argued, and that was all the fault of modern society and the 'nanny state': its mollycoddling and obsession with safety had wreaked havoc "in this very special area of human activity" – bike racing – "where by definition, everything remains an adventure."

What Goddet's comments showed, then and now, is that while a fifth Tour de France title matters hugely in terms of the history of the sport, it doesn't have to be the story of the race.

Just like last year when Tadej Pogačar was on the cusp of a winning a fourth Tour but the main media focus was on his 'lack of motivation' in the third week, and whether a fifth Tour victory is a close-run affair like in 1964 for Jacques Anquetil or a snooze-fest like in 1974 for Merckx, the statistic can become something of an afterthought.

On the other side of the fence, with so many Tour victories already in the bag, rather than a feeling of etching a permanent place in the history books, the sense of an 'obligation' to take another can be what predominates inside a team.

"The first two or three Tours that he won were fantastic, but the last three he raced we suffered a lot because nothing that wasn’t winning made any sense," Eusebio Unzué, sports director of Miguel Indurain, once said.

"In the last few Tours, there was a huge amount of tension, knowing that if you didn’t make any mistakes, if you got it totally right inside the team, then he wouldn’t let you down. He was almost perfect. So you had to check everything time and again, make sure it was all going to work perfectly. And what was the first thing you did when you got to Paris? Breathe easy again."

Jacques Anquetil – the first to ever do it

But was it always like this? Certainly when it came to the first winner of five Tours, rather than feel obliged to keep going, come what may, the French star Jacques Anquetil knew exactly when to call time on the never-ending demands for greater and greater success.

After he became the first member of the Club des Cinq in 1964, in July 1965 Anquetil said he was no longer interested in taking part. As he put it, with refreshing honesty or dubious cynicism (take your pick), he wasn't going to race the Tour that year because "My contract won't get any bigger if I win a sixth, and on the contrary, I've everything to lose if I fail."

The key point to remember, though, was that by 1964 and when fighting for Tour number five, Anquetil had already not only equalled the previous record of three, jointly held by Philip Thys (1913, 1914, 1920) and Louison Bobet (1953, 1954, 1955), he'd gone one better. So rather than records, what inspired Anquetil go for Tour number five in 1964 (when he could perfectly easily have trotted out that 1965 line about not making any more money if he did take part then, too) was a different record. It was the chance to become the only rider after Fausto Coppi to conquer the Giro, which he'd won that May, and the Tour de France in the same year.

Quite apart from a rare 'double', another major issue was reportedly Anquetil's ego. Winning another Tour would mean stealing a march on arch-rival and fellow Frenchman Raymond Poulidor whose failure to win so often as Anquetil, combined with his much more downhome, salt-of-the-earth personality, had made Poulidor something of a fan favourite – and his Vuelta a España victory in April 1964 had put him on the map as the coning man. So sensitive to criticism that he once named his yacht 'Whistles' (in an ironic reference to the boos and catcalls he'd received after losing the 1959 Tour to Federico Martin Bahamontes), putting the Tour record out of reach with a fifth victory wasn't apparently top of Anquetil's to-do list. But putting Poulidor in his place, that was another story.

What's undeniable is that of the four Tours that gave their winners the chance to enter le Club des Cinq, 1964 was by far the most dramatic. Anquetil's tiny final margin of success, just 55 seconds, underlined the knife-edge nature of the event, and also – after years where riders would conquer the Tour or be defeated by handfuls of minutes – hinted strongly at how the Tour was lurching, albeit patchily, into a more modern, finely calculated era. Equally, on top of that, Anquetil's domination of the time trials (of which there were three), while Poulidor was much more superior in the mountains, helped keep the pendulum swinging back and forth. The first-ever live TV broadcasts of parts of Tour stages could hardly have come at a better moment.

The way things kept on going back in favour of one rider of the other was far from formulaic or limited to a particular type of stage, too: in the first week, Anquetil lost a 30-second time bonus because of a puncture in Briančon in the Alps (and struggled on the Galibier), then Poulidor miscalculated by a lap in the Monaco velodrome the next day, and Anquetil regained all his lost time.

Even on a single stage, the setbacks and bouncebacks succeeded in almost bewildering speed. In Anquetil's case, overeating at a vast lamb barbecue on the subsequent rest day in Andorra, and the fear induced by the prediction from one of France's most famous fortune tellers, La Mage Bellne, in France-Soir newspaper, that he would have a fatal crash on stage 14, left him reeling on an initial climb the following day. But after Anquetil had drunk a bottle of champagne at the summit of the Envalira (now there's a marginal gain for you), kindly provided by his team director, he overcame his severe indigestion. Thanks to a fantastic descent and a slightly questionable alliance, he managed to catch Poulidor on the flatter run-in.

But even then it wasn't all over. Before the end of the stage, Poulidor had crashed because of a mechanical and lost time on his arch-rival, only for Anquetil to suffer so much on the next day's stage that after an incredibly gutsy ride across the Portillon climb, Poulidor could regain much of his losses.

As if that wasn't enough to make it a great Tour, the image that defined the closeness of the Poulidor-Anquetil era (and again, underlines how much smaller the gaps were becoming) came just 48 hours before the finish at Paris, on the Pûy de Dome. With the final result still hanging on a knife-edge, the race's most emblematic image of the two was taken: leaning on each other as they tackled the interminably steep climb.

The image in question only was possible because Poulidor had just gone too close to a photographer's motorbike, scorched his leg on its exhaust pipe and was over-compensating in the opposite direction, and the point where they were in physical contact only lasted a few seconds. But it didn't matter: that brief moment, once voted the all-time definitive image of the Tour de France in later L'Équipe polls, perfectly underlined both the ferocity of their rivalry – neither rider willing to give an inch to their opponent – and the way that their rivalry fed off and supported each other as well. To quote Goddet again: "Never had two men who fought so ferociously for the most beautiful and strangest of trophies been brought so closely together in their effort."

Despite ceding a little on the Puy de Dôme, Anquetil finally won that year's Tour, thanks to his last blast on the time trial – although even there, Poulidor initially gave him a run for his money. But rather than the notable success of five Tours, his victory was memorable much more because of how he had had such a narrow pathway to triumph. The precarious nature of the triumph was both underlined by the famous answer Anquetil gave when told his GC margin on Poulidor had been reduced to 14 seconds – that's 13 seconds too much – not to mention his later revealed promise to himself that if Poulidor had taken yellow on the Puy de Dome, he'd have abandoned.

"What surprises me the most about him;" Poulidor said in turn, "isn't just his class, it's the way he knows how to suffer so much in a race."

"I'm proud to have beaten a great champion," Anquetil said, "in the hardest Tour I've ever done."

In the midst of all of these moving reflections on the drama and suspense provided by the race, the fact Anquetil had also won the Tour five times somehow didn't matter so much as the human angle. In an era like today's where the results seem to be what matters the most, that's surely something worth keeping in mind this summer in the Tour.

Eddy Merckx – The Cannibal

Anquetil's hotly disputed but hugely memorable fifth Tour effectively rounded off his career in July – in 1966, his one remaining participation, he and Poulidor basically marked each other out of contention. But the next rider to achieve five Tour victories, Eddy Merckx, showed no sign of retiring, and was clearly in a class of his own.

It wasn't just L'Équipe making that point, either: neither of his top challengers were present. 1973 Tour winner Luis Ocaña had been sacked by his team, BIC, before the start of the race, and perennial Dutch favourite Joop Zoetemelk was recovering from a life-threatening crash at the warm-up race of Midi-Libre. Bereft of big rivals, the process of Merckx clinching victory number five was curiously colourless, laying the foundations by picking up time bonuses wherever and whenever he could, but then blasting the opposition out of existence at Gaillard and Aix-les-Bains in the Alps.

It says it all that the one point of interest or flicker of rivalry in this "monotonous, boring Tour" – and if that was L'Équipe's description, imagine what the rest of the media were saying – was provided by a rider nearly aged 40, the incombustible Raymond Poulidor.

The Frenchman dropping Merckx briefly in the Alps on the Mont du Chât climb proved to be an ephemeral moment of weakness on the Belgian's part, but at least Poulidor's win in Saint-Lary-Soulan provided a refreshing change from Merckx' continuous domination. But if Merckx's success could seemingly be taken for granted, the fact his closest rival on the Tour podium was a 38-year-old made it clear that a new generation of contenders was sorely needed – one that duly emerged, defeating Merckx, in 1976.

By that point, Merckx's position as the greatest racer of all time had been clearly established and by anyone's standard, his 1974 season could only be considered a triumph throughout. Merckx preceded his Tour victory with a win in the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de Suisse (albeit with no Spring Classics wins for the first time in his career) and followed his July triumph with victory in the World Championships. No other rider had ever previously secured the 'Triple Crown' and no rider would again until Stephen Roche in 1987. That he failed to ride defensively and instead went for eight stage wins, no less, was even more remarkable as he'd raced the entire Tour with a bleeding, open, wound in his perineum.

"To race in the Tour de France five times and to win each time, that's a dream, the kind of record I think is unusual," Merckx said according to the New York Times, its po-faced headline 'French Bike Tour won by Merckx' an indication of how little cycling had impacted in the US at that time more than anything else. But it's notable that even the Belgian didn't make so much of the number, rather he was prouder of having remained undefeated in all his participations. Again, it was the more human side of the endeavour that mattered the most, not the drawing equal with Anquetil.

By the time the Tour reached Paris, recalls the still-active British photographer John Pierce of Photosport International, who was present on the race, the public was more "nonplussed" and resigned at the latest demonstration of power than anything else.

"The atmosphere in the velodrome" – where the Tour finished for the last time ever that year before moving from La Cipale onto the Champs Elysées in 1975 – "was a bit flat," Pierce said. "Merckx was more like a Hollywood hero than a sporting hero, even if to me as a cyclist there's no greater racer. Even me, was going to see the guy who'd just won the 1974 Giro, which to me was the best bike race ever, he'd won by 12 seconds, not Merckx.

"At the time I don't think it was even mentioned that it was his fifth Tour, and I don't think people are going to celebrate Pogačar getting five either. It's like going to buy the same loaf of bread every day."

Bernard Hinault – The last French hero

Even if they don't sum it up completely, somewhere along the line in most Tours, an image emerges which captures its essence. In 1964, that'd be the Poulidor-Anquetil rubbing shoulders and elbows on the Puy de Dôme, while in 1974, it was Merckx blasting away alone to Orléans. As for 1985, it'd have to be Hinault with his bloodied, broken nose and two black eyes, crossing the line at Saint-Étienne on stage 14, and still able from then on to defy the odds and conquer the race.

Pre-race, if it had felt only logical that a four-time Tour winner should be the overwhelming favourite to take a fifth, that logic became even even more uncompromising given the 1984 champion Laurent Fignon – who'd beaten Hinault by more than ten minutes the previous July – was a non-starter because of an Achilles tendon operation. Furthermore, with Hinault's teammate Greg LeMond in second in Paris, the 1985 Tour was the first where a fifth, record-equalling win was also a demonstration of collective GC strength as well.

Yet there were plenty of wheels within wheels: for one thing, the race was split into unequal two halves by Hinault's crash. The Frenchman had won the opening TT, the stage 8 time trial and then still managed to gain time on LeMond, his nearest rival, in the Alps despite failing, surprisingly, to win a mountain TT.

But Hinault's crash in the final kilometre of the Saint-Étienne stage forced him on the defensive for the second half, particularly as congestion in his broken nose then morphed into fullblown bronchitis. The full picture behind events anchored in considerable controversy, such as LeMond being told by his team car that Hinault was much closer behind on a Pyrenean stage after he'd been dropped, remains unclear to this day, but they played out in Hinault's favour.

The same goes for LeMond's claims that he had to push Hinault on the following day in order to keep the Frenchman in yellow – Hinault was still in the lead as a result. The fact is that despite his struggles on the climbs, Hinault was more than capable of defending himself on the flat final time trial at Lac de Vassiviere, only ceding five seconds to LeMond. A fifth Tour was in the bag.

Hinault would later shrug off any suggestion he could have lost the 1985 Tour at any point. But even if LeMond could undoubtedly have come closer, Hinault was one of the handful of modern-day Grand Tour GC racers – Alberto Contador being perhaps the best – who could win as much or more by strategy as by brute force.

"Without my fall in Saint-Étienne, that would have been an easy victory," Hinault told L'Équipe in Bordeaux, going on – ever the politician – to thank LeMond for his support. "We blocked the opposition easily. Only [rival Stephen] Roche did what he could." As for the idea he might have earned extra prestige by winning injured and with two black eyes, Hinault answered succinctly, "Maybe, but it still sucks."

Present at the 1985 Tour as well, Pierce says the crowd's support for Hinault's success in Paris was "logically far greater as he's French, it was pretty good compared to 1974. It was also to do with their personalities and how they celebrated. Merckx was much more relaxed, acting like winning five Tours was the most natural thing in the world. Hinault was a lot more nervous when he got his fifth, jumping around, hamming it up and putting on a real show."

Yet for all the added glamour, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Hinault's win is that even as it seemed to confirm France's domination of its home race in the post-Merckx era – nine wins from the previous eleven editions, five in a row – in fact it proved a kind of death knell for the host nation's aspirations. To this day, Hinault's 1985 victory remains the last time the men's Tour has been won by a Frenchman. And no sooner had Hinault lost the Tour the following year (this despite having promised LeMond he would help him in return for the 1985 support), than he quit. For France, then as now, this was as good as it would get.

Miguel Indurain – 30 years since the last five-time winner

To judge by his interviews, for Hinault as it was for Merckx, a fifth Tour was one in a series rather than a goal in itself, particularly given the problems and setbacks he'd had achieving it. But attitudes to the fifth Tour, at latest in the media, had changed notably was by the time Miguel Indurain clinched his 1995 title, and became, in the process, the only member of the Club des Cinq to secure all five in one fell swoop. For one thing, after three of the greatest Grand Tour riders had fallen dramatically short in their sixth Tour bid or simply (as in Anquetil's case) opted out altogether, reaching five became the new gold standard. Secondly, Indurain's ability to win one Tour after another in immediate succession, unlike either Merckx or Hinault, focussed the interest on the number even more.

Furthemore, as Unzué says, both for the rider and for the team, Banesto, Indurain's lifelong squad, by 1995 the Tour de France had acquired an unwieldy level of importance. (It was one that caused some controversy too: Indurain's repeated absence from the Vuelta a España, held in April up to 1994 and which he avoided as racing it that month could have harmed his Tour build-up, even sparked questions in the Spanish parliament.) Yet if another Indurain Tour victory had become almost routine by 1995, it was curiously both the July where Indurain himself tore up his own strategy and the race where he came closest to losing.

Up until the 1994 Tour de France, for his previous four Grand Tour wins – two in the Giro and two in France – Indurain had always opted for riding defensively in the mountains and killing the opposition in the time trials. But in 1995, Indurain switched his game completely powering away on the shores of the River Meuse in Liège the day before a crucial time trial - where he'd normally have saved all his energy – a move which completely blindsided his rivals and gaining a hefty advantage, both psychological and real, as a result.

"I changed my strategy a bit and they got confused," Indurain once told El País. "The team might have had its ideas, but in a race, you have to take decisions."

"What surprised me the most about his winning the Tour in any year was the time when he attacked at the end of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège route," Unzué, confirming he had no idea Indurain's move was coming, once said in a biography of Indurain, Relentless.

"That was a Miguel Indurain that I didn’t know, the day before a time trial, what did he need to do that for? But that was the Tour, in an case, where we saw the day he came closest to racing like Eddy Merckx."

Yet if the Tour seemed to be completely in Indurain's power after his knock-out blow in Belgium and equally important ride up to La Plagne in the Alps, the biggest setback of the 1995 Tour came on the stage to Mende in the Massif Central a few stages later. And it was a massive blow.

"That was the hardest day of all the five Tours," Unzué once admitted, where "for many hours, it seemed as though something [an Indurain defeat] could happen… The Tour was slipping through our fingers."

More than capable of defeating any rival individually, as Indurain had proved in La Plagne, what proved nearly catastrophic was when Indurain faced a collective challenge, in this case by the Spanish team, ONCE. In a move across the rugged Massif Central to Mende airfield, the presence of three ONCE riders including team leader Laurent Jalabert in a day-long break left Banesto broken apart, and Indurain and his squad had to look for all kinds of circumstantial allies to try and bring them back.

Teams with absolutely no interest in the GC battle, for reasons that shall remain purely conjectural, opted to back Indurain in his bid to quell the ONCE mutiny. For all Jalabert was at 9:10 overall, when the gap rose to over ten minutes, it felt like Indurain's bid for a fifth Tour was about to go up in smoke.

For the Tour-centric Banesto (and a country like Spain that was obsessed with stage racing and barely had any ideas of the importance of the Classics), this was nothing less than disastrous. ONCE was the Spanish equivalent of the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and the phone lines to its headquarters in Madrid reportedly collapsed under the numbers of outraged callers, demanding to know what the squad was doing, 'betraying' a fellow-countryman like Indurain.

"I felt the race was in danger that day," Indurain once told El País, "but that wasn't my responsibility, it was the team's. They had to control and that's where I put them under pressure because things had got out of control. I told them to sort it out and to see how they could do it. My job was to keep the GC contenders under control, and I had them under control."

Finally, enough teams collaborated – later claiming they were paying back an unspoken debt where Banesto would 'gift' stage wins to rivals – with a by-now completely isolated Indurain to bring Jalabert and co within a safe enough distance for the Navarran's maillot jaune to be safe. Jalabert won the stage, but his advantage of 4:50 was only enough to put him briefly on the podium. The yellow was another story.

It's true there were grumblings from 1996 Tour winner Bjaarne Riis that had the Tour raced the stage after the death of Fabio Casartelli in the Pyrenees, rather than neutralising it, Indurain might have been more vulnerable: But really the Tour ended the moment Indurain garnered enough support to keep ONCE under control on the road to Mende.

Such was Indurain's control that El País later insisted that "nobody would dare give an answer" to the question who could stop him taking a sixth in 1996. "They would be scared of being called a madman or a fortune teller," the newspaper reported. Yet in fact, as we know – and just like nobody ever doubted that Merckx would win a sixth, either – five proved to be the upper limit for Indurain and there it remains.

That is perhaps the pivotal fact on which all of the subsequent evaluations of five Tours really hangs. The importance of Pogačar's fifth win really depends on what happens if firstly he gets it, and secondly what happens afterwards. If, for whatever reason, that's as good as it gets, it will feel very different as a victory than if it's 'just' another Tour win en route to becoming the first rider ever to take six. So given we'll only know later what that fifth Tour win (if it happens) really means, for now perhaps it's best to do as happened with Anquetil and Hinault (and to a lesser extent with Indurain) and focus in on the human experience that it took to attain that achievement – and the records can remain in the history books and for the years to come.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

Eurobike is back. Though perhaps not quite as I remember it.

Frankfurt in late June has been the trade show's spiritual home for a few years now, and it's usually a sweaty, crowded, enormously fun migration of the global cycling industry, squeezed into cavernous exhibition halls and spilling out into the surrounding areas between them.

At its peak, seven halls barely contained it all. This year, only three halls were used, and even those weren't full. As someone who has been making the pilgrimage on and off for the best part of fifteen years, I won't pretend there wasn't something melancholic about the quieter corridors and sparser stands.

It's the kind of event everyone loves to complain about. The schlep, the heat, the bad food, and somehow always leaving with some sort of cold or illness, but the buzz of seeing the good folk that keep the bike industry running and all the latest and greatest shiny kit made it bearable, and though there were far fewer brands attending, there was still plenty of kit to see if you looked hard enough.

So here are the highlights of a hectic day searching the halls of Frankfurt during a 30-degree heatwave.

Unnamed Ridey Gravel bike

Eddy Merckx 525

The new Canyon Aeroad

Another new, unreleased aero gravel bike

A cyclo-cross bike - remeber those?

Canyon Speedmax Track

Toot Racing road bike

A new Winspace aero bike

It wouldn't be Eurobike without a crazy prototype

Canyon Lux World Cup XC race bike

Nukeproof Hyperfly 290

Gusto GTG gravel race bike

Laget Aero 3d printed Ti frame

Megamo Upon

Lake custom-painted shoes

Fidlock with a great idea for content creators

Daysaver Pump

Prologo saddle

Pertual wheels

A few weeks ago, after he had won the Giro d'Italia, I wrote about how Jonas Vingegaard had probably had his strongest Tour de France preparation yet, but we were still none the wiser about what that means in comparison to Tadej Pogačar.

That's a view I still stand by, but as we approach the start of the Tour de France, the more I see people asserting that Vingegaard simply has no chance against Pogačar, and the more I think that's a really wild assumption to make.

Yes, it's true that we have little to go off in terms of an accurate comparison between the two, and if we look at the last few years, Pogačar has always been much better at the Tour. But you don't have to go back particularly far to remember when it was Vingegaard who was crushing Pogačar – as much as we like to make it out, their rivalry has never been one sided.

Vingegaard is one of the many riders whose status suffers because he is racing in the era of Pogačar, where what was a successful career 10 years ago now feels less so against the yardstick of the Slovenian, but underestimate him at your peril.

He's a four-time Grand Tour winner, has had his most setback-free run-in in years and is coming off a Giro d'Italia where he won with ease, hardly having to exert himself to claim the GC and complete his Grand Tour set.

If his assertions are true, he often feels better in the second Grand Tour of the season, so he should be coming into this Tour de France feeling really, really good. And we know what a really good Vingegaard can do to Pogačar, he can beat him.

I know it's the popular narrative to say that Pogačar is unbeatable, that any race he starts is foregone conclusion, often used as a tool to berate him and his dominance, and I'll concede that often that prediction is right. But not always, and often not when it comes to his perennial rival Vingegaard, the man who can push him further than anyone else in stage races, and probably one of the only riders Pogačar feels truly challenged by.

This Tour is not a foregone conclusion, and suggesting at this stage that Vingegaard has no chance of going up against Pogačar feels shortsighted, defeatist, inaccurate even. As I said, you can't write him off.

However – and there is a however – there is one thing that is threatening to muddy Vingegaard's otherwise crystal clear run-in to this Tour, and that is the ongoing uncertainty and blows to his team line-up.

He already lost two of Visma-Lease a Bike's most trusted workhorses when Christophe Laporte and Wout van Aert were ruled out of the race before selection was made, and even though Visma officially announced their line-up last week, we're still not entirely sure who will join Vingegaard on the start line this Saturday.

The main source of uncertainty centres around Edoardo Affini, who had a nasty crash at the Italian National Championships, and though Visma have been quiet about his condition, just saying he will be monitored, the rumours are that his injury was quite nasty, and replacements were being put on standby over the weekend.

In a normal year, losing Affini may not be a huge blow, but when the team have already foregone Van Aert and Laporte, starting the Tour – which opens with a crucial TTT no less – without Affini too would feel like a depleted and weakened team especially for the chaotic and flatter first week.

In terms of possible replacements – remember they have already drafted in Davide Piganzoli to fill in for Van Aert, a super strong rider but certainly not like for like – Visma are not flush for options. They have already been slightly on the back foot this year, after Simon Yates' retirement caught them by surprise and left them with a gap on their roster, and now that, various injuries, and the complications of targetting two Grand Tours in the space of a few months is taking its toll.

If Affini cannot start, the most likely replacement at this point sounds like Bart Lemmen, a talented climber who helped shepherd Vingegaard to Giro victory a few weeks ago. Lemmen is a strong rider, particularly on the harder days, but he is not a fill in for Affini – he won't be riding for hours on the front, or dragging the team around the TTT, that's just not the type of rider he is.

Vingegaard could end up with a very climber-heavy support team, which may sound like the best tactic to try and overcome Pogačar in the climbs, but in truth will probably cost him more on the flat that it will win him in the mountains. If there's one thing that Pogačar's brute force racing can do, it's find a rival's weakness and exploit it.

And so Vingegaard's fantastic run-in, as it often has, hits a hurdle. Sometimes that hurdle has come earlier, with season-derailing crashes, and sometimes later, like now with his team selection up in the air just days before the race.

Fortunately, a weaker team is likely a much easier issue to overcome than broken bones, but it still could prove costly to Vingegaard. It's true that the Dane himself is looking really strong this year, and that he is – has always been – more than capable of matching or beating Pogačar when he's at his best.

But to be at his best, and to go up against the most dominant rider of his generation, Vingegaard needs every tiny thing to go right. So whilst his form and fitness look stronger than ever, and should not be underestimated when he and Pogačar go head to head over the next few months, those tiny things and small details could be the difference between finally overcoming his great rival once more, or retroactively confirming the narrative that the Slovenian was always going to win this race.

So no, the conclusion isn't foregone, and this Tour is not a one horse race. But a lot needs to start going right for Vingegaard if he wants to change that conclusion.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

A new name will grace the start line of the men's Tour de France this year as teams roll off the ramp for the opening team time trial in Barcelona.

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA will be a team familiar to most, thanks to their exploits at the Vuelta a España over the past 15 years, but 2026 will be the first year that the team lines up in the world's biggest race.

"For us, it's incredible to be in the Tour de France this year because we are a small team compared to the WorldTour teams and the other ProTeams. It's incredible for us," sports director Aritz Bagües told Cyclingnews ahead of the team's debut.

Cooperative banking group Caja Rural has previously featured in the Tour de France, sponsoring the Caja Rural-Orbea team in 1987 and 1988. However, the entity that will race the Tour this year was founded in 1992 and spent almost two decades as an amateur team based in Pamplona before registering as a UCI team in 2010. The team will commemorate sponsor Caja Rural's long history in the sport with a special jersey for the 2026 Tour.

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA has been known over the years as a real talent factory, with names such as Michal Kwiatkowski, Pello Bilbao, Hugh Carthy, and 2026 Giro d'Italia stage winner Thomas Silva developed in the team's system, which also includes a development team that races in the highly competitive Spanish amateur circuit.

The team has enjoyed its own success too, winning one stage of the Vuelta in 2012 through Antonio Piedra, and the mountain classification in 2014 and 2015. The 2026 Tour, however, represents the team's biggest moment.

'It's very special'

In order to make the start in Barcelona, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA had to fend off other ProTeams who were similarly keen to secure a first outing at the Tour de France. The French-Dutch Unibet-Rose Rockets team were touted for selection, but race organisers A.S.O. chose the Spanish team due to its higher placing in the UCI ranking and its vast Grand Tour experience.

Bagües remembers the moment he found out the team had been selected for the Tour. He was in the car during a stage of the AlUla Tour in January when the news came through, but didn't have any signal in the desert. He was told as he parked the car at the finish.

"It was a very special day for all the team," he says. "It's very, very special for us because we've been there a lot of years with a small team doing all the European calendar and nowadays all over the world. It's like a prize for us."

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA's maiden Tour start is even more significant given its proximity to the team's base in Pamplona, in the region of Navarra, about a five-hour drive from Barcelona. Five members of the team's 26 riders hail from the autonomous region of Catalonia: Abel Balderstone (Ullastrell), Jan Castellon (Lleida), Sergi Darder (Barcelona), Joel Nicolau (Llofriu) and Eduard Prades (Alcanar).

The team are expecting a crowd of supporters over the first three days before the race enters France. "We have a lot of riders from Catalonia in our professional team, and in the amateur team too. I think that we will have a lot of supporters there."

Chasing a stage win

Having discovered their Tour participation in late January, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA selected ten riders to be considered for La Grande Boucle in April, to be whittled down to eight ahead of the race's start.

The team will chase stage wins across the three weeks, with two-time Tour de France stage-winner Fernando Gaviria leading the line in the bunch sprints. The Spanish outfit will also contain several climbers who will look to sniff out opportunities in the mountains.

It will be Gaviria's third Tour de France, having taken both of his wins during the 2018 Tour while riding for Quick-Step Floors. The 31-year-old Colombian, who has become famous for launching his sprint early, won't have the luxury of a powerful sprint train like rivals Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech) or Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), but Bagües believes that Gaviria has the experience and talent to find his own way to the finish line.

"We know that this is very difficult, but he's a special rider. He's a very talented rider, and maybe we can do it. It's difficult," he says. "He manages very well in the peloton. He knows where he has to stay, and he's very, very special in that. He's a very, very good rider."

"He's also a very good captain and leader for the guys, and for us, he's a very important guy in the team," Bagües adds.

The team's Spanish climbers have been buoyed by a strong performance at the Tour Auvergne-Rhǒne Alpes, the Tour de France's traditional warm-up race, with José Félix Parra 9th in the General Classification and Jan Castellon 11th, along with several stage top-10s.

"For us, it's good because we see that we can stay there with those guys and with those teams. It's more confidence for us to start in Barcelona with less pressure, because we know that we can do it," Bagües says.

"We put a goal of trying to take one victory in a stage…I think it will be very difficult, but we will try to do it."

Other potential principals in the team include Australian Sebastian Berwick, who won the Tour of Türkiye earlier this year, former Giro d'Italia stage-winner Stefano Oldani and Dutchman Alex Molenaar, who scored a top-10 and De Brabantse Pijl earlier this year.

"They are all motivated. It's very special for the team but also for the riders because it's their opportunity to go to the Tour de France. It's important for all of them," Bagües adds.

Racing for Jaume Guardeño

The Caja Rural-Seguros RGA team is finding added motivation ahead of the Tour as riders and staff keep their colleague Jaume Guardeño in the forefront of their minds.

23-year-old Guardeño, who finished 14th at the Vuelta last year, collided with a car during a training ride in March, putting him in a critical condition. Local media reported that the rider from Altea had struck a rock, causing him to lose control of his bike.

Guardeño was taken to the intensive care unit at Parc Taulí Hospital in Sabadell and has since been transferred to the Guttman clinic in Barcelona; a facility that specialises in "neurorehabilitation and treatment of serious neurological injuries," according to the most recent team update on his condition.

"It's difficult because we know that Jaume is not in a good condition. It's very, very hard for us. We will try to do our best to give him a victory and to give him power to help because he's in a very dangerous situation and it's bad news for the whole team," Bagües says.

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA may be the new boys on the block at the Tour de France, but this Spanish team, with its mix of young talent and experienced heads, are out to prove that they are not just there to make up the numbers.

Particularly in the opening three stages, this will be a team that will be motivated not only by the grandeur of the Tour, but also by the desire to honour their team-mate and the team's long history in the sport.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

Rewind six months, and Netcompany Ineos' Tour de France project looked genuinely exciting. They'd signed one of the most exciting young GC riders – a British one, at that – as well as a rising French star, both of whom had finished in the top 10 of the 2025 Tour.

Add those two riders to the team's existing climbers, their wealth of experience in winning Grand Tours, and their top-tier resources and you had a winning formula, right? Well, wrong, because like many best-laid plans, things aren't looking as promising as they were six months ago.

The team's star signings, Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin, had a great start to the year at the Volta ao Algarve, kicking off enthusiasm about what Ineos were hoping to achieve this year. But since then, their fortunes seem to have waned.

Onley's torrid year reached its zenith this week when the team confirmed that he wouldn't ride the Tour at all, still struggling with a "significant" shoulder injury sustained in a truly horrible crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Even if it didn't look like Onley was at the level that delivered him to fourth last year anyway, losing him is a big blow nonetheless, both for the team and for his confidence, which seems to have been shaken by the difficult months he's had.

At the time of writing, we believe Kévin Vauquelin is going to start the Tour, but he's been hit with illness in the run-up and his year hasn't exactly been a breeze, either. He hasn't suffered quite the same bad luck as Onley but he hasn't excelled, either. Based on his results and the stacked competition starting the race in Barcelona, for now it looks like he would have to make a big jump to repeat his top 10 finish from last year.

So where do Netcompany Ineos stand? Before the Giro d'Italia, when they welcomed new title sponsor Netcompany, the team were clear about their long-term goal: to return to the top step of the Tour de France podium – and not just one day, but within the next five years, they emphasised.

Of course, this is only year one, the very beginning of their project, and no one said they were going to win the Tour this year. But for a team that wants to win this race by 2031, you'd hope to at least be challenging for the top 10 in 2026, and for the moment, it's not certain that they will.

Who will step up this year?

Right now, Ineos have an immediate challenge on their hands. Who is going to step up and make a success of their Tour de France this year? Long-term goals aside, the team have a flashy new sponsor who want results and visibility at the biggest race on the planet, be it on GC or elsewhere. If they're not going to be battling for the GC, they need to be battling for stage wins. Unfortunately, bad luck for a few riders won't really cut it as a reason to not deliver at the Tour.

So who can do that? Obviously, a lot of hopes will still be on Vauquelin, especially whilst we don't know how bad his illness was or how it might affect him. His fearless and consistent riding earned him seventh overall last year whilst riding for a smaller team, Arkéa B&B Hotels. So there is hope that if he feels well, he could still be fighting for the top 10.

Vauquelin's results so far in 2026 haven't been overly impressive, with 15th at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on his most recent outing, but in fairness the good results that he enjoyed before the Tour last year were largely in smaller races. He's raced a much more ambitious programme this season, and not quite delivered, but that's not to say the French fervour couldn't spur him on to find some magic in his legs.

If he's not in GC-challenging form, Vauquelin should readjust quickly and at least try and go for a stage on one of the early tough days. Paul Seixas will take a lot of the French pressure off his shoulders, but there's still a lot of expectation on Vauquelin.

Though we've spent most of the year talking about Onley and Vauquelin, the riders Ineos signed for the Tour, let's not forget the riders they already had who can also compete on the hardest stages.

Thymen Arensman won two of the toughest stages of the Tour last year, and he's only been demoted from leadership duty for the Tour because he was targeting the Giro d'Italia this year – it's not because he isn't capable of a GC campaign if he's willing and able.

He finished fourth overall at the Giro, and whilst that will have taken a lot of his energy, he's done two Grand Tours in a year before so it's not like he's coming to the Tour with totally empty legs. The third week TT works in his favour, too, given his strength in the discipline, and if he comes good whilst other riders fall away, he could replicate a good GC result.

The Dutchman has flown under the radar amidst the Onley-Vauquelin focus, but – like he was last year – he could end up being Ineos' secret sauce.

There's also Carlos Rodríguez who, yes, hasn't quite replicated the level that saw him finish fifth overall and win a big stage in 2023, but that doesn't mean he should be written off entirely. He's had consistent if not stand-out results this year, and certainly has the Grand Tour experience.

If the mountains and GC battle fail, Ineos can always hold onto hope that Filippo Ganna might deliver, either in the TTT or the individual effort on stage 16: Newly crowned Polish TT champion Michal Kwiatkowski, who never seems to age, could be in with a chance of a vintage stage victory.

Amongst the new signings for 2026, Dorian Godon has proved to be a real success story as well. With five WorldTour stage wins this season, as well as a long spell in the lead in the Volta a Catalunya, Godon's versatility in punchier terrain has earned the Frenchman some impressive victories this season, including the opening prologue of the Tour de Romandie.

So, given how Ineos have improved on capitalising on chances, racing more aggressively and winning more often, it does seem unlikely that their race will be a total wash, but it also doesn't look likely to reach the heights they hoped for at the start of the year.

The bigger picture – or bigger problem?

Whether Netcompany Ineos can still pull of a 2026 Tour or not, though, questions still remain over the feasibility of their stated aims.

Both Onley and Vauquelin are still young and they obviously have a whole lot of room to grow, but it must also be said that we're in an era where GC contenders don't tend to grow into it – riders like Pogačar, Vingegaard and Del Toro were very good, very quickly. Is it even possible to grow into being a Grand Tour winner over five years, or is it a case of you either have it at 21 or you don't?

With Onley and Vauquelin, everything is of course pure speculation, and particularly in Onley's case a year of crashes and illness doesn't erase the raw talent he clearly has, which delivered him to fourth last year with very little team support. But in pro cycling there is so little time to falter, that it does feel like this one off year could make a dent in his long-term chances as a Tour winner.

The other question for Ineos is whether their project is as future-looking as it needs to be. We know that they were a highly effective Grand Tour team in the past, finessing the mountain train tactic and delivering their riders to

So what have Ineos done to move into the future and this new era? Well, they have a fancy new sponsor who promises to use AI to help them win – even if most other big teams are already well on the AI train – but in terms of personnel, their leadership looks notably nostalgic.

Dave Brailsford is back as team principal, Geraint Thomas is head of racing, and they've got former riders in the team cars as sports directors. Their staffing is full of people who helped them win the Tour last decade, but that's the operative phrase: last decade.

Despite their good recruitment moves and injection of sponsor cash, the team is still looking somewhat stuck in the past, hoping that what worked 10 years ago will work now, and we know very, very well by now that it just won't.

In Onley and Vauquelin, as well as Arensman, they have fresh, talented and high-potential riders. It might not have worked out this year, but there is still time for them to get back on track and harness the talent of their riders to work towards that lofty Tour de France-winning goal. They just need to do it in the modern way, not the way of 10 years ago – and with 2026 already partly scratched off, at least for Onley, they'll need to do it fast.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

Most of the time when we see Tadej Pogačar in a bike race, he's already at the peak of his powers. The only questions that need to be asked are not so much whether he will win, but how and where.

The Tour de France is the hardest of all those racing challenges, though, and taking a fifth one this year would further cement the Slovenian star's place amongst the very greatest of the sport. However, while he is the maximum favourite for the final victory, it's by no means a given that he'll do it.

All of which makes the process by which Pogačar has reached a point where he can bid for the Tour for a seventh year running (and with podium finishes on all of them so far) even more relevant.

In the first of a two-part series, Cyclingnews talks to UAE Team Emirates-XRG Head of Performance Jeroen Swart about Pogačar and what he believes he can achieve in the Tour de France this year, including why he thinks the four-times winner can still get even better.

Q&A with UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Head of Performance

Cyclingnews (CN): At the start of this season, while you pointed out that two years ago [from the start of 2024 onwards], Pogačar had mproved dramatically, you said, and I'm quoting you textually "I think the changes now will be much smaller. It's more about being able to sustain that level."

Do you stand by that statement now, having seen what he did in the spring and where he's at?

Jeroen Swart (JS): I do. If we look at Tadej's numbers, he definitely is not improving by the same margins as he did before. I have been a little surprised in that we've been able to still eke out some improvement. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have suspected that we would have hit a plateau and that we would have been then focused on maintaining that plateau and to our surprise, he has still improved, and that has helped us as well in terms of his performance on the Classics side as well. That was also aimed at specifically that he'd gained a few kilos of extra muscle that helped with the explosiveness required for the Classics, so there was a focused training and specific adaptation for that.

But his overall performance, if we look across races, has increased very marginally, and we were nevertheless surprised to still see an improvement, which is obviously welcome. Every little bit helps.

CN: So is it fair to say that the best Tadej could be yet to come?

JS: That would be so difficult to predict. I would settle for the same Tadej we've had in previous Tours, that would be great. If he manages to improve further, that would certainly be welcome. I would hesitate to think that it's still possible, but let's wait and see.

CN: But you're not ruling it out.

JS: I'm not ruling anything out. He keeps surprising us and with his level, every year has been a surprise in terms of his ability to continue to improve a little bit here and there. So I wouldn't rule it out, but I think the chances are increasingly slimmer each season that he can take another step.

CN: Miguel Indurain was the last male rider to win five Tours, and he won his first when he was 27, which is the same year that Pogačar could win his fifth this July.

So given the five-year difference in ages to possibly reach that particular landmark, is it fair to say what really matters more now at this point in Tadej career is ensuring his mental resilience remains in place, because you've got the physical side of things more or less dialled?

JS: I think that point about mental resilience isn't just about Tadej, it's across the board, in all sports. Sports psychology and mental coaching have become increasingly recognised as a very important part of sports performance, and whether it's in professional golfing or professional cycling, it's equally as important.

So that means that there's a greater structure and focus than ever before on mental health, performance-related optimisation from a mental perspective. And we've taken specific steps to do that, and to look after that.

The racing has definitely become mentally more challenging, too. It is more full on from the start, and it doesn't really let up, you know: There are the odd races or stages where there's a hiatus in the sort of attacks and the pace and the peloton can relax a little, but that has become almost the exception and no longer the rule. So every race is mentally very taxing and that can be cumulative.

I also think there's a greater mental stress because of the speeds, the aggression in the racing - and our riders talk about this - the risks being taken across the peloton, including by our riders as well, because everybody seems to be pushing the envelope.

Descents have become a step to the next attack, they've become the area where attacks often happen, where the pressure is exerted. So all round, the mental stress of racing has definitely increased substantially.

At the same time, the younger peloton has emerged as a result of riders developing physically much earlier, particularly in their late teens and early twenties, a time when many of them are developing as individuals and their personality is not even fully formed. The prefrontal cortex is still developing, and you're putting these athletes into the most difficult circumstances mentally while they're still developing emotionally and neurologically.

The reason why you've asked the question is because it's obviously a factor these days and we recognise that and so it's something that you have to pay attention to and look after them.

The question is often asked, too, 'When will Tadej stop racing?' and it will be earlier than other athletes have traditionally done in the past. Athletes used to ride into their mid-30s, sometimes in the case of Alejandro Valverde and others into their 40s.

I think it's unlikely that we'll see that. I think we'll see earlier retirements, and then there's also the aspect of motivation for us with Tadej. We've spoken about it quite regularly, and it's important for him to stay motivated and enjoy the sport because as soon as it becomes a drag, it becomes harder to have the level of commitment that you have to have to achieve the heights that he is achieving.

CN: So does that added mental stress for everybody, not just Tadej, but obviously including him, affect the way you've approached the assault on the fifth Tour win?

JS: Well, it's not just around the Tour, it's around the entire season and actually with the whole team. So one of the things that we did do in recent years is that, and I'm talking from a team-wide basis, was introduce our Gen Z team into 1.1, 2.1 races, where we are able to substitute in Gen Z riders and allow our WorldTour riders to take more time out, because we do know and recognise that they require periods of recovery and a large part of that is mental. So we build that into each rider's calendar and [UAE sports manager] Joxean Fernández Matxin does an excellent job of that.

He has found an absolutely phenomenal balance in terms of bringing riders both opportunities but also the periods of recovery that they need and so every rider has a break in the season where they're able to just go home where they reset mentally and physically, and that helps in terms of then returning with increased mental vigour and focus.

In Tadej's case specifically, it's the same thing but also focused around maintaining his motivation while also not overloading him in terms of the racing calendar, and so you'll see his racing calendar is very much focused around his ambitions and goals, and further to that, it's not peppered with races that aren't meaningful. So it's a very carefully constructed calendar that ensures that he is able to tackle the goals that he wants to tackle while also being prepared physically and mentally for the goals coming up.

CN: This year, it's a similar kind of Tour route to 2024, as in we've got a very complicated first week, and then again in the third. How does that change things in terms of the physiological and preparation side? Are you taking a similar approach to 2024, perhaps, when we had the Alps so soon?

JS: The approach is actually very similar, but I don't think the specific parcours of this year's Tour is a reason to change how we do things. In the years when he did the Giro, it was obviously different, but in the years that he hasn't done the Giro and that's the majority of the last few years, the build-up has been very similar to this one: a focus on the Classics, a reset and then a build-up towards the Tour, which requires a different physiological stressor [physical or biological factors that disrupt the body's internal balance - Ed] in terms of the training stimulus. It requires a different set of performance characteristics and so it's aimed at achieving those. It doesn't matter whether the first week is peppered with difficult stages or whether that's in the second week, he needs to arrive at the Tour in top condition, and so that is really what our focus is on.

CN: When it comes to general preparation of the UAE athletes and Tadej in particular, have you looked at other sports outside cycling a lot, a little or just a bit, as a reference point? Are there any specific ones that you have found helpful?

JS: I wouldn't say so. We look at all the science and the evolution of sports performance across the board. So sometimes there are, you know, little anecdotes that come through from running, from other sports that we then look into, and sometimes innovation happens in other sports, and then we will assess that. And then over time it will become part of our practice.

But it's not that often that you see other sports demonstrating new techniques. I would say the ones that we have gained insights from would be, for instance, running and triathlon.

CN: Could you give me an example?

JS: Sure. In running and in triathlon, we've increasingly used heat training in previous years, [also] the aerodynamic side. Triathlon is unlimited. There are no restrictions on the kinds of aerodynamic changes that you can adopt on the bike and in terms of the rider's position, and so triathlon often innovates in that space.

We're then constrained by the UCI regulations. So we have to look at changes that are adopted in triathlon and see whether or not a modification of those can be somehow implemented within the UCI's rules. So that's an example.

Aero gains is a huge part of triathlon, too, and then in the training side of things, as I said, heat training is an example that was adopted across multiple different endurance sports and then running in particular. Then it was adopted by cycling and triathlon and all endurance disciplines collectively.

CN: Have you continued working on his sprints in high mountains because this is something you mentioned in previous interviews as being very important?

JS: It's part of our altitude training protocol for different reasons. Doing sprints at altitude reverses some of the negative effects of being at altitude, which is that blood vessels constrict and therefore limit your ability to do high-intensity accelerations at altitude.

I know that other teams, Jumbo as they were back then [Visma-Lease a Bike], were doing that prior to us, and so sometimes we look at some of the things that other teams are doing while we're studying the literature and we met with the scientists in that space to optimise our protocol and implementation of that protocol.

So that's something that we definitely do, and continue to do, and it's certainly beneficial.

CN: What about his low-cadence torque training, which has also been mentioned as significant?

JS: That's something that's continued too, and I think some of his improvements in the last seasons are still attributable to improvements in torque. In cycling we talk about mean maximum power, which is the mean value for a particular duration that you can produce a power output and we have mean maximal torque as well.

So we know that an athlete can sustain a maximal torque for say five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes and it declines with increasing duration. And Tadej's mean maximum torque values have continued to increase over the last three years that we've been focused on that kind of work.

And because torque is a component of power that is possibly responsible for some of the gains that we've made, we can infer that there are continued improvements in that area as well.

CN: When it comes to Pogačar's use of standing and seated accelerations, I couldn't help noticing during Liège that as far as I could see from the TV cameras, he used a very strong standing acceleration on the Côte de la Redoute and then a seated one on the Roche-aux-Faucons to finally 'get rid of' Paul Seixas. Was that a planned strategy or was that switching around simply because Tadej felt like it?

JS: That was his own decision, that was purely his own decision to attack in that way.

Part of that race he was assessing where he could potentially uncover a weakness in Seixas' ability and it seemed that the out-of-the-saddle, very high intensity attacks were not having the desired effect of shaking him loose. So then he decided to do a very high-intensity effort but sustained for a longer duration, and that's something that you can only do in the saddle and that then had the desired effect of creating the gap.

So I think it was just a matter of testing out the different aspects of where he could exploit a weakness. And eventually he found it.

Part 2 of this interview, including more information on Pogačar's capacities as a racer and rider, will be published next week.

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For over 120 years, the Tour de France has been held in July, with winners from Maurice Garin to Tadej Pogačar triumphing at cycling's biggest race in the height of the summer.

But will things always be this way? Or will rising temperatures caused by climate change one day provoke a shake-up in the professional cycling calendar?

The question has been asked about cycling's other Grand Tours – the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España – before. The Italian race is sometimes forced to skip high-mountain tests as heavy snow lingers deeper into May, while racing through Spain in late August poses obvious heat-related challenges.

The Tour de Frances Femmes, which runs in early August, the hottest time of the year in the country, is another race that will surely be affected by the rising heat, too.

This year, the same questions have been posed of the men's Tour as Europe faces a record-breaking heatwave just a week before the Grand Départ in Barcelona. Much of Western Europe has dealt with air temperatures of 35°C (95°F), while highs of 43°C (109°F) have hit parts of France and Spain.

On Monday, French newspaper Le Parisien raised the question, referring to a scientific study titled 'The future of European outdoor summer sports through the lens of 50 years of the Tour de France', published by a collective of experts based in France, Spain, the UK, and Italy in the journal Scientific Reports in February.

The study stated that, given the increased frequency of heatwaves, "it seems only a question of time as to when the race will encounter the extreme heat stress days that will test the existing heat safety protocols," citing Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) – a measure of environmental heat which takes humidity, air movement, and heat radiation, along with the standard air measurement temperature, into account.

A WBGT reading above 28°C (82°F) stands out as high risk, and so the study looked back over 50 years of July data around France. The focus was on key cities including Paris, Nîmes, Bordeaux, and Toulouse (and a secondary focus on six others), as well as the famous mountains of Alpe d'Huez and the Col du Tourmalet.

The study found that the highest mid-afternoon WBGT occurrences in each location "since 1974 have all been recorded post 2018", while all four cities have passed the high-risk mark in recent years.

"Excluding the two mountainous locations, each of the above-mentioned WBGT records would fall well in the high-risk category according to the UCI's [High Temperature] Protocol," the study noted.

"The WBGT trends over the entire Metropolitan France are positive, demonstrating an increase in afternoon heat stress values in July over the 50-year period."

Fortunately, a high-risk WBGT event has yet to occur concurrently with a Tour de France stage. But with air temperatures and the WBGT trending upwards over time, it looks like it's a matter of time before that eventually comes to pass.

The High Temperature Protocol and its consequences

What could happen when that mark is eventually passed during a race?

Cycling's governing body, the UCI, has taken steps in the past to assist with the challenges of the weather. The well-publicised Extreme Weather Protocol was introduced in 2015, while the lesser-known and less often-utilised High Temperature Protocol was adopted in 2023.

The High Temperature Protocol assesses risk in line with various WBGT ranges, with a WBGT between 23°C and 27.9°C in the orange zone of moderate high risk, and anything above 28°C in the red high-risk zone (other sporting federations, including football's FIFA and tennis' ITF, define high-risk zones above 32°C).

Once the protocol is invoked, various race stakeholders, including the commissaires, race director and doctor, and team and rider representatives, would meet to discuss the next steps in line with the UCI's risk zones.

Suggested countermeasures for the orange zone include adapting race start times, adding shading and motorbikes with drinks and ice socks. Red zone countermeasures include adapting start times, neutralising sections of stages, and even race cancellations.

At the time of writing, none of cycling's biggest races has been neutralised or cancelled in line with these measures, though more and more races are being affected by the heat.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Gravel National Championships were cancelled due to safety concerns as air temperatures hit 34°C, while in Europe, several national federations have made extra accommodations due to the ongoing heatwave.

Back in January, a combination of temperatures hitting the 40s and bushfire risks caused the cancellation of both Surf Coast Classic races and the alteration of a stage of the Tour Down Under.

Four years ago, stage 15 of the Tour saw riders racing to Carcassonne in air temperatures exceeding 40°C as the UCI enacted the Extreme Weather Protocol, allowing riders to take on drinks until 10km from the finish and extending the time cut as race organisers ASO sprayed water across select portions of the road.

"I would say other sports would be cancelled if it's that warm, but I think mostly in cycling we learn if something bad happens, which is very unfortunate," Bob Jungels told Cyclingnews at the time.

The Scientific Reports study notes that the lack of neutralisations and cancellations at the Tour due to the heat is "apparently by chance."

"It is interesting that the Tour de France race dates have thus far managed to avoid the worst of the July heat stress," reads the paper's conclusion alongside recommendations to keep developing and re-evaluating cycling's heat protocols.

"However, given that the route and the race dates have to be planned months in advance, while reliable weather forecasts are available maximum 14 days beforehand this outcome is apparently by chance.

"Accordingly, it is critical that both organisers and participants (and to a lesser extent, the spectators) remain vigilant and prepared. In the absence of detailed daily weather forecasts several months before the event, awareness of the locations with a history of dangerous heat stress occurrences, as well as emerging ones, is of key importance."

Measures to beat the heat

So could the Tour de France be moved, then? Shifting the race, or any other long-established major race, for that matter, seems unlikely in the near future.

In recent years, races have managed to avoid running in air temperatures and WBGT which stray into the high-risk category as defined by the UCI and the Scientific Reports study, so there's no present danger of shifting the Tour to May, let's say.

There could be scope to shift stage times around, given that riders race during a point of the day when the highest temperatures occur. This seems the most likely outcome in the near future, with races shifting away from the mid-afternoon heat and further into the morning.

"In July in France, morning hours are the safest part of the day," notes the study. "While high heat stress can persist during most of the afternoon, planning the race for the morning hours and avoiding the afternoons could substantially increase rider and spectator safety."

In the meantime, the Tour is also taking other measures to beat the heat. Speaking to Le Dauphiné Libéré recently, race director Christian Prudhomme said that he and route designer Thierry Gouvenou have sought out shaded areas more than they had in the past.

"Our approach to designing certain routes," he stated, when asked if the race has a solution for the rising temperatures.

"The Col du Haag [on stage 14 – Ed.], which is one of the new features for 2026, is entirely under the trees. Five or six years ago, when we were designing a route, we thought it had to be in the open for television coverage and for the public.

"Today, on the contrary, we look for climbs in the undergrowth whenever possible. But obviously, we will never remove places like the Galibier or the Tourmalet from the Tour de France."

At the Vuelta a España, which this year, in a rare move, will be run entirely in Spain's southern regions, among the hottest in the country, race director Javier Guillén has taken a different stance.

"The heat cannot prevent us from going to certain areas. It's part of the competition, and we must adapt to those conditions," Guillén told Marca last week.

"Furthermore, we have protocols in place for extreme situations. They are planned for cases of extreme temperatures. We are prepared and will assess each situation as it arises."

The Tour de France, and La Vuelta for that matter, will remain in the afternoon for now, then, and there's no talk yet of inverting cycling's calendar to avoid the summer months. But with record-breaking temperatures and extreme heatwaves becoming ever more common across Europe, that may not always be the case.

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A total of 184 riders from 23 teams will start the 2026 Tour de France, all with different roles, hopes and ambitions for the three weeks of racing. With just a few days left until the race gets underway in Barcelona, many teams have now confirmed their line-ups.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) is chasing a record-equalling fifth victory, while some Tour debutants are just hoping to survive the mountain stages and reach the finish in Paris. 'À chacun son Tour' as they say in France.

Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) have dominated the Tour GC battle in recent years but this year's race, at least for the podium spots, seems more open and so surely more interesting, even if there is a fear Pogačar could dominate once again.

Vingegaard and his Visma team will challenge Pogačar and UAE, with Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) a dangerous duo for the GC. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) leads the list of young Tour debutants but the French teenager could also emerge as a GC contender.

The best sprinters in the world will fight for the victory on the flat stages, with plenty of other more aggressive riders looking for success from breakaways. The domestiques on every team face three weeks of suffering and total team loyalty.

The start list includes the 18 WorldTour teams plus Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor Pro Cycling and Cofidis - the three automatic invitation teams – and Team TotalEnergies and Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, the final two wildcard teams.

This is the Cyclingnews guide to all of the 23 teams taking part in the 2026 Tour including team leaders, objective, riders to watch and full team line-ups when they are confirmed.

Alpecin-Premier Tech

• Ambitions: Sprint and stage victories, points classification
• Team leader(s): Mathieu van der Poel, Jasper Philipsen
• Rider to watch: Emiel Verstrynge
• Full team: Jasper Philipsen, Mathieu van der Poel, Emiel Verstrynge, Jonas Rickaert, Tim Marsman, Ramses Debruyne, Edward Planckaert, Silvan Dillier

Alpecin-Premier Tech will again be hunting for stage victories at the Tour, with Jasper Philipsen a proven sprint winner and Mathieu van der Poel a threat from a breakaway or after a hard finale. Kaden Groves can help Philipsen and also be a dangerous sprint alternative.

Van der Poel and Philipsen both enjoyed successful spring Classics campaigns and appear to be on track to peak again in July. Philipsen recently won the Copenhagen Sprint WorldTour race, while Van der Poel grew in confidence and form during the Tour de Suisse.

Emiel Verstrynge is far more than a talented cyclocross rider and proved it with fourth at the Amstel Gold Race and fifth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Whenever the stage profiles are too demanding for Van der Poel, Verstrynge should get a chance to show what he can do in the biggest race in the world.

Bahrain Victorious

• Ambitions: GC top ten, stage victories
• Team leader(s): Lenny Martinez
• Rider to watch: Antonio Tiberi
• Full team: Antonio Tiberi, Lenny Martinez, Matej Mohorič, Phil Bauhaus, Damiano Caruso, Kamil Gradek, Robert Stannard, Vlad Van Mechelen
• Read more: Youth and experience on display as Bahrain-Victorious announce balanced squad for Tour de France

Bahrain Victorious appear to have kept their best riders for the Tour de France, with Lenny Martinez, Antonio Tiberi, and Matej Mohorič all expected to line-up in Barcelona. Pello Bilbao will miss the Tour in what is his final season as a pro.

Damiano Caruso is also riding the Tour de France in the final months of his career. Those five riders would give Bahrain Victorious options to fight for the GC and chase stages on mountainous and hilly terrain.

Tiberi targeted the Giro in 2025 only to suffer in the final week after a nasty crash. He will make his Tour debut, with his teammates and performance staff convinced the French Grand Tour suits him far more due to the gradual gradients in the mountains and the impact of the time trials. It will be fascinating to see if he can finally live up to the talents he showed as a young rider.

Martinez may be overshadowed by the Seixas-mania swapping through France but at 22, with two Tour rides on his palmarès, he is perhaps ready for a breakthrough stage victory. He went on the attack on four different stages in 2025 and has surely studied every detail of stages 19 and 20 to Alpe d'Huez.

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA

• Ambitions: Sprint and stage victories
• Team leader(s): Fernando Gaviria
• Rider to watch: Stefano Oldani
• Full team: Alex Molenaar, Joel Nicolau, Abel Balderstone, Sebastian Berwick, Fernando Gaviria, Stefano Oldani, Jakub Otruba, José Parra
• Read more: Riding for a critically ill teammate, Caja Rural want to honour the past and win a stage on their long-awaited Tour de France debut

The Spanish ProTeam secured a wildcard invitation from ASO, as Unibet Rose Rockets missed out. The Grand Depart in Spain was surely a factor, as was the team's long history and trusted team structure.

Caja Rural will race the Tour in their iconic jersey design of the nineties, which Marino Lejarreta showed off so often in 1987 and 1988 with mountain attacks during the Tour.

Fernando Gaviria is the team's standout name and the now veteran Colombian will surely contest the sprint finishes, perhaps with his usual early acceleration giving him a number of placings or even a victory.

Italy's Stefano Oldani won a stage at the 2022 Giro d'Italia and showed he is back to his best with a strong ride at the Tour of Slovenia.

José Félix Parra finished ninth overall at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes which was enough to punch his for the Tour. Australia's Sebastian Berwick will also be in action after winning the Tour of Turkey this year.

Cofidis

• Ambitions: Stage victories
• Team leader(s): Ion Izagirre
• Rider to watch: Milan Fretin
• Full team: Piet Allegaert, Jenthe Biermans, Milan Fretin, Alex Kirsch, Hugo Page, Alex Aranburu, Benjamin Thomas, Ion Izagirre

Cofidis are cleverly racing for UCI ranking points and WorldTour survival but they will perhaps change tactics at the Tour and target a stage victory, which would be worth far more due to the importance of the race for the French-based team.

Veteran Basque rider Ion Izagirre could win from a breakaway in the mountains as he did in 2016 and 2023. Izagirre has already announced he will retire at the end of the season but will surely want to go out on a high. He seems motivated and focused and his third place overall the La Route d'Occitanie proves it.

Alex Aranburu showed his form by winning at the Baloise Belgium Tour from the break, while Benjamin Thomas is still a fine finisseur and arguably deserves a Tour de France stage win on his palmarès.

Milan Fretin could be a contender in the sprint finishes, as he proved in the June semi-Classics.

Decathlon CMA CGM

• Ambitions: GC podium
• Team leader(s): Paul Seixas
• Rider to watch: Olav Kooij
• Full team: Tiesj Benoot, Cees Bol, Daan Houle, Olav Kooij, Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Nicolas Prodhomme, Matthew Riccitello, Paul Seixas

The presence of Paul Seixas in the Decathlon Tour line-up changes everything for the French team.

Seixas is still only 19 but has already proven his stage racing ability and incredible potential. Now his talents face the ultimate test on his Tour debut, with France hoping and expecting him to finally give them a home victory in the years to come.

Such is Seixas' talents that even his rivals respect and fear him. Can he defeat Tadej Pogačar and stop the Slovenian from winning a fifth Tour? Probably not but he is the equal of Jonas Vingegaard and perhaps already a better, more complete Grand Tour rider than Remco Evenepoel. If he avoids any early crashes and loss of time, he could emerge to fight for the podium. That gives him a chance of victory if Pogačar stumbles.

The Decathlon team management face a tough decision on the inclusion of Olav Kooij in the Tour team. Seixas arguably deserves full team support but the Dutch sprinter has won three times since overcoming illness and making his season debut in late May. A Kooij sprint win early on could help ease the pressure on Seixas.

Stefan Bissegger and Daan Hoole will play a vital role in the opening team time trial, while Tiesj Benoot could be a calming and experienced road captain. Seixas' mountain teammates are likely to include Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Matthew Riccitello and Nicolas Prodhomme.

EF Education-EasyPost

• Ambitions: GC podium, stage victories
• Team leader(s): Richard Carapaz, Ben Healy
• Rider to watch: Alex Baudin
• Full team: Richard Carapaz, Ben Healy, Alex Baudin, Kasper Asgreen, Michael Valgren, Sean Quinn, Max Walker and Georg Steinhauser

EF Education-EasyPost struggled for results in the spring due to illness and injury but always raise their game for the Tour de France.

Last year Ben Healy won a stage from an aggressive breakaway, wore the yellow jersey for two days and finished ninth overall. Team manager Jonathan Vaughters will be hoping the Irish rider and fellow team leader Richard Carapaz can produce similar results this year, though the Ecuadorian has played down any GC ambitions and may just be going for stage wins instead.

Carapaz was forced to miss last year's Tour due to a late gastrointestinal issue and then was forced to reset his 2026 season after a serious saddle sore needed surgery. He missed the Giro but showed his form with second overall at the Tour de Suisse, attacking in pursuit of Tadej Pogačar on stage 1 and then defending his time gain. If he performs at a similar level in France, his and EF's season will be a success.

Kasper Asgreen is expected to target the flatter early stages, while Frenchman Alex Baudin will hope to repeat his Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes success.

Jayco AlUla

• Ambitions: Stage victories
• Team leader(s): Ben O'Connor
• Rider to watch: Michael Matthews, Luke Plapp
• Full team: Michael Matthews, Luke Plapp, Pascal Ackermann, Ben O'Connor, Mauro Schmid, Kell O'Brien, Felix Engelhardt, Luke Durbridge
• Read more: Jayco AlUla hedge Tour de France stage hunting bets with options from Ben O'Connor to Michael Matthews and Pascal Ackermann

Jayco AlUla are looking for a major sponsor for when Gerry Ryan finally ends his backing and a successful Tour campaign could help secure the long-term future of the Australia team.

Management have selected the team's biggest names, with Ben O'Connor, Luke Plapp, Mauro Schmid and Pascal Ackermann all expected to be part of the final eight-rider roster. Each has different talents and different ambitions, meaning the special edition Maap Jayco-AlUla jerseys could be in the action on every stage.

O'Connor hoped to target the GC at the Giro but suffered on the climbs and finished 16th. The Western Australian will be looking for redemption on the roads of France and often performs better in his second Grand Tour of the season.

Schmid is more consistent and can battle with the likes of Mathieu van der Poel on hilly stages suited to breakaways. His second place at La Flèche Wallonne was no fluke.

Michael Matthews missed the 2025 Tour due to a dangerous blood clot and then missed four months of the 2026 season after fracturing his wrists in a nasty training crash. He is healthy again and back racing and rode both the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and the Tour de Suisse.

Plapp got his first taste of the Tour in 2025 when he got a late call to replace Matthews after racing and winning at the Giro. This year his Tour campaign has been carefully calibrated and he should be a contender for breakaways and perhaps the individual time trial.

Groupama-FDJ United

• Ambitions: Stage victories, GC top ten
• Team leader(s): Guillaume Martin
• Rider to watch: Romain Grégoire
• Full team: Guillaume Martin, Romain Grégoire, Clément Berthet, Clémen Braz Afonso, Lorenzo Germani, Quentin Pacher, Clément Russo, Ewen Costiou

The Groupama-FDJ United team have struggled in recent seasons as French rivals Decathlon CMA CGM out-performed them and became a super team.

Marc Madiot is no longer directly involved in team management but his traditional Tour de France motivational talks are likely to lift the riders as they search for stage victories and a moment of glory in their biggest race of the year.

In the absence of David Gaudu, Guillaume Martin will likely be the team's leader and potential highest GC finisher, though a top 20 feels more feasible than a top 10 at this stage.

Romain Grégoire won the Tour of Britain in 2025 and showed he has Tour de France form by winning stage 2 at the Tour de Suisse. He is still only 23 but has already ridden the Tour twice.

Italy's Lorenzo Germani is also expected to make his Tour debut and join the pursuit of stage victories via breakaways.

Lidl-Trek

• Ambitions: GC podium, stage victories, points classification
• Team leader(s): Mads Pedersen, Juan Auyso
• Rider to watch: Quinn Simmons
• Full team: Juan Ayuso, Mads Pedersen, Mathias Vacek, Mattias Skjelmose, Quinn Simmons, Derek Gee-West, Carlos Verona, Toms Skujiņš

Lidl-Trek are in the midst of a management revolution as the German supermarket ushers out Luca Guercilena and puts their trust in former Tour contender Andy Schleck. It will be interesting to see if the changes have an impact on the team at the Tour de France.

Lidl-Trek have added GC ambitions to their Tour strategy after signing Juan Ayuso and have to combine the Spaniard's lofty goals with Mattias Skjelmose's objectives and chasing stage victories with Mads Pedersen, Guilio Ciccone, Quinn Simmons and Mathias Vacek. That may make it difficult for Pedersen to also target the green points jersey and Andy Schleck will have to manage his riders' ambitions and convince them to work for each other.

Pedersen is back targeting Tour stages after swapping roles with Jonathan Milan in 2025. The Dane has endured a quiet preparation phase after fracturing his wrist before the Classics. He was strong at the Boucles de la Mayenne at the end of May but needs to be much stronger to be successful in July.

Ayuso showed his form with third overall at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. He couldn't crack Isaac del Toro but at least tried and seems back to his Grand Tour best after failing to finish the Giro and the Tour in 2024 and 2025.

Simmons will again fly the US national champion's stars and stripes in the Tour after his win in Charleston, West Virginia. He could be a valuable teammate but will also expect or even go and take his chances in breakaways on specific stages.

Lotto-Intermarché

• Ambitions: Sprint and stage victories
• Team leader(s): Arnaud De Lie
• Rider to watch: Lennert Van Eetvelt
• Full team: Arnaud De Lie, Lennert Van Eetvelt, Georg Zimmermann, Huub Artz, Jenno Berckmoez, Liam Slock, Lars Craps, Baptiste Veistroffer

Lotto-Intermarché are back in the WorldTour in 2026 and have stepped up their ambitions too. 20-year-old super talent Jarno Widar will make his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a España rather than at the Tour and so the Belgian team will target sprint stages with Arnaud De Lie and mountain stages with Lennert Van Eetvelt.

De Lie rode the Tour in 2024 and 2025, racking up numerous top five sprint results. A victory is surely within grasp this year, perhaps on a hillier stage when his fastest rivals have been dropped. We should watch for Lotto-Intermarché joining forces with Lidl-Trek and NSN Cycling Team to make the rolling stages far harder than they look on paper.

Van Eetvelt was chasing stages and looking strong at the Giro d'Italia but then crashed and fractured a finger on stage 11. He appears to have recovered and has been training at altitude recently, so should be in form for breakaway days in the mountains.

Movistar

• Ambitions: Stage victories, GC top ten
• Team leader(s): Cian Uijtdebroeks
• Rider to watch: Einer Rubio
• Full team: Cian Uijtderbroeks, Raúl García Pierna, Pablo Castrillo, Einer Rubio, Javier Romo, Nelson Oliveira, Jefferson Alveiro Cepeda, Michel Hessmann

Movistar have carefully divided their Grand Tour leaders, with Enric Mas riding the Giro and the Vuelta. Cian Uijtdebroeks was a surprise signing for 2026 and was given the task of targeting the Tour, which arguably suits his talents and more controlled racing style.

Uijtdebroeks was considered a super talent when at Red Bull and Visma and is keen to return to his best at this year's Tour and prove his talents. He was seventh overall at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and seems to be building consistently for the Tour.

Einer Rubio will be Uijtdebroeks' climbing companion and could also have the freedom to target mountain stages. The Colombian is on track to ride all three Grand Tour this year after finishing 23rd at the Giro.

Movistar will be missing one strong rider in Iván Romeo who is out of the race due to illness.

Netcompany Ineos

• Ambitions: Stage victories, GC top ten
• Team leader(s): Kévin Vauquelin
• Rider to watch: Thymen Arensman
• Full team: TBA

Netcompany Ineos have a new title sponsor and appear to have a new focus on their performance, with the Tour de France the biggest goal of all.

However, their team has already taken a blow as Oscar Onley has been ruled out of the race due to a shoulder injury he sustained in a nasty crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

The British team does not otherwise have a bonafide GC contenders but any of Thymen Arensman, Carlos Rodríguez and Kévin Vauquelin could finish in the top 10. The roads of France will surely decide who emerges as the protected rider for the final mountain stages in the Alps.

Vauquelin was seventh last year and despite underwhelming results so far this year he will probably start as their main rider. Arensman finished fourth at the Giro d'Italia and may opt to target mountain stages but his ride in the 2025 Tour indicated he performs better in his second Grand Tour.

Filippo Ganna is also doubling up, riding the Tour after the Giro, and the Italian will be the driving force for the team time trial, target the stage 16 individual time trial and also target stage victories from breakaways.

NSN Cycling Team

• Ambitions: Sprint, stage victories and points classification
• Team leader(s): Biniam Girmay
• Rider to watch: Marco Frigo
• Full team: Biniam Girmay, Jake Stewart, Lewis Askey, Krists Neilands, Marco Frigo, Matis Louvel, George Bennett, Tom Van Asbroeck
• Read more: 'Full of confidence and with a real sense of anticipation' – Can Biniam Girmay recapture his 2024 Tour de France form with this NSN lead-out?

NSN will celebrate the Tour de France Grand Départ kicking off near their Spanish base, with co-founder and former Barcelona soccer player Andrés Iniesta no doubt as popular as the team's riders during the opening stages.

Biniam Girmay leads NSN's stage hunting ambitions after his move from Intermarché. The Eritrean has won three times so far in 2026 but appeared stronger and faster at the recent Baloise Belgium Tour where he beat Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) in the first sprint.

Stage 2 ends with three laps of the Montjuïc circuit and a 1.6km climb each time. If the GC riders opt not to attack, Girmay could have the power to survive and the speed to win the stage. A new points structure also favours Girmay as he targets a second green jersey after his historic 2024 success.

NSN will build their Tour team around Girmay, with Jake Stewart expected to be a vital leadout man.

“At the beginning of the year, we built a nice group around Bini for the sprints and that was a learning process," sports director Sam Bewley explained to Wielerflits.

"We asked how he wanted to be led out, where is the best place to position him, and how does he work with the other riders. They have found that click now."

Picnic PostNL

• Ambitions: Stage victories, points scoring
• Team leader(s): Pavel Bittner
• Rider to watch: Frank van den Broek
• Full team: Pavel Bittner, Warren Barguil, Frank van den Broek, Robbe Dhondt, Julius van den Berg, Niklas Märkl, Fritz Biesterbos, John Degenkolb

Picnic PostNL have been struggling in the first part of 2026 but refuse to give up the fight and always trust their well-developed and proven process.

In 2025 Oscar Onley emerged to finish fourth overall in the Tour de France and his UCI ranking points haul helped the team retain WorldTour status. He left for Netcompany Ineos during the winter and so Picnic PostNL can only hope that Pavel Bittner can pull off a win in the sprints and veterans Warren Barguil and John Degenkolb can rekindle the success of their past.

Sadly Max Poole has not raced since February as he battles full recovery from Epstein-Barr syndrome but the lack of a clear team leader could open doors to the likes of Frank van den Broek, who finished second on a stage with Romain Bardet in 2024.

Bittner has raced little since the spring but was second behind Tim Merlier at Scheldeprijs. He also took two top-five placing in sprints in the 2025 Tour.

"Things aren't going smoothly. We're fighting against the wind. That's a given at times, and you have to find a way out of it," sports director Roy Curvers told Wielerflits recently.

"Believe me, we're working hard on that internally. But if you look at a list of our injured and sick riders, it's understandable why things aren't going smoothly for us."

Pinarello-Q36.5

• Ambitions: Stage victories, GC top ten
• Team leader(s): Tom Pidcock
• Rider to watch: Fred Wright
• Full team: TBA

Pinarello-Q36.5 secured an automatic wild card invitation to the 2026 Tour de France and so will make their debut in the sport's biggest race.

The Swiss-based team is growing and improving rapidly, just like team leader Tom Pidcock's Grand Tour ambitions. The Yorkshire rider finished third overall in the 2025 Vuelta a España and so will try to combine his love for winning with Tour de France GC ambitions.

"The first goal is to enjoy the Tour de France," his long-time coach, confidant and Head of Performance at Pinarello-Q36.5 Kurt Bogaerts told Cyclingnews.

"His last result in the Tour was 13th in 2023. If he could get into the top 10 on GC, that, for me, would be a good progression. Then with Tom, we always know that he can do better than anyone expects."

Pidcock was slowed by a viral infection at his altitude camp and so opted to miss the Tour of Suisse. However he won the Andorra MoraBanc Clàssica on June 21, showing he was on the way back to his best.

The Pinarello-Q36.5 Tour roster is built around Pidcock's ambitions but fellow Briton Fred Wright will likely have the freedom to also target stages. He suffered a knee infection after the team's pre-season altitude camp in Chile but has raced aggressively and taken several placings in recent weeks.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe

• Ambitions: GC podium, stage victories
• Team leader(s): Remco Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz
• Rider to watch: Jai Hindley
• Full team: Remco Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz, Mattia Cattaneo, Nico Denz, Jai Hindley, Jan Tratnik, Tim van Dijke, Maxim Van Gils
• Read more: Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe announce full Tour de France team and 'dual leadership approach' around Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz

Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz have been named as joint team leader's for the Tour de France, with team manager Ralph Denk opting for a Formula 1 type strategy of letting the two fight it out on the road for eventual team leadership. Jai Hindley finished third at the Giro and will have the difficult task of trying to help both of them on the key mountain stages.

Lipowitz has the bragging rights of finishing third in the 2025 Tour but prefers to let his legs do the talking. Evenepoel is Red Bull's big name signing for 2026 and has claimed his stake to leadership by dedicating the last two months to his Tour preparation.

The Belgian was a surprise contender at the Tour of Flanders and won the Amstel Gold Race. Now he has to prove to himself and his doubters that he really can challenge for the yellow jersey against Pogačar and the next generation of riders led by Paul Seixas.

The Barcelona team time trial will be the first test of Red Bull's leadership strategy and for Evenepoel's and Lipowitz's Tour ambitions.

Soudal-QuickStep

• Ambitions: Sprint and stage victories
• Team leader(s): Tim Merlier
• Rider to watch: Valentin Paret-Peintre
• Full team: Tim Merlier, Valentin Paret-Peintre, Pascal Eenkhorn, Jasper Stuyven, Dylan van Baarle, Bert Van Lerberghe, Ilan Van Wilder, Louis Vervaeke

Soudal-QuickStep have reverted to being a Classics and sprint team after letting Evenepoel move to Red Bull but have few regrets about the decision so far, with the team's core proving to be strong enough to move on from the change in strategy.

Tim Merlier suffered with a knee problem and only made his season debut in late March. However he immediately won Scheldeprijs and more recently won a stage at the Baloise Belgium Tour and was second on two others.

Merlier has the late speed and power to win Tour sprints and the calmness to handle the pressure and hectic finale of stages. This year he can count on the support of loyal leadout man Bert Van Lerberghe, plus the proven talents of Jasper Stuyven.

Valentin Paret-Peintre helped steady the Soudal ship after Evenepoel quit the Tour last year and it became evident he would move to Red Bull. Few riders have won atop Mont Ventoux and the French climber took victory from the breakaway after a great team ride from Ilan Van Wilder.

The two could combine again this year, perhaps late in the Tour in the high Alps, when the GC is set and breakaway opportunities more frequent.

TotalEnergies

• Ambitions: Stage victories
• Team leader(s): Jordan Jegat
• Rider to watch: Mattéo Vercher
• Full team: Jordan Jegat, Alexandre Delettre, Anthony Turgis, Mattéo Vercher, Mathis Le Berre, Nicolas Breuillard, Joris Delbove, Thibault Guernalec

French ProTeam TotalEnergies are racing for their future, with legendary team owner Jean-René Bernaudeau and new team manager Stéphane Heulot are hoping a historic result in the Tour can convince a new sponsor to take over from the French energy giant and keep the team alive.

Threats by management not to select riders who had found a new team for 2027 appears draconian and illogical but has perhaps focused minds and ambitions.

The team has emerged from the ashes in the past, with Thomas Voeckler wearing the yellow jersey for ten days in 2011 and finishing fourth overall.

The TotalEnergies roster is weaker than it once was but Jordan Jegat impressed at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, going on the attack on three different mountain stages. It is easy to forget that Jegat finished tenth overall in the 2025 Tour.

Geoffrey Bouchard is now 34 but has proven Grand Tour experience, as do Mattéo Vercher and Mathis Le Berre.

Tudor Pro Cycling

• Ambitions: Stage victories
• Team leader(s): Michael Storer
• Rider to watch: Julian Alaphilippe
• Full team: Julian Alaphilippe, Matteo Trentin, Michael Storer, Rick Pluimers, Arvid de Kleijn, Marco Haller, Marc Hirschi, Yannis Voisard

Tudor are a WorldTour squad in everything but name and team owner Fabian Cancellara is hoping to see his distinctive black and red colours in the thick of the action after an injury-hit spring.

Julian Alaphilippe is in Tudor's Tour de France selection along with Michael Storer, Matteo Trentin, Rick Pluimers and possibly Stefan Küng.

The Swiss rider fractured his femur at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad at the end of February and will only race again at the Swiss National Championships this week. However if that test goes well, he could be part of the Tour roster.

Alaphilippe recently took time out from racing but was back in action at the Tour de Suisse. He may lack the panache and swagger of his best years but even at 34, Alaphilippe is still inspired by the Tour de France and the love of the French fans. He went closer to victory on stage 2 last year and went on the attack on four other stages. His long spells in yellow may be a thing of the past but Alaphilippe is always entertaining.

Storer finished seventh at the Giro d'Italia as he focused on the GC. He will flip to stage hunting at the Tour and hopes to build on his five breakaway attempts and two top-five results of 2025.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG

• Ambitions: Win the GC
• Team leader(s): Tadej Pogačar
• Rider to watch: Isaac del Toro
• Full team: Tadej Pogačar, Isaac del Toro, Adam Yates, Tim Wellens, Nils Politt, Florian Vermeersch, Felix Großschartner, Brandon McNulty
• Read more: UAE Team Emirates-XRG Tour de France team confirmed as Tadej Pogačar assembles 'a fantastic group of teammates and staff' to chase fifth title

UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Tadej Pogačar appear unbeatable on paper but everyone at the team, from manager Mauro Gianetti to Pogačar and each rider and staff member, know that every Tour has to be won out on the road, overcoming daily problems, crashes, illness and attacks.

The final UAE Tour squad includes Isaac del Toro, Tim Wellens, Nils Politt, Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty, Felix Großschartner and Florian Vermeersch.

Last year Pogačar seemed unhappy and fatigued in the final week, only to reveal months later that a simple handlebar bang to his knee had left him in pain and doubting he could even make it to Paris. Of course he won a fourth Tour and now he has a chance to join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain as five-time Tour winners.

Pogačar defies cycling logic in the way he distances his rivals and adds victories to his palmarès. He appears from another planet but yet remains humble, hungry and even friendly. When he can't drop his rivals on the road, he seems to destroy them mentally. He again dominated the Classics, even if Paris-Roubaix evaded him and won the Tour de Suisse after working hard at altitude for the Tour.

"I’d say I’m stronger," Pogačar said after a recent training camp test ride. "We did super good training. We had a lot of time out of home with the teammates. A lot of work has been done, so I'm happy."

We have been warned.

Sports director Joxean Fernandez Matxin fears Vingegaard and Paul Seixas but considers Del Toro as a valid and strong Plan B if anything should happen to Pogačar. The Mexican is making his Tour debut but won the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Uno-X Mobility

• Ambitions: Top five on GC and stage victories
• Team leader(s): Tobias Halland Johannessen
• Rider to watch: Magnus Cort
• Full team: Anders Halland Johannessen, Magnus Cort, Tobias Halland Johannessen, Anders Skaarseth, Søren Wærenskjold, Anthon Charmig, Jonas Abrahamsen, Torstein Træen

The Uno-X Mobility team jokingly described themselves and their Tour de France squad as a moment of yellow and red Danish-Norwegian unity, as riders from the two nations come together to target stage wins and a GC result with Tobias Halland Johannessen.

Uno-X won a stage at the 2025 Tour thanks to Jonas Abrahamsen, with Tobias Halland Johannessen finishing sixth overall. This year their goals are higher.

"The goal is to do what we did in 2025 once again. And that might be even harder this year than last year, because now we have said it out loud. A top 5 overall with Tobias is the objective, and it is the team’s big goal," sports director Gabriel Rasch said.

Halland Johannessen has been consistently impressive so far in 2026, finishing fourth at Tirreno-Adriatico, third at Itzulia Basque Country and fifth at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

The eight-rider roster includes Magnus Cort, Anders Skaarseth, Søren Wærenskjold, Anthon Charmig, Jonas Abrahamsen and Torstein Træen, who impressed at last year's Vuelta. Andrea Kron was meant to start but is ill so has been replaced by Anders Halland Johannessen.

33-year-old Cort seems back to his Grand Tour winning best and leads the group of sprinters and stage hunters.

"There are many stages where we have to try to get the right rider in the right breakaway on the right day. We can win in several different ways," Rasch said.

Visma-Lease a Bike

• Ambitions: Win the GC
• Team leader(s): Jonas Vingegaard
• Rider to watch: Davide Piganzoli
• Full team: Jonas Vingegaard, Edoardo Affini, Bruno Armirail, Victor Campenaerts, Per Strand Hagenes, Matteo Jorgenson, Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli
• Read more: This is Jonas Vingegaard's support squad for the Tour de France, as Visma-Lease a Bike confirm line-up

Visma-Lease a Bike are a proven Tour de France winning team and perhaps the only squad able to take on Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad in this year's race.

Vingegaard defeated Pogačar in 2022 and 2023 and has clashed with the Slovenian year after year. Pogačar is targeting a record-equalling fifth victory, while Vingegaard is chasing a historic Giro-Tour double.

The Tour will decide who has chosen the best route to Paris but both seem in peak form. Vingegaard and Visma rode a controlled Corsa Rosa and the Dane again insisted he was back to his very best for the first time since his terrible 2024 Itzulia Basque Country crash.

Vimsa were the first major team to confirm their final eight riders, with the roster built around Vingegaard's ambitions. The absence of Wout van Aert due to his elbow infection has removed any temptation and stage victory distractions, Visma are going all-in for Vingegaard.

Edoardo Affini, Bruno Armirail, Victor Campenaerts and Per Strand Hagenes are the engine room and guardian angels for the flat stages, with Matteo Jorgenson, Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli expected to be there in the mountains.

Strand Hagenes is perhaps a replacement for Christophe Laporte, who tore his quadriceps muscle in training in mid-May. Van Aert is irreplaceable and so Visma opted to add climbing power with Piganzoli. The Italian joined the team in 2026 but made an immediate impression with his strong riding at the Giro and earned Vingegaard's utter confidence.

Expect Visma and Vingegaard to be in the battle for the yellow jersey right from the opening time trial in Barcelona.

XDS Astana Team

• Ambitions: Stage victories
• Team leader(s): Sergio Higuita
• Rider to watch: Max Kanter
• Full team: Mike Teunissen, Sergio Higuita, Harold Tejada, Max Kanter, Nicolas Vinokurov, Davide Ballerini, Aaron Gate, Simone Velasco

XDS Astana successfully chased UCI ranking points in 2025 to safeguard their WorldTour status but with a new three-year licence confirmed, they are targeting race victories in 2026, with any points as a welcome consequence.

They won three stages at the Giro d'Italia and will surely hunt more at the Tour. Sergio Higuita and Harold Tejada are always a threat in a mountain breakaway, while Mike Teunissen and Max Kanter are suited to the stages that become a Classics-rider showdown. Kanter secured his place after three top-five results at the Baloise Belgium Tour.

Higuita finished 14th in the 2025 Tour after a consistent ride. There is no reason why he can't climb into the top ten this year, especially with the difficulties of the late mountain stages in the Alps.

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Whatever Remco Evenepoel does or does not achieve in the Tour de France this July, it's worth remembering that he has already had a good Classics season.

Third in the Tour of Flanders in his debut there was a success, so it's not like his year will be a bad one if, say, he now only wins one stage in the Tour. I think with Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard there, if Remco can get third and wins the time trial that'd be a good race for him, whilst for it to be a great Tour, he'd have to get a mountain stage win against Pogačar or wear the yellow jersey.

But can he achieve even more than that? In many ways, that's Remco's problem right now in Belgium. Because even if he did get third, then a lot of people will say he didn't perform well. While somebody else gets just one top 10 in a stage and they'd say, 'Ah, that was a really good Tour de France', in Remco's case, even being on the podium of a Grand Tour – which for me is as good as it can get right now, barring major surprises – that just wouldn't be good enough.

Within those double standards, if his time trialling is taken for granted, the high mountains are going to be where Remco's Tour is really judged. But again, the standards he is judged by are wrong. That's because if you put him in a race where there is no Pogačar and no Vingegaard, then he's one of the best on the climbs because he can choose his own tempo on them. But his problem is that when Pogačar attacks, he can put Remco in the red zone and after a few minutes, he explodes. He loses 30 or 40 seconds in those two minutes, after which he gets to his own tempo again and he doesn't get dropped that badly. He's a time triallist and once he gets to his own pace, he's really capable. But by that point he's lost that minute on the climb, so it's difficult.

He's far from being alone in having this problem when Pogačar attacks and unfortunately Remco's upper limit isn't quite good enough to follow Pogačar. But maybe now with the new training approach Remco has, it could be he's been training like a maniac to get his VO2 Max up and he'll get that extra percentage point – and it really is just 1% difference. But remember that if on paper it looks easy, in practice is another thing.

Talking of numbers, I've seen all this stuff about his FTP value of 425 and actually I think it's a number that's lower than what he is actually pushing – it's just a training number. For example, my own FTP on paper was always 430 or 435 with a weight of 69kg. But in the races, it could actually rise to something like 460 for 20 minutes. So what your FTP is in the race and on paper are two very different things.

As for the why he published that number, he may explain that at some point before the Tour so it'll become clear, but right now that's hard to understand. After all, the two guys that are ahead of him in the Tour will likely always stay in front of him – and that's Vingegaard and Pogačar. But I suppose that at least for a lot of the guys that are training at home, they now know what numbers they have to push to be at the top level...

As for other rivals apart from Vingegaard and Pogačar, I'm not expecting as much from Paul Seixas as some people are this July. He can always surprise me, and his numbers for a 19-year-old are incredible, and he will for sure be a Tour de France winner one day. But this is his first Grand Tour and while I think he'll be there in the mix at the top level for the first two weeks, the third week is always something of a question mark for a lot of riders, and that includes Seixas.

It's even true for riders who have finished on the podium of a Grand Tour. You can get sick in the build-up, say, and that can sometimes only emerge as a problem in the third week because you're missing 1% or 2% in your endurance and in the last part of a Grand Tour, you pay a really high price for those tiny gaps. So Seixas has to learn how his body will react after two weeks and what happens in the third when Pogačar and Vingegaard unleash their demons, and as a result, I think it'll be difficult for him to be on the final podium.

Evenepoel and Lipowitz

How Evenepoel works with Florian Lipowitz is another story. Lipowitz is a teammate but he could be a bit of a problem, because imagine Lipowitz attacks a bit early on a climb and Remco is not allowed to chase, then he's a bit blocked behind because of team tactics. You're just stuck on the wheels in a group.

For sure they will have some discussions before the Tour, but they will have to reach some solid agreements. Because at some point you have to make a decision, one of them may have to sacrifice his options for the other. It's a team sport, and you can't just race for a top five placing in the Tour. Because then if you end up in fourth and fifth, say, and nobody's on the podium, then it will look a bit stupid.

What will also define Remco's Tour is how he comes out of such a long time before it without any racing, training for over two months purely for the Tour. I can only speak for myself but if I didn't do any racing for a month, then the first few days of competition were always horrible, because your legs miss the speed. I just hope for him that's not the case, because for me not racing so long would be a really bad decision. On top of that, the first day of the Tour is a team time trial and it's not like Remco can sit back, he's the TT powerhouse for his squad. I've already seen that when there are TTTs, if the other guys do 20-second turns, Remco's doing 40 to one minute. So the results of the TTT will be almost completely on his shoulders.

On the other hand, I know Remco a little bit, and I also know that when he's in a race, he's there to win and not just follow wheels. You could see that at the beginning of the year, when he was at preparation races and he kept on having to win: he's a difficult rider to contain. It doesn't matter if you say 'Please, just go to the Tour de Suisse and we'll do it as preparation, just going for it on two stages'. If he can attack 60 kilometres from the line, then he will.

Not only that, all of the parameters in training are controllable, you have a reduced risk of crashing, a lower risk of getting sick. But truth to tell, we'll only really know by the end of July, not the beginning, if this training strategy was a good or bad decision.

In fact, Remco's problem is a different one – it's that for some people, only winning is good enough at this point and that's a bit of a shame. Particularly because while Remco went to Red Bull to win races, I think winning the Tour will be really difficult. It's not impossible, but realistically, I think he only has a small chance.

It's not that some people back home have less sympathy for Remco because he left QuickStep, rather that there's something about him and his results that they always look at differently. He won six of seven races in the first two months of the year, and then just because he was dropped on one climb in the UAE Tour, their theory is that he's not performing well. So he can achieve whatever he can, but the moment he doesn't perform, even if he crashes and has bad legs as a result, they'll always say that's no excuse. Or even after finishing third in Flanders, expectations were higher for Liège and the Ardennes races, and when he didn't perform so well, they burned him down again.

So that's Remco's story: he's in a position where even if he does win, he's still doing something wrong in the eyes of a lot of people – and a lot of journalists as well. And unfortunately it seems like nothing can change that, not even (maybe) finishing third in the Tour de France this July.

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When Demi Vollering invited her FDJ United-SUEZ teammates onto the podium after winning the recent Giro d'Italia Women one face stood out. With neither sunglasses nor helmet, Lauren Dickson's smile shone brightly, but there was also the merest hint of bewilderment.

Dickson had finished 11th overall in her first Grand Tour but her performance was all the more remarkable considering how recently she began road racing. After being a runner, triathlete and duathlete she only started the sport in April 2024, the day after her 24th birthday.

Her contribution in support of Vollering at the Giro was huge. She was the Dutch woman's final mountain domestique and without her efforts there is every chance Vollering would never have overhauled Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) on that dramatic final stage.

"We always had the goal of coming to the Giro to win, and then after the time trial, we realised that it was going to be super hard because Anna was so strong," Dickson told Cyclingnews.

"When you start the ninth stage you feel pretty awful when you know it's going to be such hard work. The girls were fighting so hard to get into the breakaway and it just wasn't going. You're really starting to wonder, 'is it actually going to be possible?'"

However, the day's main climb proved hugely selective, Dickson emerging with a group of GC riders and the stage and overall win still at stake. For the second time in just a handful of days Dickson played a key part, keeping Vollering just about close enough to a leading trio to facilitate the winning move.

"The entire race you're wondering, 'Have we left it too late? Have we done enough?' and the radio gets too far away to hear what's happening so when you cross the line you find out. It's so nice and Demi was so happy."

Where it all started

Dickson's athletic ability was spotted while playing tennis as a young child, and she began running in primary school. After representing Scotland in a multitude of disciplines and Great Britain in trail running at European and World Championships, she eventually gravitated to triathlon, where some friends were competing.

At Leeds University, she trained with both British Athletics and British Tri, but while studying in Barcelona, she focused first on triathlon and then duathlon, even racing against recent Vuelta Femenina winner, Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ). However, after competing at the European Championships, she began to suffer from a foot injury, and a visit to see her boyfriend, Picnic-PostNL rider Sean Flynn, changed everything.

"One of his housemates rides for AG [Insurance-Soudal] and she was asking about my power numbers, because I would just go out to the big climbs and try and get the QOMs, and she saw the data I'd done for a five-minute effort."

As a result, in April 2024, Dickson and Eilidh Shaw, who is now with the UAE Development Team, accidentally entered the Open category at the JG Cycles races close to Glasgow. In a field full of men, Dickson finished 44th.

"That was such a blessing because it meant I went in a huge bunch, really high pace. In the UK it's hard to get 80 women in a domestic race, so here I was with 80 men and Eilidh."

A new bike followed, as did victories, and Dickson finished in the top 10 of every domestic race she completed that season. The standout result was second place at the National Series Lancaster GP and as a result the Scottish Continental team, Handsling-Alba Development, offered her a place. She was soon racing in Belgium. That was late July and by the end of September she'd quit her job.

"I'd used all my holidays up at work, so basically, I either didn't race or I took the plunge and went full-time," Dickson explained. "By this point, I started being trained by [former pro rider] Evan Oliphant from Scottish Cycling and I was trying to do three-hour rides at 5am before work or in the dark at 10pm. Experiences like those you have for life. On the road at 5 am, it's actually quite cool but not practical for a long time. I always wanted to take a gap year and try to become a professional triathlete, so why not do it in cycling?"

That commitment led to outstanding results. There were two UCI stage race podiums, second place at the 1.1 Point du Raz in France behind Blasi then, days later, the win at the Rapha Lincoln GP, arguably the UK's most prestigious domestic race. Her first experience of WorldTour racing came at the 2025 Tour of Britain Women, the anniversary of which came on stage 7 of the Giro.

"Strava tells you what you did a year ago, and I had the recapture from the first stage of the Tour of Britain," she explains. "I had captured it as 'obliterated by the WorldTour', and I just remember at one point the road was gridlocked, I just could not figure how to move up. Now when I'm in the bunch and I'm moving through, that's when you start to think, 'crikey, it's crazy how much can change in a year'."

By then, the path to a professional contract was already starting to take shape after chatting with former British road and TT champion turned rider agent, Hannah Barnes.

"She'd seen my numbers already, and then she started speaking to teams. I'm never too sure when FDJ got in contact, I just remember she asked me, 'How would it feel if you were riding in an FDJ United-SUEZ jersey?' At the time, I just couldn't believe it. I did a race and I just remember looking at the girls in the team but still you don't think it would happen."

After a chat with the team manager, Stephen Delcourt, her future was sealed with a two-year contract.

As she found out at the Tour of Britain last year, you can have all the athletic ability but, if you can't handle your bike and navigate a peloton, success is hard to come by. To ensure she began the learning process as early as possible Dickson made her debut for the French team in January at the Tour Down Under.

"Because the bunch is slightly smaller, it's a perfect place to learn," Dickson says. "Even coming into roundabouts last year I'd have been losing 10 positions with so much energy accelerating up again, whereas now I come into a roundabout and I either hold position or I gain position and that's not pedalling, that's not extra watts."

Not only is her positioning now better than others who've been in the bunch far longer, but we saw in the Giro that her descending is also much more than adequate.

"I do descending lessons once or twice a week, and I really think it's worth it. If you want to be the best, you need to make sure every little detail is in place. It's skills more than just descending. I did [learn to] bunny hop last year, and in the Giro two girls crashed in front of me and I bunny hopped over the bike. Had I not been able to jump I would have crashed and not been there to help Demi, so it's all the little things that add up."

It's this kind of dedication, focus, and desire to become a professional athlete that has brought Dickson to the top of the sport but it may never have happened at all given she suffered multiple injuries when hit by a car while training in 2019.

"I broke my neck and all my ribs," she says. "That was a really key moment in my life. It took six months before I could even get out of bed properly and, the first time I rode my bike, the bars dropped. I just remember we were stood at the side of the road with me crying. My dad asked, 'do you want to turn back or do you want to carry on?' The fact we carried on, riding through Edinburgh still crying, but I didn't give up, and I think that is super poignant."

Dickson will need some of that resolve over the coming weeks after breaking her collarbone in a crash at the Tour de Suisse Women. However, that injury comes at the end of a string of results any rider, let alone a first-year pro, would be happy with. Her 13 top 10 finishes include two GC podium places, one of which was the WorldTour level Itzulia Women.

Dickson's journey to the top of the sport might have been short, but her story perfectly illustrates how she makes the most of her physicality. She's quickly become an accomplished climber and stage racer, and it may not be too long before she's also challenging for her own Grand Tour results.

Can anyone upset the Pogačar show at this year's Tour de France?

Looking through the results of this season so far would suggest that the simple answer is no, they can’t. Outside of the speciality races like Paris-Roubaix, whenever Tadej Pogačar has been on the start line everyone else has been racing for second place.

The stats tell the story more starkly than merely revisiting the performances, thirteen wins from sixteen race days. His worst result is a 12th place but that anomaly is more down to the escapees surviving to dispute the victory than any hint of weakness on the part of the world champion. Domination doesn’t come more clearly than the current 2026 season we have witnessed so far.

Hence, all things considered, Pogačar starts his campaign to join the Tour five-time winners' club as the outright favourite. There isn’t one terrain or stage of this 113th edition that ought to pose a problem.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG are dedicated to ensuring his success, they have no sprinter to complicate the flat stages, the hilly days are covered by Nils Polit, Tim Wellens and Florian Vermeersch and then then there’s the mountain guys who would be leaders in the their own right if on another team: Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty and Isaac Del Toro. The last spot looks like being between Jay Vine and Pavel Sivakov with either bridging the all important role of being strong enough to help Politt and co. on the flatter days but also perfectly capable of being there deep into a mountain stage.

You can moan about all that talent being in one team but that’s how it’s always been: the best team attracts the biggest sponsors with the deepest pockets and the resulting successes attract the best riders. In terms of recruitment, UAE have built the machine that allows Pogačar to function and if plan A doesn’t work out, they have riders like Del Toro waiting to take over. The Mexican might be starting his first Tour but he’s there with an eye on the future and to take some of the pressure off Pogačar if the opportunity presents itself.

Challenging such domination is going to be difficult however one rider is sure to try, and that rider is Jonas Vingegaard. Visma-Lease a Bike losing Wout van Aert to injury will affect their race but the Giro d’Italia confirmed that Vingegaard is back to his climbing best and will push Pogačar to his limit in the highest mountains.

The opening team time trial and the individual TT of stage 16 are where I expect the Visma leader to be most worried. Both occasions look to be days where time is lost rather than gained, perhaps not by much, but psychologically it means that Vingegaard then has to be wondering where he can take those seconds back. With Pogačar’s current form, there won’t be many chances until the final week and the double Alpe d’Huez finishes.

Visma have a great team and it’s perhaps not as great as UAE in every role, however the Tour always comes down to a rivalry between two riders. In this era that’s been Tadej Pogačar versus Jonas Vingegaard and I don't expect that to change here, if anything Vingegaard looks to be climbing on par with his rival so the bonus seconds and the TTs could be the deciding factors. They’ll certainly influence the tactics between the two big names.

The fight between the rest

Now for the riders behind the two big names. Normally I would have said this is where Remco Evenepoel sits, however he’s been very quiet since the Classics and there’s no race form indicating where he sits in the hierarchy.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had a decent enough Giro d'Italia with Jai Hindley on the podium but the Tour is another level higher again and seeing as Vingegaard cruised through that race doing enough to win but not going too deep, I expect to see the Australian in the service of Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz in France. The latter may have just won the Tour of Slovenia but he hasn’t beaten any of the riders he will be in direct competition with this year for a top-five place and I don’t see that changing.

Del Toro and Paul Seixas will be thinking the same and that’s before you include Juan Ayuso or Mattias Skjelmose. The young German will profit from Evenepoel taking most of the pressure, but this year looks like being a bumper edition where everyone turns up with a defined goal and the candidates for the top 10 are numerous.

The main interest of all the newcomers has to be Paul Seixas of Decathlon CMA CGM, a team who are now back to being a GC squad after a brief period of restructuring around one day racing. The hype around Seixas seems to be justified and though he hasn’t raced Grand Tour or any stage race even remotely close to them in length, the signs are there.

The pressure will certainly be on him and the start in Barcelona is perfect terrain to show just how good he can be. Surviving to the final week is an altogether different matter but until then he will be influential in how that top 10 is raced. The second week's terrain is far from easy and ideal for attacking riders which, given how we’ve seen Seixas race so far, will be ideal for him. I don’t think we will be disappointed with his performances whilst he is in the race, though him withdrawing as the Tour heads towards the Alps may not be a surprise either.

Netcompany Ineos are in a difficult situation with their leaders for the Tour. Oscar Onley has had a bit of a nightmare season after transferring from Picnic PostNL. DNF at Paris-Nice, Romandie and the Dauphiné and he’s not sure to start, which may remove one issue in who is team leader, but it adds another because none of Kevin Vauquelin, Thymen Arensman or Carlos Rodríguez seem likely to be battling with Lipowitz, Seixas and Del Toro. They might finish with them some days but it’ll be the exception to the norm for them.

The opening TTT is the Ineos' big chance to be in the limelight and that middle week struggle through the Massif Central where Vauquelin, if he’s out of the GC squabble, has the perfect terrain for his battling style. One thing is for sure, their press conference will say they have multiple options for the GC, but realistically, they won’t be surrounding any of the big names.

For me, the only British hope for success is Tom Pidcock, who doesn’t have to pretend he’s riding for the overall classification and can concentrate on stage wins instead. That is a goal which he can certainly reach and one which ought to suit his characteristics more than being quiet, careful and staying patient until the last week. In terms of producing a stellar one-day performance Pidcock is up there with the best. The tricky part at the Tour is delivering on the chosen day.

The points classification looks like being the hardest to decipher. Tim Merlier, Jasper Philipsen, Jordi Meeus, Olav Kooij, Binian Girmay, Dorian Godon, and Mads Pedersen will be looking at each of the 7 sprint stages in detail. Three opportunities in the opening segment, then after the first rest day there are two flat stages in the middle week and two more in the final part – though one of them, the Paris finish, has Montmartre to negotiate.

Soudal-QuickStep and Alpecin have the teams to control and set up a big bunch sprints because neither have a proper GC rider to protect. The same for NSN and Girmay but to a much lesser extent, and it’s a similar role for Lotto Intermarché and Arnaud De Lie. Mads Pedersen has Ayuso and Skjelmose riding a GC race at Lidl-Trek but he has the advantage that the lumpy second week opens the possibility of infiltrating the break and accumulating points that way.

All in all it ought to be a fascinating Tour de France. Will Tadej Pogačar make it five wins, will a fully fit Jonas Vingegaard outclimb everyone and will Remco Evenepoel revisit the Paris podium? Then there’s Paul Seixas for whom the whole of France expects a performance that gives them hope that one day they'll see one of theirs on that top step again. Not long until these questions are answered.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

There are 10 days to go until the Tour de France, and it's now a game of finishing touches.

The big training blocks are in the bank, the key build-up races are done and dusted, and to a certain extent form for the Tour has been set – if not in stone then in rapidly-drying concrete.

But there is still room for a spot of fine-tuning, whether that's a final hit of thin air up at altitude, reconnaissance missions to key mountains, or simply down-time spent at home before a month of madness.

With most riders expected to travel to the Tour de France next Tuesday, we take a look at how the big favourites are spending their final week of preparation.

Tadej Pogačar

The four-time winner has changed his plans, which at the time of writing are still up in the air.

Tadej Pogačar had been set to head up to Isola 2000 after completing his commanding Tour de Suisse victory on Sunday. The ski resort in the southern French Alps has been a customary final staging post for the Slovenian ahead of the Tour, providing a final burst of altitude stimulus – the '2000' refers to the altitude of the ski station, in metres.

However, Pogačar is currently at home at sea level in Monaco. That's largely because his partner, Urška Žigart, suffered a serious injury at the Tour de Suisse and Pogačar has prioritised being at home with her.

"The most important thing is that we stay together the next few days and we see how it is," he said.

Pogačar can obviously still train hard on hilly and mountainous terrain near his home – even Isola is only just over an hour from Monaco – but the trade-off would be the benefits of sleeping at altitude and spending time with key teammates like Isaac del Toro and Pavel Sivakov, who are there already.

Jonas Vingegaard

The two-time winner and three-time runner-up, who looks set to renew his rivalry with Tadej Pogačar, is currently in Tignes on an altitude training camp.

Tignes is a familiar stop for Visma-Lease a Bike, who have a permanent base set up at the 2,100-metre-high ski resort in the heart of the French Alps.

Vingegaard spent two weeks at home in Denmark after winning the Giro d'Italia, and travelled to France for the camp last Monday, where he was joined by most of his Tour teammates, several of whom came directly from the final stage of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Curiously, Visma-Lease a Bike won't tell us exactly what date Vingegaard will leave Tignes, but he is expected to remain there until the end of the week. He has been building intensity with mountainous training rides and has been spotted on key climbs that will feature in the Tour.

While this Tignes camp is familiar enough by now, it's still a step into the unknown, with Vingegaard coming into the Tour on the back of the Giro for the first time in his career.

Paul Seixas

The French sensation is currently stationed up at Les Arcs, another French Alpine ski resort that comes with a number to indicate its altitude metres (1950).

Seixas travelled there straight after abandoning the final day of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on June 14, and the crash that forced that exit seems to have had a knock-on effect on his preparations for the Tour de France.

Reports in the French press indicate that Seixas was limited to indoor training sessions at first, in order to minimise risks with his body still heavily bandaged. He returned to riding outdoors at the weekend.

Seixas will still gain the blood-boosting benefits of being at altitude but not being able to replicate real-life climbing conditions will have certainly been an inconvenience. What's more, his body will still have been in recovery mode, so his training load will likely have been downgraded accordingly.

There are also doubts surrounding the health of his teammates, with Decathlon CMA CGM cancelling a press conference in which they were supposed to announce their Tour team on Wednesday.

Seixas won't race the French National Championships on Sunday but that wasn't part of the original plan. Instead, he'll stay in Les Arcs until Saturday, returning home for a couple of days before travelling to Barcelona.

Remco Eveneopel

The double Olympic champion raised plenty of eyebrows when he scrapped the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes from his schedule, clearing a huge gulf between the Spring Classics and the Tour de France.

Evenepoel has filled it with a variety of training blocks, the main one being a near-three-week block in the Sierra Nevada mountains in May. He then returned to sea level to spend early June training from his second home near Calpe in south-east Spain.

This week, Evenepoel has been training in the French Alps. On Monday, he put in a 196km ride that took in a mammoth 5,000 metres of elevation gain. He did not tackle any of the climbs on the Tour route on that ride, even though he was on the doorstep of a couple of them.

Evenepoel returns home to Belgium in the middle of this week and in theory he should line up at his National Championships on Sunday, as required by the Belgian federation, although reports suggest he's set to find a way out and skip the event.

Florian Lipowitz

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have a leadership question mark and the other half of that duo alongside Evenepoel is Florian Lipowitz, who is currently on a top-up altitude training camp.

Lipowitz, who made the podium in a breakthrough Tour de France last year, won the recent Tour of Slovenia, which finished on Sunday. He went straight to Kühtai in the Austrian mountains, not far from the border with his native Germany.

Lipowitz' family moved to that part of Austria when he was a teenager, to facilitate his passion and talent for winter sports, and he still lives there, so the training camp is not far from his home. The camp has been described as a 'short training block' of a week in length.

Juan Ayuso

The Spaniard was an impressive podium finisher at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and is currently finalising his preparations at altitude in Andorra.

Ayuso and several teammates went straight from that race to Andorra, which sits between France and Spain, and not far from Barcelona, where the Tour begins on July 4. The team have planned a relatively long block of 12 days of altitude training.

"What's actually growing now is primarily durability, meaning the ability to maintain the same effort under a greater load," Lidl-Trek coach Josu Larrazabal told BiciPro. "Essentially, being able to sustain certain performances for longer and over more days."

Larrazabal also indicated that they will head to Barcelona earlier than most, with plans to spend time at the Montmeló motor racing circuit to get drilled ahead of the Tour's opening team time trial.

Oscar Onley

We don't have any official word from the team on Onley's movements this week, but he is understood to have returned to training relatively quickly after dislocating his shoulder at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

In fact, he removed the neck brace the race doctors had put on following his crash into a ravine, popped his shoulder back in and finished the stage. Even if he did pull out the next morning, that was a good sign.

Onley was also sick on that day, which didn't help, but he reportedly joined several of his Tour teammates at a pre-Tour training camp in the French Alps, where they reconned the two Alpe d'Huez stages.

We're awaiting confirmation but the signs are that Onley's preparation, while compromised, has not been totally ruined.

Tom Pidcock

Last year's Vuelta podium finisher is at home in Andorra, which rather conveniently sits at altitude.

Pidcock had to adjust his Tour preparation this year, scrapping his planned appearance at the recent Tour de Suisse due to illness. However, doubts surrounding his form were swatted aside with a fine victory in the Andorra MoraBanc Clàssica.

That race was practically on his door step, and came as part of a home-based build-up to the Tour. Pidcock will remain in Andorra for the rest of the week before making the short journey to Barcelona early next week.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

It'll be news to nobody here in the UK that the sun has currently got his hat on.

It's currently 31° Celsius at Cyclingnews HQ in Bath, and temperatures are predicted to soar to the high-30s (around 100° F) for most of England in the coming days, likely hitting all-time highs since records began.

With a Red Weather Warning for 'Extreme Heat' in effect across the country, it's imperative to stay safe when going about your day-to-day business, and that might counterintuitively mean staying indoors.

Aside from a dunk in the sea – I wish I had taken up surfing as a kid – there are worse sports you can do in conditions like these. However, it's important to remain vigilant if you do choose to venture out.

As a cyclist, you're often in direct sunlight for multiple hours at a time, working hard. You might not feel as though you're sweating as much as when you go for a run or work out in the gym, but that's probably because the sweat is doing its job of cooling you down by evaporating, and thus you must remember to replace the fluids and electrolytes you're losing.

There are plenty of other things you should be doing to keep yourself safe, too. Here are nine things to think about.

Sun cream

The first line of defence against the sun's harmful rays is a good quality sunscreen with high SPF rating. The higher SPF the better, along with a liberal approach to application. Our advice is to get a sport-specific sunscreen, or at least something that's sweatproof, but don't forget to reapply every couple of hours.

Start - and stay - hydrated

You wouldn't start a long car journey with an empty fuel tank, and the same should apply to your hydration and fuel when cycling in hot weather. By drinking plenty of fluids in the 24 hours leading up to your ride, you have more fluid to help you sweat, and a bigger buffer before the wheels start falling off.

But this needs to be approached sensibly. Too much water without also eating real foods or at least supplementing electrolytes can lead to hyponatraemia, which is when the body's balance between water and sodium is disrupted and becomes overly diluted.

Alternate water and electrolytes

Connected to the above, it's important to add electrolytes to at least one of your bottles, but it can also be beneficial carrying a bottle of plain water.

Your body's natural cooling mechanism is to sweat, which takes heat away from the body as that sweat evaporates. If you feel the heat rise a little too far, pouring some of that water over your neck, back, arms or legs can help accelerate this evaporative cooling effect.

Avoid cotton, wear white

Compared to modern polyester apparel, cotton t-shirts and older cycling jerseys are pretty poor at aiding breathability and providing the sweat-wicking properties that help with your body's natural evaporative cooling techniques.

Also, on days where the sun is beating strongly, avoid black or dark clothing that absorbs the sun's radiation, and instead opt for light colours or white that can reflect the sun's rays.

Time your ride, plan your route, and avoid the hottest part of the day

This is a two-in-one tip, and it falls squarely under 'avoid the heat at all costs'. In short, if you can avoid riding during the hottest part of the day, you should.

But even if getting out at 6 AM isn't feasible, you can adapt your route to ride roads that are likely to be shaded by tree cover or tall buildings, rather than heading out onto your nearest moor where roads are exposed and primed for baking in the afternoon sun.

Plan your stops

Connected to the above, consider whether your ride needs a stopping place, either at the roadside in the shade to reapply your suncream, at a petrol station for a top-up of water, or at a cafe with air conditioning to give you a chance to cool down.

Do a bit of research on places to stop, shops that'll be open, cafes that will let you lock your bike up, or ice cream vans that'll serve you up a Solero.

Take a leaf out of the pro peloton's book

Before hot race days, most pro cyclists will cut the leg off a pair of stockings, stuff it with ice cubes, tie a knot in the top and pop it inside their jersey against between their shoulder blades. This not only acts as local cooling for an area that sits in direct sunlight, but as the ice melts, the water covers the torso and evaporates, helping to keep the core temperature down.

Ice drinks

We've all heard of putting our bottles in the fridge the night before we head out, but a pro tech tip that takes this one step further is replacing that drink with an ice slushy, which does an excellent job of cooling your core temperature from the inside.

And since we don't care much for average speed on our training rides, you could even swap out your plastic bottles for stainless steel insulated bottles and keep those slushies cold for your entire ride.

Pre cooling

Pre-cooling, such as drinking an ice drink before you depart, or wearing an ice vest like the pros, can help delay the effects of the heat, simply because starting cooler means it takes your body longer to reach the sorts of temperatures that can cause issues.

This may help on shorter efforts, but it won't make much of a dent on longer rides.

Adapt to the heat in advance

It's obviously too late for anyone facing the heat this week, but as a learning ahead of next time, if you want to be able to ride well in hot weather, you'll need to adapt.

Examples of ways to do this include frequent low-level exposure to heat, such as saunas and hot baths, but also include riding indoors with the fan turned off. Of course, this should all be approached with extreme caution, because done incorrectly, it can carry the risk of hyperthermia.

"Secrets are poison. They suck the life out of you." Tyler Hamilton.

"I viewed this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times." Lance Armstrong.

"This place has been my home. They liked me here. Not anymore. Now they will look the other way. Now I don't belong." David Millar.

Is doping worth it? To live everyday looking over your shoulder? To enhance performance but diminish character? Cheating equals high anxiety and, of course, little sympathy. The stress-free solution? Don't dope. It's simple. Or is it?

These days, the advanced anti-doping and testing system means athletes face 'strict liability' for every single substance they consume, vigilance so high that they can't even buy vitamin C at a pharmacy, and surveillance that requires them to provide their location at a specific time every single day.

Is adhering to an anti-doping system that monitors you every day of the year, where you're guilty until proven innocent, in need of reform for athlete sanity? Cyclingnews investigated the system, the rules, and the mental impact they have on riders who are just trying to stay clean, and prove it.

The contamination issue

Michael Woods enjoyed a stellar 13-year professional career, primarily for Cannondale (now EF Education-EasyPost) and Israel-PremierTech (now NSN Cycling Team). He won four Grand Tour stages – one at the Tour de France, three at the Vuelta a España– and the prestigious one-day race, Milan-Torino. Woods retired from the WorldTour at the end of 2025 but, like many modern-day pros, he soon swapped road for gravel. When we caught up, he'd just 'won' the Canadian gravel national championships. Possibly. Extreme heat led to the event being cancelled while riders were still out on the course, meaning Woods' result was in doubt. Unlike his stance on cheats.

"I'll start off by saying that dopers ruin the sport for all of us," he says. "I'm all for clean sport and forged a career from clean sport. But the anti-doping system, while a necessary burden, is a massive burden. It's a huge stress. During my entire career, I guarantee that I never intentionally took a performance-enhancing substance. But I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't have tested positive for one."

That's not an admission of guilt or Machiavellian Armstrong wordplay – "I've been tested 500 times and I've never failed a drug test" – but an honest appraisal of a system that can end careers if an athlete's urine or blood sample shows traces of one of more than 400 prohibited substances.

According to WADA's (World Anti-Doping Agency) Athletes' Anti-Doping Rights Act, 'strict liability' means that the athlete is solely responsible for any "any banned substance you use, attempt to use or is found in your system, regardless of how it got there or whether there was any intention to cheat". In anti-doping, not knowing isn't an excuse. You must live pure in an impure world.

"Unless you live on a farm, isolated from the rest of the world, growing your own food and ensuring no-one touches it, can you guarantee that something isn't contaminated?" says Woods. "Whenever I took a drugs test, that played on my mind. It's stressful and it's the same throughout the peloton.

"One of the biggest stressors is that you're guilty unless you can prove your innocence. And even if you prove how you ended up consuming contaminated food, by virtue of how the media handles the story and how the sport deals with you, you're tainted. I have friends who tested positive but discovered the source of contamination and were exonerated. But the damage to their finances and reputations was irreparable.

"They're especially damning in Canada. I'm proud of the fact that our country is vehemently for anti-doping, but it means any positive test results in you being crucified. Arguably, this goes back to Ben Johnson and what happened in South Korea. We were burnt and embarrassed on an international scale."

For our younger readers, the muscular Johnson won the 100m men's race at the 1988 Seoul Olympics in a new world record, before ignominiously leaving the Games and being stripped of gold after testing positive for the steroid stanozolol. It was arguably the biggest story in Olympic history. A piece of graffiti in the Olympic village encapsulated the drama: "Hero to zero in 9.79 secs."

Hormone-fuelled food system

Johnson confessed to doping. Many banned athletes don't, blaming their positive test on contamination. In the monochrome world of doping, it's seen as a convenient excuse. But the evidence suggests many grey areas.

Take the steroid trenbolone, used in the American food industry to boost the efficiency and yield of meat production. It's legal in the USA. But trenbolone is on WADA's prohibited list. Maximum residue figures are set for how much trenbolone commonly remains in a slaughtered animal from farm to fork for anti-doping purposes. Several assumptions are made that impact these residue figures, including point of administration. Trenbolone is mixed into a compressed pellet and injected into the back of the cattle's ear. The steroid then dissolves into the bloodstream. After around 200 days, the animals are 'harvested', whereby the ears are removed to prevent potential contamination.

If the farmer follows standard practice and an athlete records an anti-doping violation, the contaminated meat excuse is flimsy. But not, many a defendant has argued, if the pellet was misplaced and entered muscles from which rib-eye and loin steaks are cut. Or oxtail. That was the defence of runner Erriyon Knighton, who tested positive for trenbolone in March 2024. An independent arbitrator initially cleared him after accepting that contaminated meat likely caused the result, allowing him to compete at the Paris Olympics where the American finished fourth in the 200m. However, the Court of Arbitration for Sport later ruled the contamination evidence was insufficient and imposed a four-year ban. Knighton continues to protest his innocence.

Clenbuterol is another WADA-prohibited substance used to increase meat yields, albeit it's banned around the world because residues are high enough to cause health issues. Despite that, there's a huge black market in many Latin American and South-east Asian countries.

Alberto Contador was handed a two-year ban and stripped of his 2010 Tour de France victory after testing positive for clenbuterol. The Spaniard's contamination defence – that it was down to eating meat brought across the border from Spain to Pau on the rest day – didn't hold up because the illegal clenbuterol farming practices are rare in Spain, despite Contador passing a lie detector test.

(As an aside, for my new book Dope I interviewed Morten Hostrup, associate professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, who'd recently undertaken human studies on clenbuterol. Hostrup told me it's great for muscle building but actually impairs endurance performance because it 'suppresses mitochondrial function' in the muscle. "It's one reason why the current regulations would have accepted Contador's explanation," he told me. "He wouldn't have been suspended.")

In short, contamination is a very real stressor for professional athletes. "I raced the Vuelta a Mexico [which last took place in 2015 but is scheduled for a return in 2027] and the Tour of Qinghai Lake in China and basically you eat rice and eggs," says Woods. "You have to be hyper-vigilant and it's an extra stressor."

Supplementary pressures

It's the same with supplements. According to a 2025 survey by Sport Integrity Australia, one in three sport supplements – around 35 per cent of 200 samples – bought online contained at least one substance prohibited by WADA. Why is down to two reasons: accidental (the equipment wasn't cleaned thoroughly) and intentional (the manufacturer purposely added a prohibited performance-enhancer to crank up its effectiveness and have the athlete coming back for more).

WADA recommends athletes take supplements that are third-party tested. These products will feature the testing company's respective logos, and include NSF Certified for Sport, Informed Choice and Informed Sport.

"You couldn't take anything not approved by the team," says Woods. "It makes sense, but if you're feeling under the weather and want to buy vitamin C, you can't go to the pharmacy and be an adult. You have to report to mom and dad and ask if it's OK. It's for the right reasons, but it becomes crazy. You lose any autonomy and it's something you're constantly thinking about."

"When I first started competing, I was proud of making sure I was doing everything right," Woods adds. "Come the end of my road career, I'd been on some form of anti-doping programme for nearly 15 years. After all that time, you start to think, ‘Fuck this. I am so over it!'"

Or I'm not just over this, but I'm over life, in the case of former British cyclist Lizzy Banks, whose contamination case left her battling suicidal thoughts. In July 2023, Banks tested positive for traces of the banned diuretic chlortalidone. April 2024, UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) cleared Banks, accepting that contamination likely stemmed from a tablet she took for asthma. June 2024, WADA appealed her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, ruling that she'd failed to prove the source of the contamination despite overwhelming scientific and contextual evidence and so banned her for two years.

"This case demonstrates the high bar set by the application of the 'strict liability' principle," UKAD pronounced, "and the challenges in identifying and establishing unintentional violations."

The 'will they, won't they?' sanction left Banks in turmoil.

"I'm not sure yet whether I regret having carried on the fight," she wrote at the time. "I'm so empty right now that I barely know what I feel anymore. But this is what they do to people like me. They crush us. They expect that we will just walk away and they will never have any consequences. But there must be consequences."

Banks proposed a series of anti-doping changes to protect athlete welfare including easing the burden of proof – that athletes shouldn't be required to provide the exact source of contamination when strong scientific evidence shows the substance level is incompatible with intentional use. She sees the current system as creating prolonged uncertainty and psychological harm.

Whereabouts is the welfare?

As do a dozen professional tennis players, including Nick Kyrgios, who in January 2025 filed a legal case against tennis federations and the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) for a complete disregard of athlete well-being when enforcing anti-doping policing.

The case came off the back of doping allegations against the men's world number one, Jannik Sinner, who twice tested positive for the banned steroid clostebol. WADA accepted the Italian's story that he didn't cheat and exposure came via his fitness coach's massage cream. Both parties agreed to a three-month ban that some felt conveniently expired before the second Major of the year, the French Open. The civil class-action cited his preferential treatment due to potential financial implications and access to superior legal representation.

A team of academics – including Alex Smith, senior researcher at Bern University in Switzerland – examined the complaint in a paper entitled, 'Coercive compliance? Anti-doping systems in tennis and athlete mental health.' It's a fascinating read and draws attention to the need for fairness when enforcing anti-doping policy.

"The focus of most anti-doping bodies remains firmly on detection and deterrence, which is understandable, but the inadvertent psychological implications of compliance sits largely outside that frame," co-author Smith tells us. "Research has documented what some call ‘clean anxiety' among athletes, which is a persistent fear of inadvertent rule violations and the reputational damage that would follow.

"For younger athletes who are still developing, that could be particularly problematic. They're trying to establish themselves in elite sport, managing uncertain incomes, unpredictable travel, sometimes young families, and on top of all that they carry this background fear of making an administrative error that carries the same punishment as failing a drugs test."

For administrative error, read the Whereabouts system. This is a requirement in any sport signed up to the WADA Code and allows anti-doping authorities to conduct unannounced drug tests on athletes between 6am and 11pm (and, in some cases like targeted testing, also between 11pm and 6am) on any day of the year. Athletes must update their ADAMS (Anti-Doping Administration Management System) to give a specific 60-minute time slot each day when they guarantee they'll be available for testing. You can update it any time before that 60-minute time slot begins. If you miss three tests within a 12-month period, you're banned.

"Athletes have described the constant need to remain organised, available and compliant, particularly during periods of travel, family commitments, illness or other major life stressors," says Smith. "The concern is often less about being monitored and more about the possibility of making an administrative mistake that could carry significant professional consequences. In that respect, the psychological burden may be less visible than other stressors in elite sport, but it does remain present in the background of athletes' lives."

Smith stresses that the integrity of anti-doping testing is vitally important and out-of-competition testing is an effective tool. "However, athletes are required to disclose their whereabouts around the clock, submit to surprise testing and provide highly sensitive health data, including biometric identifiers and medical information," he says. "Nowhere else in a democratic society would we accept that level of surveillance as a condition of employment."

That's the academic viewpoint. What about the athletic one? "Of course, out-of-competition testing and monitoring is important," says Woods. "Dick Pound [former president of WADA] had a great saying that if you fail in competition, you've failed two tests: the doping control test and the IQ test!

"So, things like the Whereabouts system are useful but I'd actually have preferred a tracking device, especially in the off-season when you're looking to switch off from cycling mode. That's when your plans tend to change. You might head to your mate's for a couple of drinks and the last thing you're thinking of is logging into your phone to change the address on ADAMS. You then awake the next morning and panic that if the doping officer visited, you've messed up.

"Thankfully, I was pretty diligent and only had one out-of-competition miss, which I contested because the tester made fundamental errors and it was removed. The area – Andorra, where I was living – was unfamiliar to them and they went to the wrong building. But it was stressful."

Woods says he has friends who missed three tests in the 12-month period but fought the last one and won. "And I know others who missed three and were banned."

Punished for neurology

Further pressure arises from the therapeutic usage exemption (TUE) system, which allows prohibited substances to be used for medical reasons. It's supposed to be performance-enabling rather than enhancing, though is perceived to be widely abused.

"The burden arises from the additional documentation and evidentiary requirements imposed by the anti-doping framework," says Smith. "For conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it's a challenge. Many cyclists take medication for ADHD, which is on the prohibited list, but the process of sorting a TUE is extremely involved. That's not great for a disorder associated with forgetfulness and disorganisation. You're almost punishing someone for having the disorder, which means many might not bother taking the medication to avoid form-filling. If you're in the middle of a peloton and you've got a disorder that's linked to hyperactivity and impulsivity, that has clear implications for you and your fellow riders."

"That's me," says Woods. "I've never been officially diagnosed but I was almost held back a grade and repeatedly told I had 'attention issues'. If I was younger, I'm confident I'd have been diagnosed with ADHD at school. Keeping on top of these forms and apps is a real issue and can kill careers. Miss tests and teams won't sign you. Sponsors won't sponsor you. You can't race."

Smith says British Cycling has delivered TUE courses specifically aimed at riders with ADHD, but suggests all levels of elite athletes should be better supported, as they can face considerable costs simply to demonstrate eligibility for a treatment that's medically needed. More broadly, he says that greater focus must centre on the daily strain of adhering to anti-doping policy.

"The argument is always that athletes consent to it, but that consent is functionally coerced," he says. "An athlete who refuses compliance faces immediate exclusion from international competition. The balance shifts when you build genuine welfare support into the framework. Right now, the obligations are clearly defined and the consequences of failure are clearly defined, but the psychological support available to athletes navigating that system remains largely absent. We believe that you can uphold rigorous testing and provide mental health resources."

"We'd suggest introducing mandatory welfare assessments as part of the anti-doping relationship as standard practice for any athlete in a registered testing pool," Smith continues. "Right now, the system is entirely focussed on compliance. There's no touchpoint where anyone asks how an athlete is actually doing. A welfare check-in, delivered through the existing infrastructure, would catch athletes who are struggling before they reach crisis point, and it would send a signal that anti-doping organisations view athletes as people with lives and health needs rather than just samples to be collected."

This humanising of the anti-doping system is picked up on by those dozen tennis players, who contested the ITIA policy of "requiring players selected for drug testing to shower under direct observation if they choose to wash before providing a sample".

Woods echoes the indignity. "I've had testers come straight after my morning coffee. Let's just say I'm regular after that first caffeine hit. The chaperone can't take their eyes off you once you've opened the door, so I've had times when I've taken a shit staring eyeball to eyeball with a tester. I get it because there are cases in the past of athletes passing off clean samples by using a prosthetic penis. But you don't want it, the tester certainly doesn't want it. I must admit, you do sit there thinking fuck the dopers."

Anti-doping remains essential. Few athletes and researchers would argue otherwise. Yet as sport pursues cheats with ever greater vigilance, it must also consider the cost borne by those playing by the rules. For every doper trying to evade detection, thousands of clean athletes are navigating surveillance, suspicion and the fear of inadvertent error. Protecting sport's integrity matters. Protecting the well-being of the people who uphold it matters, too.

While the men's Tour de Suisse told us little we didn't already know for the Tour de France, the result of the women's race held much more weight for what might happen in August, with Marlen Reusser (Movistar) romping to a dominant win at her home race.

On the surface, it shouldn't say much, given that this is the third time Reusser has won her home race, adding to titles from 2023 and 2025, but that is without taking into account the context.

Prior to the start in Sondrio, Reusser was fresh off the back of a decent but not world-beating Giro d'Italia performance, having only just made her return from a spinal fracture she suffered in a crash at the Tour of Flanders. There were signs of the star rider's best throughout the nine stages, but as she lined up for the Tour de Suisse, even Reusser didn't quite know where she was form-wise.

"What happened in the last months makes it really a bit difficult, and the Giro, it's not a boost of confidence, and I came out with quite some struggles in my body, which we tried to fix," said Reusser before the race.

"If it was not the Tour de Suisse, maybe we would wait a bit longer, but I also think if things are better, which we don't really know, I still can be quite good, so we'll see.

"I mean, I used to be quite good," she added, bursting out into laughter at her unknown form, "so of course, I hope to find back in my shape."

"Of course, I couldn't train so much for the last four months, and each race I do, each week I pass with training will make me stronger, so I hope I'll be better and better again."

Five days of tough racing later, Reusser's hopes had turned into reality, as she scorched to overall victory and stage wins in the time trial and on an exhilarating queen stage in the baking heat to Villarus-sur-Ollon.

Those signs from the Giro had turned into confirmations that Reusser was back to her best, as an elite TT specialist, an underrated climber on the longest ascents, and one of the hardest riders in the sport to pry from the top spot once she gets into the race leader's jersey.

Try as top riders Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE ADQ), Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) and Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) did throughout the five difficult stages, none were particularly close to Reusser at the conclusion, the latter coming second overall 1:31 down.

"Elisa and also Kasia actually are really riders that are like the best in these small punchy climbs, [and that's] what we have in the first three days," said Reusser of how the battle unfolded before the final two stages.

"Normally, if it's a longer climb, it's a bit harder for them and better for me. Elisa didn't have the best day [on stage 5]. Kasia had a good day, and she was really strong in the end, [but] usually these kinds of days are actually really in my favour, because when I'm fully in shape, I'm a really good climber for long, hard climbs."

It was Niewiadoma who kept attacking throughout the stage as riders were spread all over the road on the thrilling finale, but even with a full rep and quarter going up the Col de la Croix (19.2km at 7%) in the legs, she couldn't shake Reusser on the final ascent, forced to concede when the Swiss rider made a late sprint for victory.

With the Tour De France Femmes fast approaching at the start of August, Reusser has completed that spinal fracture comeback fully. But satisfied as she was with the originally unplanned five days of extra racing, she still believes there is more to come.

"It was really tough this year. I had two fractures in my back in Flanders, and then I tried to recover as fast as I could to be able to participate in the Giro," said Reusser.

"Everybody could see it was not the easiest. I really had quite some troubles there, especially with my nerves in my left leg, and, actually, the plan was to do a little bit of holiday after the Giro, but we skipped the holiday, and I was really working with therapists, osteopaths, physio, and medical doctors on this problem.

"I think we got a lot further there, but still it was early to compete in the Tour de Suisse, and I think it's not all 100% solved, but when I see what step I could make in this short time, I'm super happy about it."

A warning to Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot

Reusser has enjoyed a very successful career up to this point already. As a time trial expert, Classics star, and top GC rider, she is the latest in a long line of ultra-versatile riders in the women's peloton who seem to have almost no weaknesses.

Even at the Tour de France, she's enjoyed triumphs, winning two stages, but luck hasn't gone her way at cycling's biggest race in recent times. Just 12 months ago, Reusser had her best period of GC racing approaching the big appointment, finishing second at the Giro and Vuelta, but her Tour bid never got off the ground when stomach issues on the opening day forced her to abandon.

It looked as though she was going to head into the 2026 Tour, which starts in her home country, Switzerland, with 13th at the Giro as her in-race build-up, but this display of strength at the Tour de Suisse has steadied the ship and put her right among the top contenders for the yellow jersey.

"When we look to the Tour, it gives me back some confidence. After the Giro, I didn’t feel super optimistic," she said. "I could see why all of this was, but it still doesn’t make you feel great. So the step I could make since then is super nice."

Looking at the Tour route, there is every reason for the big favourites Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) and Pauliné Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) to really consider Reusser as the next best challenger.

Yes, Mont Ventoux's vicious and barren slopes will likely decide the race for yellow, where those two elite climbers should be in a different league than Reusser, but the rest of the eight stages should play mostly into the Swiss rider's favour.

Of course, there is the 21km stage 4 time trial in Dijon, where there is a climb, but World Champion Reusser will still be the heavy favourite to win and take time on all of her rivals. Vollering's ability against the clock should limit her losses to a minimum, but Ferrand-Prévot – if she can return to the form she dominated with last year – has shown few signs that she won't concede major losses to Reusser on this important day.

When the race does go uphill, though, on every day that isn't Ventoux, there are no other mountaintop finishes to be seen. The second hardest uphill run to the line comes on the opening day in Lausanne, where 2.6km at 4,6% will bring the riders to the line.

Stages 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9 are filled with climbs along their routes, but with a series of downhill and flat runs to the finish, anyone trying to really beat Reusser will not only have to distance her uphill, but stay away from her when she gets back onto favoured gradients and terrain.

And she's no slouch on the climbs as a start, anyway, which she showed at the Tour de Suisse, while still improving in form and against top competition in Longo Borghini and former Tour de France Femmes winner Niewiadoma-Phinney.

There's every chance she could be in yellow after the time trial and hold it until the race reaches the storied slopes of Ventoux. From there, defence could be her best attack as the top climbers all scramble to try and gain the time back. But after the 16 kilometres are up, it could well be too late.

Could 2026 be the year of Marlen Reusser? The Tour de France Femmes has thrown up relative surprises in the race for yellow in the past, just as Vollering proved. But from everything she's shown on the comeback road from injury, the Swiss rider is signposting her best performance yet ahead of the August Grand Départ.

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Hello everyone! When Cyclingnews, and more specifically the wonderful human that is Josh Croxton, first approached me roughly a month ago and floated the idea of writing my own column for their website, I was a young and relatively unknown rider within the WorldTour. Fast forward to the middle of June as I've started to write this first piece and that situation is now very different.

Hi, my name is Luke Tuckwell. I am a 21-year-old Australian professional cyclist for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. 2026 is my first year as a rider in the WorldTour and for the past two years I have been studying a communications degree online. So, when Josh initially pitched the idea for my own column, I immediately jumped on it due to my passion for journalism and love for communicating stories and experiences.

In this first piece I will explain my story, where I started, how I got to Europe, and ultimately how I ended up in the position that I am in today. I hope you enjoy the read, there will be plenty more to come!

Where did I start?

I actually don’t remember the day I said I wanted to ride a bike. I was so young that to me it has always been the norm. But I trace it back to a series of moments that my parents have subsequently told me.

For this part the Australian readers will know what I am talking about, but for the rest of you, as a toddler I was obsessed with the Australian kids' show 'The Wiggles’. They were mostly well known for the colour of their shirts. The lead character Greg wore yellow, Murray wore red, and Anthony wore blue. During this stage of my life my dad also began regularly watching the Tour de France, more specifically the morning thirty minute highlight package that SBS ran. Unfortunately for me, these highlights coincided with episodes of The Wiggles. So, in order for dad to stay up to date with the race and for his toddler to be satisfied, he tricked me into thinking that The Wiggles was the Tour. I think you can imagine how that turned out; a young Luke screaming "Go Greg!" at the top of his lungs as Lance Armstrong danced away from his rivals in the Alps.

I attribute this manipulation of a child’s mind by his father as the reason why I am completely obsessed with cycling today. Cycling has been ingrained into my life for the best part of fifteen years now, and I think my love for the sport is the biggest factor to my success and enjoyment of riding my bike.

My transition From Australia to Europe

I was a slow progresser in the Australian junior scene. I was in and around the podium regularly, but I wasn’t a prolific winner and didn’t score any national titles. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the hugely successful domestic team InForm TMX Make for my second junior year, which also happened to be the first year I went to Europe.

Let me take you back to November 2021. I was sitting in the kitchen alone and received an Instagram DM from Simon Clarke, one of the most successful and well respected Australian pros there has been. I was stunned, 17-year-old Luke couldn’t believe the notification on his phone. Anyways, Simon’s message in short entailed the details of a potential opportunity to go and race in Italy the following year for a few months. I immediately said yes before consulting my parents.

Over the next few months, together with Simon and my parents, we fleshed out the details and booked the flights for three months in Italy between April and July. And so 17-year-old Luke, in his final year of high school, waved goodbye to his family at Sydney airport bound for Rome.

The first week in Italy was horrible. I was incredibly homesick, to the point where if a taxi pulled up outside where I was living bound for the airport, I would have jumped into it immediately.

My first race was a week after arriving and it was the last thing I wanted to do. I went anyway without any expectations and saw it as a good first experience in the European peloton. I think during this first race I spent roughly 90% of the race in the last twenty positions on the road questioning my life choices as Italian teenagers pushed each other off the road with 80km still to go until the finish. The 10km lap we raced around consisted of a singular, gradual 3-4km climb to the finish, and the second last time up I somehow made it to the front. The legs felt good, and I launched an attack. Of course no one had any idea who I was so no one followed, and I began my pursuit towards the breakaway a minute ahead of the bunch. I eventually caught the breakaway, continued on riding with them sitting in my wheel, and subsequently dropped them on the final time up the climb to the finish.

I won my first race in Europe. Solo. A pretty good way to start my European racing career if I must say.

I quickly drew interest from a few individuals within the sport, and after another win in late June I decided that Trinity Racing was my destination for the 2023 season, my first year as a U23 rider. The following year I did what every young Australian rider does and moved to Girona in Spain, and got my head kicked in at the limited races I did in the second half of the year. I would be lying if I wasn’t a bit apprehensive to how the 2024 season would go, and so I returned back to Europe in February 2024 for my second year with Trinity.

Things started clicking

I could ramble on here about how I progressed throughout the 2024 season and all the ups and downs I experienced, but in short I had a great year. I was hyper-focused on nailing the first six months of the year, and making sure I was on the start line of the Giro Next Gen in June.

I got my first top 10 GC result in May in Ronde de l’Isard where I finished sixth. That was followed the next week by a fifth in the Belgian one-day race Flèche Ardennaise. At this point I was well and truly on track to be at the start of the Giro in Aosta, and in Aosta I was. I spent two long weeks up at altitude in Tignes solo prior to the race, and was in flying form from the beginning of the race. Coming into the last weekend of the race I was in the top 10 overall, then spilled out of it, and on the final day I pulled the first breakaway stunt of my career and snuck back into GC and finished 10th. The first big result of my career.

During the race John Wakefield from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe approached me expressing their interest in me. They were excited by my style of racing and my development trajectory. John also explained the team’s plans of forming a development team for the 2025 season and, following my performance at the Giro Next Gen, I had a Zoom meeting with the team. Within the week, I was contracted to the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies for the 2025 season.

The year that changed my life

I was blown away by the entire Red Bull organisation. Coming from a relatively small development team in Trinity Racing and stepping into the first day of the team's October camp in Austria with the likes of Primož Roglič and Jai Hindley sitting in the same room, cycling fanboy Luke couldn’t believe the position he was in.

I started slow last year. I had two great opportunities to race with the WorldTour team in Mallorca as well as Andalucia in the first two months of the year before I shifted my focus to the first big goal of the year, U23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège. I put in a solid performance finishing eighth but I felt as if I was far from my best.

Prior to the 2025 edition of the Giro Next Gen I spent three weeks in Andorra on an altitude training camp together with the rest of the Rookies team. I had an exceptional few weeks of training and was feeling the best I had ever felt on the bike, so confidence was high heading into the Giro once again. I was looking for another good GC result in the race, with the minimum expectation of exceeding my 10th place from the year prior.

After the first uphill test of the race on stage 3 I found myself sitting in third overall, with my team mate Lorenzo Finn sitting in second behind the previous year's winner Jarno Widar. Collectively as a team, we saw a golden opportunity to put some pressure on the race leader on the fifth stage to try and launch one of us into the leader's jersey. After a flurry of attacks midway during the stage I found myself in a group of ten other riders that slowly rode away from the maglia. We crossed the line a minute and forty five seconds ahead of Widar, and I had taken the maglia rosa for the first time. This was the second GC break away stunt of my career.

As I crossed the finish line and made my way towards my soigneur, I was overjoyed. My dad had travelled over from Australia for the duration of the race and he couldn’t contain his excitement. I couldn’t quite believe I was in the race lead of such a prestigious event with only three stages remaining, but my focus quickly shifted towards defending the jersey with an eye on winning the race overall. The following day was relatively uneventful and I retained my lead without any problems. I headed into the Queen stage with a slender margin over second place. Stage 7 also happened to be my 21st birthday, so I can’t begin to describe how incredible of an experience it was to race in the maglia rosa on my birthday. I unfortunately lost half of my margin on this day, and I would go into the final day looking to hold on to win the race.

I unfortunately did not win. Slovenian star Jakob Omrzel dropped me on the final climb and won the race by 12 seconds. I was heartbroken. I felt I had come so close to winning the biggest U23 race in the world and the chance slipped through my fingers.

The thing that did help with the disappointment was that in the following two weeks, I was offered a WorldTour contract. This moment was the culmination of years of hard work and a childhood dream of one day becoming a professional cyclist.

Although I would continue to beat myself up about what happened on the final day in the Giro for a long time afterwards, the realisation that I would be pro for the following season allowed me to slowly move on. But the pain of losing a bike race would seem like a drop of water a few months later.

After fighting chronic illness for the prior two and a half years, my younger sister Antonia’s health had taken a turn for the worst. I immediately rushed back to Australia in the first week of September and thankfully made it home in time to be there for her final days. I couldn’t quite comprehend the curveball life had thrown at myself and my family, where all of us only two months earlier were celebrating my first pro contract, to now all of us sitting together in a hospital room.

Losing my sister has been the most painful experience of my life. It took a very long time for it to actually feel true, but I was determined to continue to give my all in my career in honour of her. It is the only way she would have wanted me to live out my life.

New beginnings

And so 2026 rolled around and so did my first year as a professional cyclist. I moved to Andorra, like the majority of professionals do once they turn pro. I had my first serious December training camp with the entire team in Mallorca, and I started my season in Australia at the Tour Down Under, which is a race that is close to the heart of all Australians. It was the first time my entire family had the opportunity to come and watch me race at the highest level.

Little did I know that after the year that 2025 was, 2026 would find a way to outdo it. In my next piece next week I'll dive into it and the experience that was this year's Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

See you then!

The show must go on. Unfortunate as it may be that Wout van Aert has been hit by more bad luck and forced to pull out of the 2026 Tour de France two weeks before it even starts, Visma-Lease a Bike will have to go on without one of their superstars.

It's the lingering effects of a training crash that have ruined Van Aert's hopes of an eighth consecutive Tour appearance, with an elbow wound getting infected – which thankfully didn't get more serious despite the threat of sepsis – and forcing him to recover on antibiotics and cancel his Tour participation.

A 10-time stage winner and one of the very best Tour riders of his generation, it's no easy feat replacing Van Aert, but Visma's strength in depth does give them options to try to fill the void his absence will leave.

Visma are targeting the yellow jersey with Jonas Vingegaard, and are expected to be the main rivals to Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates, so every member of the eight can prove crucial in supporting the Dane, keeping him safe, and launching him on the hardest climbs when he is at his best.

Van Aert has done all those jobs over the years as a stalwart in the Dutch team's Tour team, riding every edition since 2019, all while starring himself as a green jersey winner and yellow jersey wearer. He also played a major role in the two Tours Vingegaard defeated the Slovenian in 2022 and 2023, famously dropping Pogačar on Hautacam as he led out the Dane to a famous victory.

Seven of their 2026 Tour squad are all but officially confirmed, with Matteo Jorgenson and Sepp Kuss making up his high mountain support, rouleurs Edoardo Affini and Per Strand Hagenes acting as the controllers, break chasers and bodyguards, and the versatile Victor Campenaerts and Bruno Armirail bridging the gap between both of those jobs.

With that roster in mind, Visma should have a good idea of what they need from their eighth man, but that official decision won't be made until they reveal their full team on June 23. But who looks like the best option?

Who could fill the Van Aert-sized hole?

Visma have already had to bring in replacements to their squad, with Hagenes only recently being reported as a likely starter after some strong performances in recent weeks, filling in for the injured Christophe Laporte, who suffered a quadriceps tear during a training crash.

This was more of a like-for-like swap, whereas the rider who comes in for Van Aert looks more likely to be a climber, who can bolster Vingegaard's mountain support. Analysing the six domestiques they have, this seems the obvious route, but the specific rider they should go with is less clear.

As we dig into who might be best, it seems clear that there are three options that stand above the rest, but Visma could well opt to utilise one of Vingegaard's top helpers from the Giro if they have enough in the tank for three more brutal weeks of racing so soon.

Ben Tulett

Young British rider Ben Tulett would be the first choice for a lot of people, and has experience supporting Vingegaard in a Grand Tour, having been a key cog in his Vuelta a España-winning team from last season.

Tulett has been rising in status at Visma during what is his third season on the Dutch team, leading them in the Ardennes Classics to a third-place finish at La Flèche Wallonne and 13th at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

A strong climber with a notable cyclo-cross background, Tulett can provide some punchy edge to the faster uphill finishes that the diesel efforts of Jorgenson and the long-climbing expertise of Kuss may lack on occasion, making him not only another climbing domestique, but a different type.

Another factor in Tulett's factor is a minor one, but could prove vital in a key moment. He's a diminutive figure in the same way Vingegaard is, and in a team of big rouleurs and taller climbers – Kuss is 5'11" and Jorgenson is 6'3" – the Brit riding a similar size bike to the Dane offers him a quick change in a moment of need.

This happened during stage 16 of the Vuelta, when Vingegaard had a mechanical, but Tulett thought quickly and gave his leader his bike, allowing him to get back into the group without losing much time. Amid the craziness of the Tour, you never know when something similar might happen.

So, from a climbing point of view, and a logistical perspective, Tulett is rightly the front-runner in the running to replace Van Aert, even as a vastly different profile or rider. Furthemore, he has shown the team he's in solid form with seventh at the recent Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Wilco Kelderman

The most experienced potential replacement for Visma would be 35-year-old Dutchman Wilco Kelderman. He's ridden 20 Grand Tours in his career and has finished in the top five overall at the Tour, Giro and Vuelta.

Kelderman was due to play a big role as part of Vingegaard's support at the Giro, but crashed out with a broken collarbone just four days into the action. Having returned to racing this week at the Tour de Suisse, he's back in the running for potential Tour selection.

He's also added more string to his bow, too, in recent years, often getting into his work earlier in the stages than acting as a last mountain domestique, as a more than capable rider on the flat roads and uphill.

Kelderman doesn't offer as much punch as Tulett, but he's less of an unknown quantity at the Tour, with that wealth of experience and having been part of Vingegaard's winning effort in 2023.

Tulett has only raced two Grand Tours in his career, and this would be his Tour debut, which could swing the balance into the reliable Kelderman's favour.

Jørgen Nordhagen

21-year-old Jørgen Nordhagen is another potential option for Visma's selection, offering a chance to give one of their top young prospects a taste of cycling's biggest race, and he's shown the form to back up that possibility in recent weeks.

Nordhagen, the former cross-country skier-turned professional cyclist, has impressed since turning pro with Visma a year ago, and has only improved in his second year, finishing fourth overall at the Tour de Romandie, second at O Gran Camiño, and eighth at the UAE Tour.

A more than capable pure climber, Nordhagen would be similar to Tulett in the spot he would occupy in the climbing train, before Jorgenson and Kuss likely take over. He was in good form at the recent Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, too, before illness forced him to abandon, crossing the line alongside Jorgenson in the uphill finish to the team time trial, which Visma won.

That sickness which forced him out of the race could have put a stop to his progression in form, though, placing him below Tulett and Kelderman in the options, but a small pure climber from Scandinavia, he looks every bit a potential Vingegaard 2.0 for Visma in future.

The less likely options

Visma have the luxury of having already won a Grand Tour in 2026 at the Giro, so feasibly any of the six supporting riders who made it to Rome with him could be making the trip to the Tour with him after an elite team performance in Italy. Two of them already are in Campenaerts and Kuss, but why not dip into that squad when you need a replacement for Van Aert.

Davide Piganzoli announced himself to the cycling world fully as he acted as Vingegaard's number one domestique for much of the opening two weeks, but started to slow down in the last two weeks after giving everything to secure pink for his leader. At 23, it's fair to assume he doesn't yet have the experience or engine of Kuss and Campenaerts to maintain such a high level for six weeks of GT action in a short window, and Visma don't tend to dispurt the development of their young rider who are well on track, so it looks unlikely.

Bart Lemmen impressed more and more as the Giro went on as he rode for Vingegaard, but he too showed the signs of a tired body that has just completed three weeks of brutal action by the time they reached Rome. Lemmen, unlike Piganzoli, does have Tour experience, having been a late call-up to the 2024 race, but his services, too, would likely be better off after a period of rest with the fatigue of a full Giro in his legs.

Axel Zingle was the last name really being floated around the discussion, and the only real non-climber, but any chance of him joining the Tour roster was ruled out this week, after he confirmed to DirectVelo that he would be ending his season to undergo iliac artery surgery, with no planned return until 2027.

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If you're in market for a new MTB, there are loads of budget mountain bike options to choose from. So how do you decide which ones are winners and which are losers? Not just now, but further down the line when you're hooked on trail time and want to upgrade parts or replace bits you've worn out.

Our ultra-experienced bike tester, Guy Kesteven, reveals the five must-have features you might not think about at first, but matter way more than component brands and the number of gears in the long run.

1. Good geometry

If the bike frame isn’t a good shape to start with, there’s nothing you can do to make it ride confidently, so you can have maximum fun. Unfortunately, some cheap mountain bikes just re-use old, outdated frames to save money.

The really important number is the head angle. This is the angle the forks sit in the frame and the smaller that number is the more stable the steering of the bike will feel. For general trail riding, you want a 67-degree head angle or less. Otherwise, the steering will feel really nervous.

A generous reach – the horizontal distance from the centre of cranks to the fork top – also helps stabilise the bike. My baseline numbers are 470mm for a large frame, 450mm for a medium frame and 430mm for a small frame. If you have to size up to get the reach you need, make sure you still have enough space under the saddle to fit a dropper post if you’re looking to upgrade to one in future.

Buyer beware...

To be clear here, we’re talking about the angles of the frame tubes – not the shape of the tubes themselves. They don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, although be aware that big, square tubes will generally give a harder ride than skinny round ones.

2. Disc brakes

Thankfully it’s been a long time since I’ve tested a mountain bike with brakes that rub on the rims to eventually stop you. That’s because disc brakes give much more consistent braking in wet weather or on dirty trails and have become the industry standard. Ideally, you want brakes that use hydraulic fluid as they self-adjust for pad wear, but wire cable-operated disc brakes are still better than rim brakes.

If your budget doesn’t stretch that far then at least get a frame and forks that have the attachment points for disc brakes already built in.

Buyer beware...

Check with the shop what sort of replacement brake pads you’ll need for your brakes. Many budget brakes share standards with Shimano, but some are a special shape which can be hard to find.

3. Through-axles

‘Through-axles’ that slide through solid ends in the fork and frame are a lot more secure than old road bike style quick-release (QR) axles that sit in open slotted fork and frame tips. Ideally, you want them to be ‘Boost’ standard which means 110mm wide at the front and 148mm wide at the back too. This makes the frame and forks stiffer for more accurate control and makes it much easier to upgrade with better wheels in the future.

Buyer beware...

Even at $1,000, some of the most popular mountain bikes still have QR skewers with a skinny steel rod, not a thicker through-axle. Don’t be fooled by ‘standards’ like “Boost 141mm” either as they’re not a proper Boost fit and still use a QR skewer.

4. Tapered fork fit

Another future upgrade issue I still see hiding on some four figure price tag mountain bikes are skinny head tubes with skinny straight ‘steerer’ suspension forks. To be honest, the performance of these forks isn’t much worse than other similarly cheap models so you’re not losing out much at first. However, all better quality forks and frames use a ‘tapered' steerer with a larger bottom bearing as that design is lighter and stiffer, so you won’t be able to upgrade in the future.

Buyer beware...

Speaking of cheap forks, coil-sprung versions can feel great if you’re between 70-80kg in weight. However, if you’re lighter or heavier than that try and get a fork with an air spring that can be adjusted to your weight or how hard you ride.

5. Twenty niner wheels

The final item on my wish list for budget mountain bikes is probably the most controversial one. Unless you’re buying an XS frame I’d say always go for 29-inch wheels if you can. Partly that’s because they roll a bit smoother and easier than 27.5in wheels so your bike will make you feel like a slightly better, fitter rider. You’ll generally find 29in wheeled bikes will have more up-to-date geometry too.

However, yet again the main issue is upgrading in the future. That’s because decent quality 27.5in wheels and tires – particularly front ones – are getting increasingly hard to find as most bikes switch to 29in.

Buyer beware...

The big issue with saying that you should always buy a bike with 29in wheels is that some of the best budget mountain bikes available now still come with 27.5in wheels. Just to be really awkward, they often come with all the essential features listed above while some 29er bikes don’t. So in this case, feel free to ignore me about wheel size, just be sure to buy some spare tyres while you still can (and while they’re being sold off cheap).

The 2026 Tour de France starts in Barcelona on July 4, but the battle for the yellow jersey began several weeks ago, high up in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains, at altitude training camps.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) all spent three weeks atop the Spanish mountain, training and naturally boosting their oxygen-carrying capacity for their Tour de France showdown.

Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) headed to Sierra Nevada in late May and revealed that he had counted 14 WorldTour teams staying in Sierra Nevada. When the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ended, Giro d'Italia winner Jonas Vingegaard joined his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates in Tignes, in the French Alps, for a final pre-Tour de France altitude camp. Pogačar and his UAE teammates will do something similar after the Tour de Suisse.

In recent years, altitude training camps have become a vital part of professional cyclists' lives. Most riders buy into the isolated mountain lifestyle, and most teams now cover the costs and send coaches, soigneur, mechanics and even nutritionists and performance chefs to help their riders train in the best way possible for their major goals.

"Altitude gives you something extra, but you have to be motivated to do it," a WorldTour rider, who preferred not to be identified, told Cyclingnews.

"I know a few riders who would prefer to avoid doing long altitude camps because they have young families, but most don't tell their teams; they just accept it's part of the job. But are the current demands on riders sustainable and healthy? I'm not so sure.

"I raced some of the cobbled Classics, had three days at home and then did a three-week altitude camp block for the Giro d'Italia. I travelled home on the Saturday and then left for the Giro on the Tuesday, spending another four weeks away riding a Grand Tour."

Altitude camps and the demands of modern pro cycling create bigger problems for the sport than a rider's time at home. The full impact is complex and often multi-layered, with key stakeholders such as teams and race organisers showing little interest in the stress it puts on riders and the sport as a whole.

The speciality coffee shops of Granada, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, may have enjoyed a boom in consumption in recent weeks as riders stopped during training rides. Still, globally, fans, team sponsors, and the sport have paid a price for riders hiding away at altitude. The only people to see the biggest riders in the sport are Alfonso Sánchez, the manager of the Sierra Nevada High Performance Center and the few local riders who try to stay with riders on the climbs and capture a moment to share on their social media accounts.

Instagram posts from an altitude camp are not the same as seeing big-name riders at races and on television, though, where teams and sponsors capture their media value and repay their ever-bigger investments.

It is widely accepted that professional cycling lacks frequent big-rider showdowns, with the biggest riders in the sport only racing each other at the Tour de France. Tuttobiciweb have recently analysed the 'Startlist Quality' rating calculated by ProCyclingStats and confirmed that major WorldTour races like Paris-Nice, E3 Saxo Classic, UAE Tour, Ronde Van Brugge and the Amstel Gold Race have all seen a fall in the quality of their start lists as riders race less and prefer to train more, often at altitude.

The sport is becoming more polarised with each passing year. Science and training techniques have raised the level of performance and competition to an extreme that reduces the time riders can compete for victory. Peaks of fitness are harder to reach and last far less. Riders train more and race less.

Former Soudal-QuickStep team manager Patrick Lefevere raised a similar point in a recent column for Nieuwsblad.

"Which riders still like racing?" Lefevere asked. "I know that altitude camps work, but sometimes races now seem like [an] intermezzo between two of those camps."

Our headline calling for a ban on altitude training is a provocation that Lefevere would perhaps use for one of his columns to capture attention. Yet it also poses several questions. Would pro cycling be better, more equal and more entertaining if altitude camps and altitude training were banned to help rider welfare?

Should a pool of big-name riders be contractually obliged to race the same Classics calendar and then the same stage races, and in turn limit the time they spend training at altitude? Would more big-name clashes and a more balanced race schedule, instead of riders spending long spells living like hermits at the top of a mountain, make the sport more attractive to sponsors and global fans? Would riders be happier and healthier if they could spend more time at home?

Why go to altitude camps? The pursuit of peak haemoglobin mass

Elite athletes, especially professional cyclists, have always looked for ways to boost their performance. The 1968 Mexico Olympic Games were a turning point for altitude training, forcing athletes to find ways to prepare for the thin air of Mexico City.

In the 1990s and beyond, EPO was the drug of choice to raise a rider's haematocrit and so increase their performance to stratospheric but illegal levels. Anti-doping blood tests and the Biological Passport have hopefully limited illegal blood-boosting techniques, but in recent years, performance has improved thanks to better training methods, better energy consumption and altitude training.

Coaches and riders can now prepare for their biggest goals away from competition. The science is now so good that riding races as a form of training is considered a waste of time and can lead to 'de-training'. Evenepoel's decision not to race between Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour de France sparked debate but makes scientific sense.

"Cycling has actually become a different sport compared to when I started racing," former domestique Tim Declercq, who has a master’s degree in sports science and works as a coach for Soudal-QuickStep, told Nieuwsblad.

"In the past, there was the idea that you couldn't be good if you hadn't raced. That is no longer the case. I think there are several reasons why riders race much less now than they used to."

These include training at a calorie deficit to help lose weight, working at specific thresholds and completing specific workouts for the biggest objectives.

Riders go to altitude camps several times a year based on their season goals and fitness.

Mount Teide on the Spanish island of Tenerife is especially popular for pre-season altitude camps as it avoids the risk of snowstorms that disrupted Uno-X Mobility's and Visma-Lease a Bike's early-season camps at Sierra Nevada. The limited availability of hotels and apartments on Mount Teide is why Pidcock and Pinarello-Q36.5 travelled all the way to Chile in February.

In the spring and summer, riders and teams head to Teide, Sierra Nevada or Mount Etna in Sicily to prepare for the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, then to Tignes or Isola 2000 in the Alps, or Livigno near the border between Italy and Switzerland, for summer camps. Riders are convinced of the need for altitude camps, even if the benefits are shown to be personal to each rider.

Matej Mohoric recently trained with his Bahrain Victorious in Tenerife but preferred to train and sleep low, while his teammates were at altitude. Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) revealed during the Giro d'Italia that he combined three different altitude camps with early-season racing at the UAE Tour and the Volta a Catalunya to peak for the Corsa Rosa. He was hardly at home between late January and early June, but the plan paid off, giving him the fitness to finish second in the Giro. Adam Yates and his UAE teammates were not so fortunate. They also spent three weeks at altitude, but their Giro ended with a nasty crash on stage two.

Recent scientific research has proven that altitude training camps give pro cyclists a boost in performance.

Swedish-based Italian researcher Daniele Cardinale hit the headlines for his research into the use of now-banned carbon monoxide supplementation, but he is one of the leading experts in altitude training.

"It's not easy to quantify the benefits of altitude training due to the many variables, but several controlled research studies have confirmed the improvements we've seen with athletes. Elite athletes improve less than others, but even an improvement of between 1-2% is huge and worthwhile for an elite athlete," Cardinale told Cyclingnews, as he travelled to Livigno for a summer altitude camp.

"We know that haemoglobin mass – the key for transporting oxygen to the muscles – has an up-regulation of between two and eight per cent after three to four weeks of altitude.

"That increases the maximum oxygen carrying capacity, but it also improves the lactate buffer system, which also helps performance. We're also studying likely improvements to the cardio-respiratory system, the neuromuscular system, the increase in mitochondrial function and other environmental physiological improvements. There are muscular benefits as well as haematological benefits; it's now proven that sprint training in hypoxia increases performance."

Ways to avoid altitude camps and make a level playing field

The science and race results have shown that altitude training camps are currently vital for success in pro cycling, especially for the demands of the Tour de France. The concern is whether the modern training regimes are sustainable and so beneficial for the sport.

Are there perhaps better alternatives?

"I did a camp on Mount Tiede in late April, and I lived like a monk for three weeks. A rider can perhaps handle that once or twice a year for a big goal, but it's very demanding," our unnamed WorldTour rider admitted.

"It worked out for me, I had a good Giro and so it was worth the sacrifice, but that was perhaps not the case for a lot of other riders, who crashed out or struggled mentally. I don't know how long the new generation of riders will be able to handle this lifestyle and the intensity of it all. That is why 'burnout' is one of the biggest concerns amongst riders at the moment."

Adam Hansen, the president of the CPA riders' association, is well aware of the problems pro riders face and works to resolve them with the UCI, race organisers and the teams that employ the riders. Hansen has hiked in the Himalayas and completed numerous altitude camps during his own racing career.

"Riders have short contracts and know that their careers can be relatively short, so most are willing to attend camps and make the extra sacrifice to enjoy the benefits of altitude," Hansen told Cyclingnews.

"Riders are away from their families for long spells during a season, but I think altitude can be a benefit, especially for young riders, because they have the support of team staff, soigneurs, coaches and even nutritionists.

"I also believe that altitude can be a benefit if it means that riders race clean and still perform at a super high level. I'm in favour of riders training at altitude, rather than the temptations of doping.

"Riders tell me that they are more concerned about all the extra days they have to sacrifice around races. They have to travel to races earlier than in the past, sacrificing training and time at home for things that do not benefit their performance. The CPA is in favour of riders racing less in each season and in favour of avoiding lost days for other events. We believe that increasing team sizes could be one way to achieve that."

Riders literally count the number of days they race, train and stay at home, with the first two far outnumbering their time at home.

To reduce the impact training camps and altitude camps have on their private lives, but to still enjoy a haematalogical boost, some riders use hypoxic tents, despite their drawbacks such as noise and humidity. Bigger-name, wealthier riders have built altitude rooms in their homes. One Classics rider apparently had an altitude room built in his new villa in Spain, and so does not need to attend team altitude camps.

Riders are using other methods to help boost their blood values and so limit the time needed at altitude, including simulated altitude devices or machines, which are also legal under the WADA code.

Cardinale helped develop the heat training protocols that most WorldTour riders have in their training plans. Heat training helps to adapt to racing in the European summer but also boosts or maintains haemoglobin mass.

"Heat training could even extend or also improve on altitude training," Cardinale told Cyclingnews.

"Altitude training and heat training complement each other, so you can even have a staircase effect and build on the altitude camp work to get better physiologically. In turn, that means you then train at an even higher level at home and adapt better to a higher workload."

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) prefers to avoid altitude camps when possible but has embraced the pain of heat training.

"It’s terrible but terribly effective," he admitted.

Cardinale also believes in better individualisation for training, especially altitude training. This could reduce the time athletes need to spend away from home at altitude camps and help develop alternatives.

"Some teams still believe that everyone needs to go to the same altitude work for three weeks and that everyone will respond the same way. That's not true and far too simplistic," Cardinale said.

"The aim of precision medicine in health care is to give each individual patient the best medication, with the right dose at the same time. That mentality is finally being applied to sport and to pro cycling. It's about being as scientific as possible, not going with a gut feeling or sticking to traditions. Sport has to adapt, it has to follow the science, while respecting the athlete's health and wellness."

"For things to remain the same, everything must change"

Sport and professional cycling will never be truly equal. Budget caps can balance the spending power across the peloton, but some athletes always have natural advantages. Southern European-born riders can train at home throughout the off-season, while the likes of Jonas Abrahamsen and his Uno-X Mobility teammates have to do long indoor training sessions if they want to stay at home during the Norwegian winter.

Altitude training is considered a far bigger advantage than geography, and is why riders are obliged to attend so many altitude camps each season if they want to compete at WorldTour level.

Yet riders are currently near their physiological and psychological limits and fear burnout. Something has to be done to protect their health and welfare. Could banning altitude camps, as they currently exist, be the answer?

"We have to make sport physically and mentally sustainable," Cardinale suggested to Cyclingnews.

"It's up to the UCI and the so-called stakeholders to govern the sport and to create a sustainable sport for the athletes, teams and sponsors," he added.

The influence of proven sports science in pro cycling is increasing, and that is arguably a good thing. It brings performance and health benefits, but has also intensified the racing and training. The performances of the 2026 Tour de France won't be comparable to those of even just a decade ago.

The Tour de France traditionally lasts 21 days. In the early pioneer years, stages were 400km long, and riders raced every other day. Stage distances have fallen over the years, with riders given one rest day after a week.

The Classics are still often over 250km long and a real test of endurance and physiology, but is that still relevant and important in modern sport? Women's races and even the Vuelta a España have proven that longer race distances do not make for better racing.

Sports science has increased the intensity of our sport and changed the way riders train and race. It seems unstoppable and Luddite behaviour to even try. Is it not better to create new race formats and a new calendar that also reflects the change in performance?

If we can't stop riders from going to altitude, and we can't stop the science, perhaps we can at least change the sport to protect the riders' health?

As Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's famous line from his novel The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change."

That is also true for the world of professional cycling.

Here's a hot take: Wout van Aert is the most valuable Tour de France rider of the last five years. 'Not Tadej Pogačar? Not Jonas Vingegaard?' I hear you already typing in the comments, and in many ways you're right, of course, but in terms of a rider who can do it all at this race, both for himself and for his team, no one comes close to Van Aert.

That's why this morning's news, that Van Aert has been ruled out of what would have been his eighth Tour de France, was so big. The Tour has lost a 10-time stage winner, Jonas Vingegaard has lost his most trusted bodyguard, and Visma-Lease a Bike have lost their biggest fan favourite.

The most immediate question is how this will affect Vingegaard. In truth, the loss of Van Aert as part of his Tour team cannot be understated. The Belgian may not have been at his very best last Tour – apart from winning the final stage – but every time Vingegaard has won the Tour before, it's been with Van Aert by his side, and after some very big efforts from him.

In some ways, Van Aert's pivotal role in both of Vingegaard's previous wins makes it hard to imagine how the Dane can even achieve that without his Belgian talisman.

Despite what a few well-edited sequences of Netflix's Unchained may lead you to believe, Van Aert and Vingegaard actually have a really good partnership, at least to my eyes. If the way they work together isn't enough, then seeing them embrace atop a mountain, with Van Aert telling Vingegaard how proud he is of him, gives nothing to suggest rivalry or discontent.

Van Aert's natural role, as a Classics rider, is to be Vingegaard's bodyguard on the flatter terrain, and look after him during fast and hectic stages, a job he does with ease, but more than that, Van Aert has shown his huge value on stages that shouldn't suit his rider type.

When he's at his best, Van Aert is somehow also one of the best climbing domestiques in the peloton, burying himself to support Vingegaard on even the hardest of stages, and indeed winning every type of stage – from TT to mountain to sprint – himself over the years.

Now, whether Van Aert could have been at his very best this July, even before an elbow infection ruled him out of the race entirely, is a different question. It is true that we haven't quite seen Van Aert go turbo mode in the Tour as he did in 2022 and 2023 in recent years, and maybe his years of being the very best all-rounder in the bunch are behind him.

But that doesn't mean he isn't an incredibly valuable part of Visma-Lease a Bike's line-up, and one that will be sorely missed. For one, he is a valued and close teammate of Jonas Vingegaard, and an ally he would have wanted to have as he tries to achieve the seemingly impossible right now and beat Tadej Pogačar in the Tour. Let's not forget that the only person to beat Pogačar head-to-head so far this year was Wout van Aert.

Secondly, Van Aert is a central figure and key cog in the Visma team. Not only does he have an important team role, which became even more important this year when Christophe Laporte was also ruled out, but as a potential winner himself, he also has the ability to bring in other success for the team, and take the pressure off of Vingegaard in some ways. Van Aert could have been the face of the team, at least for the start of the race, absorbing the questions and attention in place of his leader. That won't happen now.

Without Van Aert, and Laporte, Vingegaard's support squad for the flat, chaotic stages – the ones that can prove costly for a lightweight climber like him – is severely diminished, and whoever Visma bring in to replace them will not be able to match their experience or strength. The physical weakening in Visma's line-up does not need much explaining.

But more than that, there's a mental element, and a growing feeling of misfortune at Visma this year. Wout van Aert won Paris-Roubaix and Vingegaard won the Giro, but all their successes seem to come in spite of setbacks. Van Aert's broken ankle, Vingegaard's crash, the loss of Wilco Kelderman at the Giro, and most recently, the shock exit of Grischa Niermann – who will also be missing from the Tour as Marc Reef takes the driving seat.

And of course, this is all whilst Pogačar seems to sail through life unbothered and thriving at all times. UAE have had their own injury struggles, yes, but the Slovenian himself is coming to the Tour looking as strong as ever, and with an equally powerful support squad.

So far, Visma have bounced back from all of these knocks and misfortunes to pretty successful results – at least in their biggest goals – but how long can that last? Will Wout van Aert's Tour absence be the blow that actually sticks? Vingegaard and everyone at Visma will be hoping not, but his importance as a rider and figurehead cannot be understated. It's already been difficult to imagine Vingegaard overcoming Pogačar at the Tour de France this year – and that just became even harder without Van Aert.

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Welcome to another new subscriber perk on Cyclingnews! Before we drop our latest review on the Cyclingnews Tech YouTube channel, we're giving our subscribers exclusive early access to a video breakdown of a bike that certainly left our Senior Tech Writer, Will Jones, with split opinions: the Stooge Rambler.

A boutique brand based in Shropshire, Stooge makes bikes different from the norm and has been pushing the boundaries of massive tyres and progressive geometry for some time now.

But will its head-turning looks and adaptability make it the perfect companion for when riding off-road? Watch Will's full video review below, before it officially goes live, to see how the Stooge Rambler gets on.

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An assumption about gravel racing is that because it happens largely 'off' paved roads, the elite riders are clear from motor vehicles, traffic furniture, sidewalks, gutters and throngs of crowds close to the action at every corner. But is off-road racing really a safer environment?

The short answer is no, as off-road racing has its own set of dangers and risks, with a laundry list of natural and man-made obstacles that can cause chaos: elites mixing with amateur fields, media vehicles on the same minimum maintenance roads (MMR), courses open to public traffic and more. With more live streaming of gravel races, including events at the Gravel Earth Series and Life Time Grand Prix, global audiences can now see for themselves what the riders have talked about for years.

"Safety should be number one. I would trade all the prize money for safety," was an emphatic response from Keegan Swenson to The Cooldown co-host Alexey Vermeulen in March after a camera crew on an all-terrain vehicle almost crashed with Sofia Gomez Villafañe and Paige Onweller, the elite women's leaders at The Mid South.

"These issues happen so often. In the end, it's small instances out on course, and you sometimes forget how close of a call it is because you're in the midst of racing and you go straight back to racing. It's good it got caught on camera, to see actually how sketchy it was.

"At almost every single race, there's an incident. Big Sugar last year was one. You talk to promoters or race organisers after and it's always 'Oh, sorry, it won't happen again'. But it just keeps happening. It just seems like a recurring theme. It's time for them to step back and focus on the safety of the riders more than the shot," Swenson said to Vermeulen.

Both riders are part of the Life Time Grand Prix, Swenson currently second overall and Vermeulen third, and noted that even the races in the series were not immune challenges. At Sea Otter Classic the course is closed, but has had issues with dust kicked up by media vehicles and hand-off in feed zones. Unbound Gravel 200 and Leadville Trail 100 MTB have areas where the course passes over active roads, and the feed zones were shared with age-group riders.

"The sport, to begin with, isn't very safe. You know, I come from the road. We still see crashes with cars, even though it's closed courses. We still see riders making stupid decisions," Vermeulen said.

"The UCI has done some things, like trackers on bikes now, riders can't get lost. We [gravel racers] deal with even more, because we're racing off road, there's all sorts of weird surface things. I feel like in the end, you need to control the controllables."

Media vehicle mayhem, 'dusting' riders and 'the slip'

Onweller and Villafañe were not injured at The Mid South near-collision with a media all-terrain vehicle, but it disrupted their race. A nine-rider sprint was won by Villafane, with Onweller finishing fourth. Onweller said she has spent a lot of time talking with Mid South organisers since and they had been receptive to her input for safety, specifically with media vehicles.

"They've been super open to feedback and wanting to talk through like plans and how things are improved. I'll continue to talk with them as they work towards next year's event," she told Cyclingnews.

Vermeulen confirmed that while The Mid South got called out for the incident because it was seen globally on a live stream and social posts, it still happens all the time.

"When you have a conversation about how crazy an event was, very rarely is it in a photo, on video or two [people] actually talking about it afterwards, because you go on to the person who won the race. And if there was the catastrophe or someone got hit, then there isn't a reason to really talk about it. People want to glance over it because we don't want to point the flashlight at the dark corners of the sport."

The Mid South is not an isolated incident related to chaos kicked up by UTVs, motorbikes and jeeps. A 'side-by-side slip' can be created by these vehicles, specifically when conditions are dry, that provides less air resistance like drafting from the front. These common situations, according to Swenson, occur when a media vehicle misjudges the speed of the racers.

"They'll be stopped at the bottom of the hill, and we roll up onto them so fast. [Then] accelerating, trying to get out of there, they're dusting us. It creates a situation where it puts off this mean slip[stream]. You happen to get in the slip of this thing, you can just be gone."

He recounted how Cameron Jones and Simon Pellaud used this slipstream effect at Unbound Gravel 200 in 2025 to break away from the lead group. It wasn't a safety issue, but could be interpreted as a fairness issue.

"It's not necessarily the fault of the riders, because if it's there you're going to use it. We're looking for every advantage. Sometimes you just happen to attack and the side-by-side is there, and there's nowhere else to go.

"And I think the issue with the side-by-side, not many think about it, is those big exposed wheels [of the UTV]. They can just suck you in, like catch your foot on them. Whereas a motorcycle, it's more like a bike. At least you're not going to get sucked under the wheel and run over by a 5,000-pound machine."

But motorbikes are not clear of trouble, as a moto crashed at Lauf Gravel Worlds last year and caused separation in the pro field. Another moto crashed at Unbound two years ago. The Cooldown hosts agreed that skillful motorcycle operators were part of the solution.

"What's hard, is that it's changed really quickly. I think in the span of three or four years that you and I have been involved, gravel has gone from 'spirit of gravel' – hang out, have fun, stop in feed zones – to professional racing. We're going that first part of the race 27, 28 miles an hour average into the first feed zone. You can't plan on the fly when you're going that fast," Vermeulen added.

Did feed zones work at Unbound?

The early feedback was positive on expanding feed zones for pros only at Unbound Gravel 200 this year, a change made by Life Time, the organisers of the Grand Prix series and owners of the collection of six races, because of input from the elite riders.

"Unbound was always tough because it's such a long race, so feed zones historically, got you to think about carrying like four litres of water," Onweller told Cyclingnews after she finished top five for a second time at Unbound 200.

"I went to a wind tunnel with Sika specifically testing how to carry four litres of water, and then the next thing you know, Life Time announces they're doing a third feed zone. So I think a lot of us elite racers were really excited, and the elite feeds were separate so that improved safety."

Onweller said the first pro-only feed zone was really short, and the speeds carried into the area would be too high for the space allowed, but the mud at mile 15 split the men's and women's pelotons apart so there was no mass entry of riders. She thought the second two feed zones were super long and having space between team set-ups was good. However the difficult logistics for crews to move between feed zones was stressful and split resources.

"We had a crew that was at the start line that then went to feed two, and then the feed zone one people went to feed zone three, so they alternated each other, so that they could catch both male and female riders," she confirmed.

"At the end of the day, adding a third feed zone actually split resources. Yeah, I think that was a really big struggle. We tried to get as many bodies as possible, but it's still a stress to your resources, so for that reason I didn't really like the added third feed zone. Unless you have endless resources in this industry, which is pretty rare, I think it stressed a lot of people."

Andrew L'Esperance, who completed his fourth Unbound Gravel 200 this year and back as an invited rider in the Grand Prix, agreed that the third feed zone did work for the most part but did create stress.

"I think it worked quite well. It avoided all the challenges that were in previous versions of Unbound, just because the feed zones were longer and they had way less people in them, so there was just a lot more space to operate," he told Cyclingnews.

"There were some challenges with transportation between feed zone one and two. I just think with the way the course layout was, it wasn't really impossible to have the same person feed [at both]. It is just the reality of the area we're racing in, that the way that we got from feed zone one to feed zone two was all on back gravel roads, and there was no real main roads to get there quickly.

"This is just an example of them [Life Time] trying to improve, They hit it like 90% great, and that last 10% is just something they can do to make it perfect."

Close calls and closed courses

Gravel races typically cover so much real estate, are closed courses possible? In Europe, the courses often pass through densely populated areas. Vermeulen and Onweller noted that USA Cycling had a closed course for US Gravel Nationals that worked, Onweller third in Nebraska two years ago and Vermeulen finishing fourth at US Nationals in Minnesota last year. Swenson said the 2025 circuit course for SBT GRVL was 'semi-closed' and seemed safe.

L'Esperance noted that one of the best-organised gravel races he has done was a regional event near his home outside Montreal, Gravelooza. It was held the weekend after Unbound, with 1,800 participants, and he noted that all intersections were marshaled by construction workers.

"At the front of the race, it felt safe the whole time," he said, noting that the workers are used to regulating traffic.

Leadville and Big Sugar were races many riders called out as unsafe – Leadville for the two-way traffic up and down the Columbine climb, and Big Sugar in Arkansas for multiple intersections where the course crossed paved roads, many of them busy. L'Esperance also noted that The Traka 360, where he finished ninth this year, had issues that may have gone unnoticed.

"I ran into the situation at The Traka where there was just most of the busy roads were marshaled by volunteers, I would say with varying effectiveness. So they didn't have the same confidence or authority that you'd expect in that situation.

"There was a fast gravel road corner and our group came very close to getting hit by a car. It was just one of those scenarios where I think the group had been pretty used to having marshals at key intersections most of the day. This happened to be one where there wasn't a marshal, and it wasn't a hard corner, it was like a softer corner, so maybe there was less alertness by the group on it, but these things obviously can happen."

Vermeulen pointed out that while it is great to have volunteers along a course, they need to be helpful, pay attention at all times and understand what is the proper hand signal to use. Are they signaling that an intersection is clear to cross or are riders to stop, or is a car to stop?

Onweller noted that Life Time did a better job this year with protected intersections, and securing the pro finish lines with fencing for an extended distance and providing police at many of the later intersections, for amateurs and pros.

Leadville the next barometre

In the 'early days' of gravel racing, just five years ago, Life Time, the organisers of the Grand Prix series and owners of the collection of six races, set a precedent by outlawing comfort bars from the elite divisions of the off-road races. It was a rather seismic rule, but the dust settled quickly.

Next came separate starts for elite men and women, larger spacing from age-division rider starts and a no-drafting rule for riders in outside categories. Rules vary from race to race around the globe on all of those, with The Traka allowing age-group men to start before the elite women this year and chaos ensued.

Life Time created two athlete advisor roles for this year, the fifth season of the series, to provide feedback from the elite competitors to improve "race experience, competition structure and key decisions that shape the series". Melisa Rollins and L'Esperance were selected by their peers for 2026, and both shared with Cyclingnews how the 'shaping' of the series has a key focus on safety.

"Life Time is open to feedback, and they're trying to improve all the time, and this is just an example of them trying to improve," L'Esperance said, the process still being developed.

"It's really cool to see that our opinions really do matter and they are actively making changes. When they say they are gonna bring it back to the team and come back to us, they always do," said Rollins, who has been out most of 2026 due to several injuries.

"I'm just getting one billion texts from one billion different avenues, about this and that, so we're kind of a good middle I think, Lespy and I."

A past winner of Leadville Trail 100 MTB, Rollins said that race had its own issues related to feed zones, media vehicles and two-way traffic with age-group riders that bring safety to the forefront.

"It seems as the media demand is sort of elevated at these races. Everybody wants media, but the more media, all the media vehicles, that's when we're having more safety problems. We aren't keeping up with the safety protocol," she said.

"Having the pro-only feed zones will help with availability for media. Hopefully it'll be safer in that regard because obviously last year there was a media crew incident coming down Columbine and we don't want a repeat of that.

"I'm not sure if there's really a solution other than closing the roads and we get a really, really safe race. That's not possible, not with races that are taking us [pros] six hours and an amateur race going on that take people 12 hours."

Cyclingnews provides you with comprehensive coverage of the 2026 gravel season. Subscribe today for unlimited access to all the breaking news, race reports, in-depth tech coverage, and analysis from all the biggest gravel races. Find out more.

It's that time of the year, the racing has shifted from the one-day Spring Classics to the start of the summer stage races and Grand Tours but nestled in between is a weeklong treat: a concentration of Road National Championships around the world.

National Championships in Australia and New Zealand took place at the start of the year, but the majority of European countries held their National Championships over the weekend, with a whole host of new champions crowned on the last weekend before the Tour de France.

Cyclingnews has put together our annual National Championships index to keep you up-to-date on the riders who claim their national time trial and road titles, and who will wear their nation's colours in the peloton through the next year.

You'll find a basic overview first, but scroll down for full results and reports from all the major nations.

Index

Reports and Results

• Felicity Wilson-Haffenden wins Australian elite women's time trial title, edging out Brodie Chapman by less than four seconds
• Jay Vine reclaims elite men's time trial title at the Australian Road National Championships
• First-year pro Mackenzie Coupland wins Australia's elite women's road race title with late solo move
• Patrick Eddy beats Luke Plapp to elite men's Australian road race title after Jayco AlUla's strength in numbers fails in dramatic final kilometre
• 'The pressure is a privilege' – Family support helps Ella Wyllie clinch New Zealand National Championships time trial title
• George Bennett solos to emotional second New Zealand national title in elite men's road race after 'rough 18 months'
• US Pro National Championships: Artem Shmidt tops Larry Warbasse in elite men's time trial
• US Pro National Championships: Triathlete Taylor Knibb claims second time trial title
• US Road Championships: Kate Courtney outsprints Lauren Stephens to win elite women's road race title
• US Road Championships: Quinn Simmons goes solo to take third elite men's road race title
• Daniek Hengeveld scorches final lap for her first elite women's Dutch time trial national title
• Huub Artz powers to victory ahead of Dylan van Baarle at Dutch men's national time trial championships
• Derek Gee-West secures third elite men's time trial title at Canadian Road Championships
• Nadia Gontova claims career-first elite women's time trial title at Canadian Road Championships
• Zoe Bäckstedt defends her British elite women's time trial title ahead of Anna Morris
• Ethan Hayter flies to fourth career British elite men's time trial title with dominant ride
• Rémi Cavagna speeds to elite men's TT title for first time in three years at French National Championships
• Célia Le Mouël shocks the favourites to triumph in women's elite time trial at French National Championships
• Lara Gillespie strikes for gold in elite women's time trial debut at Irish National Time Trial Championship
• Ryan Mullen defends Irish elite men's title in time trial ahead of Peden and Rafferty
• Filippo Ganna dominates Italian time trial championships for seventh elite men's victory
• Pablo Castrillo captures unexpected elite men's time trial at Spanish Road Nationals
• Jérôme Gauthier powers through rain and reduced breakaway to victory at the Canadian Road Championships
• Mireia Benito takes fourth consecutive elite women's Spanish time trial title
• Spanish National Championships: Mireia Benito fends off Movistar duo to add road race gold to time trial title
• French National Championships: new super talent Célia Gery conquers first road race title with devastating solo attack
• Italian National Championships: Jonathan Milan sprints to first road race title after Lidl-Trek keep rivals under firm control
• German National Championships: Franziska Koch wins from break to add third consecutive road race title to time trial glory
• Irish National Championships: Lara Gillespie wins third national road title from breakaway in miserable conditions
• Canadian National Championships: Maggie Coles-Lyster wins elite women's road race
• British National Championships: Zoe Bäckstedt doubles up with elite women's road race win
• Dutch National Championships: Wilco Kelderman ends eleven-year victory drought with solo road race triumph
• Spanish National Championships: Marcel Camprubí seals stunning victory in elite men's road race
• Belgian National Championships: Shari Bossuyt outpowers Lotte Kopecky for emotional bunch sprint victory
• Italian National Championships: Elisa Longo Borghini continues to rule supreme with seventh road race title of career
• French National Championships: Romain Grégoire delivers emphatic victory in elite men's road race
• German National Championships: Felix Engelhardt chases back onto break in final kilometres to win first elite men’s road title
• Belgian National Championships: Rune Herregodts clinches biggest victory of career as outsiders spark huge upset in elite men's road race
• Dutch National Championships: Lieke Nooijen wins two-up sprint victory over Femke Markus
• British National Championships: Fred Wright outsprints Lewis Askey and Connor Swift to win elite men’s road title
• Irish National Championships: Seth Dunwoody edges Rory Townsend to win elite men’s title

Ten days ago, a lot of us had a very different idea of how the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes was going to go. With so many of the big Tour de France favourites not there, and wonderkid Paul Seixas lining up to continue his whirlwind season, it seemed like he was a shoo-in for the podium, and the other Tour hopefuls would show their levels behind him.

But that's not what happened. Seixas left the race bruised and battered in a team car, a breakthrough rider finished second, and Tadej Pogačar's super domestique, Isaac del Toro, won the thing. Only one Tour leader landed on the podium – Juan Ayuso – and for most, the race probably did more damage to their standings than good.

The Dauphiné used to be the race where every year a rider or three would really step up to the mark and show just how strong they were before the Tour de France. This year's renamed edition seemed to do more of the opposite – the race exposed weaknesses in many.

Denigrating Isaac del Toro to 'just' a super domestique is, of course, hyperbole from me. He's a Grand Tour podium finisher and won Tirreno-Adriatico and the UAE Tour this year, and came to the Dauphiné as a key favourite.

On any other team, he'd be headed to next month's Tour as leader. But as it is, he'll start in Barcelona as a luxury helper for Pogačar, possibly with designs on the podium, but primarily a domestique.

So the fact that he won, by head and shoulders above Juan Ayuso, whilst the likes of Oscar Onley, Paul Seixas and Cian Uijtdebroeks either did not finish or didn't come close, does not exactly bode well for any added competition at the Tour.

Many might have been hoping that this race would remind us that there are other good GC riders, that it might not just be a Pogačar vs Vingegaard two-horse battle that soon becomes one. Unfortunately, that probably looks more likely than ever right now.

Looking at the final results, and indeed the stages that led there, it is pretty hard to identify anyone who came out of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes looking better for the Tour than they did beforehand.

Seixas' race wasn't going particularly well, even before he crashed and later abandoned. Oscar Onley was under pressure to prove that he should still be considered a Tour contender and add some sort of positivity to his Ineos tenure. He ended the race crashing into a ravine, and it's now unclear if he can even start the Tour in two weeks.

The intra-team rivalry that we thought might brew between him and Kévin Vauquelin? They probably don't need to worry about that, as the only thing they're currently competing for is who can have the least fortunate start to life at the British squad. The pair attempted to try and turn their fate around here, but the week only seemed to further entrench their woes.

Juan Ayuso had a positive race by his 2026 standards, given his poor luck so far, but was quite comprehensively bettered by Del Toro, and couldn't overcome Tuckwell for second. It doesn't inspire confidence in the idea that he might be able to challenge the likes of Remco Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard for a spot on the Tour podium in a few weeks.

And everyone else was, well, just fine. Fifth for Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), sixth for Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) and seventh for Cian Uijtdebroeks (Movistar). They confirmed that they'll be there to fight for the bottom of the top 10 at the Tour, and not much else.

So who did win? Well, Del Toro, of course, and by extension, probably Pogačar – he can take successes from races when he's not even there, such is his omnipresent grip on this sport. Pogačar will now start the Tour as not just the four-time winner and the far-and-away favourite, but he'll do so with a stronger super domestique than he has in years.

Jonas Vingegaard's Del Toro equivalent, Matteo Jorgenson, had a 'nothing special' kind of ride to finish fourth overall, and confirm that he's in good shape to do what he does excellently – support Vingegaard around France – but his ride did not blow anyone away or rewrite any scripts.

The other winners were – in the kindest way possible – fairly inconsequential when it comes to the bigger picture, which is the fight for yellow this July. Alex Baudin obviously had a great race, spending most of it in the lead.

And then there was Luke Tuckwell, who stepped up to the plate equally impressively, honouring the jersey to the very last and securing himself a fantastic second overall. It's a huge result for the Australian, and should take him from under-the-radar to serious up-and-comer. But does it mean we have a new Tour contender on our hands? Not right now, no.

And so the Tour de France ramp-up race did not really ramp up the tension or raise the stakes at all. Where we had hoped for glimpses of new blood, signs that Pogačar might be properly challenged this year, we instead got confirmation of what we already knew: no one new is going to come and upend Pogačar and UAE at this Tour.

No one is secretly in podium-upsetting form. Pogačar is on top, Vingegaard is closest, and everyone else will be fighting for scraps – or perhaps for nothing at all, given how many people couldn't even finish the Dauphiné.

Cycling can be unpredictable, and in many ways, the last week of racing was, in that it didn't stick to the pre-race script, but ultimately, the surprises only go so far. And for now, we're not expecting big ones at the Tour.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

Paul Seixas' ride on the penultimate stage of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes drew shock, awe, and praise from all angles, but it was exalted to biblical terms by the French newspaper L'Équipe. The 19-year-old, body limp after hours of bloodied toil, having to be dragged to his feet by his father, was likened to "someone who's been crucified and brought down from the cross – Christ and child at the same time".

In some ways, it wasn't so hyperbolic. There was a martyred sort of glory in his defeat and his defiance. We don't like it when our sportspeople have it too easy; we want them to suffer for their success. Tadej Pogačar winning Flanders three times the same way: boring. Pogačar winning Milan-San Remo after years of trying and after crashing just before the Cipressa: scintillating.

We're far from the point where Seixas wins are routine but until now, his rise to the top of the sport had been serene. Meteoric, but serene. Suddenly in disarray this weekend, we saw a new side to him.

What's more, professional cycling is a sport that has always fetishised pain and in that respect Seixas' blood-stained jersey and inability to stand up after the stage only seemed to aggrandize him in the eyes of the watching public.

But, then, less than 24 hours later, it was all over. Even on Sunday morning Seixas was swaggering towards the team bus issuing rallying calls like 'we don't give up', and 'nothing is impossible'. Thirty kilometres later, he was in the passenger seat of a team car.

In the same way that the adrenaline drained from Seixas' system and left him with the realisation that he was in no fit state to race a bike over four mountains, so in the cold light of his abandon did the whole affair go from so gloriously thrilling to so oddly futile.

The favourite, after all, had simply torched his own race. He'd run back into the burning building, but was still left surrounded by rubble and ash.

But was there something to be salvaged from the wreckage? Was it, on some level, all worth it?

Great sporting careers are built on formative experiences. And even though this Dauphiné was ultimately no repeat of the famous 1977 edition – when a young Bernard Hinault came back from the brink of collapse to win – we may yet look back on it as a coming-of-age for Paul Seixas.

This whole race was a chastening experience. It went up in flames on Saturday but it had already been wobbling off the rails since even before it began.

On the eve of the race, Seixas lost his best mountain domestique Matthew Riccitello to illness. On the opening stage, his team controlled all day only to take their foot off the gas on the final climb and allow a tactical scenario to emerge in which key rivals stole valuable seconds. In the team time trial, Stefan Bissegger was dropped early and Seixas, who had to be told mid-TT to relax by Daan Hoole, was left on the back foot ahead of the mountains.

'I'm going to give my all until the end'

On the first of those three mountain stages, Decathlon again found themselves in an awkward position, with an unruly breakaway that upended the entire complexion of the race, allowing several new names into the yellow jersey fight.

And then came the crash, and more importantly the chase. Ninety nine teams out of 100 wouldn't have bothered, said the team's director, Luke Rowe. Four minutes was the deficit, multiple were the wounds. It was a lost cause. But one by one, Seixas' teammates dropped back and little by little they pulled off the unlikeliest of comebacks.

That collective endeavour is one of the biggest factors when it comes to finding positives amid the rubble. Seixas already seemed mature beyond his years but a teenager is a teenager, and team leadership is something to be grown into. Listening to Seixas' post-race interview – perhaps the most remarkable thing about that whole day – the contribution of his colleagues was certainly not lost upon him.

"I struggled to hold the handlebars, but I did so anyway, and I thought, 'Never mind the pain, I'm going to give my all until the end for these five guys who sacrificed everything for me, when they could have left me behind, and I would have had no complaints because it's what I deserved."

Seixas, who hasn't had to serve any sort of apprenticeship before getting his own chances in the pro ranks, perhaps truly understood what it means to have a fellow human being bury themself for you. His teammates will always do their jobs but they, too, were surely inspired to new levels by their leader's fight, not least once he'd left them behind on the final climb.

It was the sort of day that builds bonds and team spirit in a way that cannot realistically be replicated even when races are being won from the front. Likewise, the team's struggles to control the peloton, and the sense of grievance they felt at the lack of investment from other teams, will only have brought them closer together.

It will also have taught them a lesson or two, and that's what this Dauphiné might boil down to. Better to make all these mistakes now, rather than at the Tour de France next month, or in any future race for that matter.

On that note, for Seixas personally, his admission of his 'idiotic' risk-taking on descents was striking both for the honesty of his words and the brashness of the attitude they described. The line between confidence and arrogance is a fine one, and it's perhaps a good thing for all involved that Seixas had his wings clipped in this way.

He will also have learned a lot about his own body and his own mind – even on that brief final-day cameo – and how he channels both of these things is central to how he grows as a rider from here.

In a way, Seixas' zealousness can be a force for bad and for good. It lands him in that predicament on Saturday. It gets him out of it. Just not the whole way out this time.

Marc Madiot had some interesting comments on French radio after Saturday's stage, the long-serving FDJ manager – usually so wildly passionate – one of the rare voices not getting carried away by the drama of it all.

"When I look at Isaac del Toro, I see control, and I see blocks being put in place for the Tour de France," Madiot said. "In parallel we have Paul, who is raring to go, full of enthusiasm, but I see an extremely high energy expenditure that he'll have to master much better at a race like the Tour de France."

Whip Seixas into line at your peril, though. He may need to be reined in to some degree, but you don't want to completely douse that fire in his belly, which is what has taken him to the top of the sport at 19 in the first place. Some birds are not meant to be caged.

How the people around Seixas – team, agent, family – manage him from here is pivotal, as are the conversations he has with himself in the mirror.

The version of Paul Seixas that rises from the ashes of this Dauphiné will be very interesting to behold – it may very well shape the future of this sport.

The world’s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.

Team time trials are not everyone’s cup of tea, but the triple T on stage 3 of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes has left this race, formerly known as the Dauphiné, poised rather nicely indeed as we head into the mountains.

After three breakaways, one sprint, and one TTT, the eight-stage race takes a big shift in focus, with three successive summit finishes to light up the battle for the yellow jersey and, atop the Plateau de Solaison on Sunday, decide it.

What sets the scene so well is that the favourites for that yellow jersey have ground to make up and work to do. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), the 19-year-old prodigy who is in the spotlight ahead of his Tour de France debut, finds himself a minute down on the overall lead, or 48 seconds down if we take the Netcompany-Ineos duo of Kévin Vauquelin and Oscar Onley as the virtual leaders, given Alex Baudin is likely to drop away in the mountains.

Seixas was the pre-race favourite in the eyes of many, but not far behind was the fellow young sensation Isac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), who has even more ground to make up, sitting a further 16 seconds down on Seixas.

That means the two pre-race favourites and the two most exciting climbers in the race need to get on the front foot and grab that time back off several very strong competitors. They need little invitation in normal circumstances, in all fairness, but you can put aggression and fireworks on the weekend menu.

The top 15

Netcompany-Ineos' options and issues

Despite Baudin's presence in yellow, Netcompany-Ineos realistically sit at the top of the GC standings among overall contenders, in second and third following the team time trial. But that TTT did not go swimmingly at all, and in turn has sparked talk of tension in the camp and question marks over leadership.

Onley dropped his chain in the TTT, and the call came from the team car to wait, which seemed to frustrate Vauquelin, who later even publicly questioned the wisdom of that call. Had the team not waited, he'd almost certainly be in yellow already with an even bigger margin over his rivals. However, Onley would have been cut adrift and would be behind most of those rivals.

The decision from the team car makes perfect sense, even if Vauquelin and certain sections of the French media weren't impressed. Onley is more of a pure climber than the punchier Vauquelin, so in theory, he stands a better chance in the mountains. What's more, keeping the number game more alive is also a sensible tactic when you have stronger individuals lining up against you.

The real issue is communication and optics. We in the media will never complain about rider honesty, but from the team's point of view, it's never a great look for a rider to question decisions publicly. Likewise, was it really necessary for Director of Racing Geraint Thomas to say "Kévin is not in top shape yet" in a post-TTT press release?

Thomas rightly pointed out that tensions can be ironed out and difficult conversations are often the most productive. But this risks becoming a theme. At Paris-Nice, it was striking how Vauquelin was left to fend for himself in the crosswind stage, before storming back and overtaking Onley, who abandoned the next day.

In light of all that, it will be fascinating to see how Vauquelin and Onley combine over the next three days. It's also interesting that Thomas was talking about having "two GC cards", and not three, despite Carlos Rodríguez also being in the top 10. The Spaniard, fourth overall at the 2023 Tour de France, was meant to be a key part of a leadership trio, but those comments are a sign of how far he has slipped in the past 18 months, raising doubts over his prospects and role at the Tour.

Seixas and Del Toro

Back to Seixas and Del Toro, who, despite their time losses, would still appear to be the two favourites. They both have a considerable amount of time to recoup, but have both shown that when they're at their best they operate on a level above the rest of the riders in this race.

That's true especially of Seixas, who has had an extraordinary breakthrough year that has made him a genuine challenger to Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour de France. In contrast to his meteoric momentum so far this year, though, the Frenchman has not had the smoothest of Dauphinés. He lost his best climbing domestique, Matthew Riccitello, to illness on the eve of the race, and he lost 12 seconds to the Ineos duo and others on the opening day. The time loss wasn't make-or-break in itself, but there was confusion as his team went from controlling all day to suddenly backing off on the final climb and allowing that more tactical scenario to emerge.

The TTT was complicated: Decathlon started one man down and then lost their best time triallist, Stefan Bissegger, to an off-day, early in the effort. Daan Hoole could be seen telling Seixas to cool off, and quotes from team directors point to the biggest challenge being keeping their leader level-headed. Seixas has the talent to run away with this race, but you also sense the potential for a costly mistake - at 19, that's only normal.

Del Toro, meanwhile, had an even more disappointing team time trial, though it didn't matter so much, as the squad here is not a dress rehearsal for the Tour like Decathlon's and others' are.

Del Toro will support Pogačar next month, but has a chance to win a third WorldTour race this season after the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico. He had already been buried by Seixas at Itzulia Basque Country before he crashed out and had to recover from injury, so he comes into this contest on the back foot in more ways than one.

The inbetweeners

Matteo Jorgenson sits fourth on GC, just 15 seconds down on Baudin and three seconds behind the Netcompany-Ineos duo, after Visma-Lease a Bike’s victory in the TTT.

The US rider is making his first appearance since breaking his collarbone at Amstel Gold Race and missing the Ardennes Classics. His plans shifted, with an earlier visit to altitude at Sierra Nevada, so the Tour de Suisse was swapped for the Dauphiné, where he has made a strong start but not without question marks. Jorgenson himself has looked powerful and hungry – his bitterness at losing 12 seconds to a couple of rivals on the opening day was a good sign there – while his team have won the TTT and controlled well elsewhere.

It remains to be seen whether Jorgenson has the climbing legs to get on the podium here, but in any case, after his injury layoff, he looks well on track for the Tour de France, where he’ll play a key role once again for Jonas Vingegaard.

Just behind Jorgenson sits another duo, this time from Lidl-Trek, with Juan Ayuso and Mattias Skjelmose both 47 seconds down on the lead of the race. Again, there has been talk of tension here, even if Ayuso has dismissed such talk as “ridiculous”. There were various comments over leadership traded in the media between the pair ahead of Ayuso’s arrival at the team over the winter, and they had only shared three race days on the road, so it does remain to be seen how they combine out there.

Skjelmose has top 10s at Catalunya and the Itzulia Basque Country to his name this season, while Ayuso had a complicated Spring due to crashes. However, the Spaniard did have a bright start to life at Lidl-Trek, beating Paul Seixas to win the Volta ao Algarve, and when he’s on song, he can reach places Skjelmose can’t.

Consistency in these final three days is so important for Ayuso, whose chances of being counted among those podium contenders for the Tour de France will become much clearer.

The road ahead

The trio of mountain stages sees the difficulty ratchet up each day, revealing more and more as we go on.

Friday's stage is the most straightforward, essentially coming down to the back-to-back climbs leading to Crest-Voland. The first is 11.5km at 5.1% while the second, which comes after a short, sharp descent, is harder at 5.9km and 7.5%. Still, it's the sort of stage where any separation is only likely to come very close to the finish.

Things intensify on Saturday as stage 7 goes saw-toothed for the opening 50km, then takes on twin ascents of the Grand Colombier, first up the hair-pinned side, then back around for the harder climb as the summit finish, measuring 8.4km at 10.2%. There's also a category-2 climb in between, so this summit finish should really see things kick off.

But that's nothing compared to the final day, which is a faintly ridiculous stage measuring 120km and featuring four major mountain ascents. The route climbs the Col du Pré (6.9km at 10.1%) from kilometre zero, before taking on the Montée de Bisanne (11.4km at 7.7%), the Col des Aravis (7km at 6.8%), and finally the Plateau de Solaison (11.3km at 9.1%). It's a brutal final climb after such an explosive and difficult stage, and it'll also feature in the upcoming Tour de France, underlining the Dauphiné's – sorry, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes' – status as a crucial waypoint for the big one.

The other names

Ones to watch

Alex Baudin (1st) – We haven’t discussed him much but the Frenchman snuck into the top 10 at Paris-Nice and Catalunya, and has sliding room here.

Jorgen Nordhagen (7th) – The Norwegian climber had a strong Tour de Romandie and could surprise a few while working for Jorgenson.

Léo Bisiaux (9th) – The young Frenchman is impressing and could become Seixas’ closest ally in the absence of Riccitello.

Luke Plapp (11th) – The Australian will be hanging rather than attacking in the big mountain stages but 3rd at UAE Tour and 5th at Romandie show that he can make the top 10.

Luke Tuckwell (12th) – Also impressive at Romandie (6th), the 21-year-old is still exploring his limits but could be a surprise top-10 package here after teammate Dani Martinez was dropped on the opening day.

Cian Uijtdebroeks (13th) – The Belgian still needs to prove himself at Movistar and the next few days will tell us whether he can deliver for his new team at the Tour de France.

Off the pace

Dani Martinez (26th) – Second place at Paris-Nice reignited the Colombian after a poor 2025 but he was off the pace at Romandie and off the pace on the opening day here. He could still push up the GC if that first day was just a shock to the system, but it doesn’t bode well.

Tobias Haaland Johanessen (35th) – Top 10 last year but dropped on the opening day here and well out of the GC running now.

João Almeida (141st) – The Portuguese star has emphatically answered the question about whether he be flipped into UAE’s Tour de France team after skipping the Giro. He’s 48 minutes down and barely making up the numbers.

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Search the internet and you will find plenty of information about road and gravel bike saddle setup, but far less specifically about doing it on a mountain bike. Although the average mountain biker won’t spend as much time in the saddle, given the extremes in gradients, variations in terrain, and dynamic nature of mountain bikes and riding, saddle setup is arguably far more involved than the static pedalling optimised position of drop bar bikes.

I’m not going to go deep into how to choose the right MTB saddle or the intricate science of bike fitting. Instead, this is a guide on how you can experiment with your current setup, gain a better understanding of the effects of saddle position, and maybe find a more comfortable mountain bike saddle position. So let's dig into it.

Let's start with the saddle

Saddles are a personal preference and what works best for one person won't necessarily suit someone else. The type of riding you do will affect the saddle you choose too so there is a fair bit of consideration when choosing the best MTB saddle. All the options can be a bit bamboozling if you aren’t sure what you want or don’t have access to loads of saddles to try out.

If you don’t want to change your saddle, there is loads of scope to experiment with your current setup to find a more comfortable position. Unless your saddle is causing you specific discomfort, I would recommend experimenting with your existing setup first, as even small adjustments to saddle height and angle can often have dramatic effects on comfort.

If you are choosing a new saddle, there are a few things to consider. Step one is determining what size of saddle you need. Most saddles, specifically those aimed at the pedal-lier end of mountain biking, will be available in at least a couple of different widths. These widths correlate to your sit bones, so it’s worth measuring those to get the right size. Some bike shops will have machines to do this, or you could pay a bike fitter for a saddle fitting. However, it's easy to get a rough sit bone measurement at home to get a ballpark guide to your required saddle width.

Unfortunately, from here, you are kinda on your own. Some people like long-nosed saddles, others prefer short ones, there are flat or curvy profiles, and more padding can be both more or less comfortable depending on the rider or riding. There are no right answers.

You also get discipline-specific saddles as well. Cross-country and trail saddles are focused on pedalling dynamics and are very similar, if not the same, as road or gravel saddles. Enduro saddles will be similar as well, but usually feature a burlier construction and some extra padding. Downhill saddles aren’t really meant to be sat on, instead, the shape is designed to aid bike control. E-MTB-specific saddles are interesting as they often feature a raised tail to help hold the rider in position when climbing super steep gradients.

It's worth noting that bigger bike shops may have demo saddles for you to try before you buy, so it's worth asking whether you can give one a test before you commit with your cash.

It’s not just about having the right saddle

Choosing the right saddle is important, but arguably, the setup of a saddle is more essential. Different saddles have different shapes which can affect how you fit them onto your bike. The type of riding you do will also influence the position, as will the geometry of your bike. This is where things start getting a bit confusing.

Saddles can be adjusted horizontally using the length of the saddle rails, while most seatposts give loads of angle adjustment. Even minor adjustments can have some significant effects on how comfortable you are on the bike. It's not just your bum either, changes to saddle position can also affect the back, shoulder, wrist, hand, knees, and feet too. What makes saddle adjustment so complex is that any adjustment has a cause-and-effect relationship, so you have to be meticulous and patient when making any changes.

Your saddle position is in direct relation to the position of your pedals, which means a saddle and saddle position that works on one bike may not directly translate to another. Seat angle, crank length, and suspension sag all affect your saddle position. For example, you will often see riders on bikes with slack effective seat tube angles (effective seat tube angle is the angle of the seat tube when the suspension is at its sag point) with their saddles pushed forward on the rails. This is because the saddle is effectively further back towards the rear axle. By pushing a saddle forward, riders are biasing seated weight towards the front which will reduce front wheel lift on climbs, although manufacturers are combating this with ever steeper seat tube angles on modern bikes.

Seat angle is set by the seatpost's saddle clamp and is usually positioned close to flat. That said, there are a few reasons why a rider may want to add a little more tilt. Gravity riders will often set their saddles with positive tilt (saddle nose pointing up) as it puts the saddle in a better position when descending. Conversely, riders who do a lot of steep climbing use more negative tilt for a more comfortable position on long climbs. Saddle shape will also determine angle, with some favouring more positive or negative angling.

Getting a basic saddle setup

The trick to finding the optimal saddle position is being able to self-diagnose problems and make specific changes to target any issues. Similar to suspension setup, adjustments are likely to be quite small, so if you make loads of changes at once, then it will be very hard to determine what the effects are. What makes it even harder is that, unlike suspension, there are no clicks, dials, or numbers for you to reference, although some saddles and seatposts will have guide markings, which can be a massive help when it comes to testing.

Again, I want to iterate that I am not a bike fitter and the below is only intended to help you get a better understanding of how to get a basic setup up your bike. With the below process, you should be able to get a ballpark saddle setup yourself, but if you want to be more specific, then you’re best speaking to a professional bike fitter.

The first step is setting the saddle up in a neutral position. I recommend trying to set the top of the saddle as flat as possible and the seatpost positioned in the centre of the rails. On curvier saddles, setting the angle can be a little more tricky as it's not clear which bit needs to be flat. Sometimes it is a case of taking a level measurement with a spirit level from the rear to the nose of the saddle while others will have a specific section that should be level. Manufacturers sometimes provide setup guides which are always worth consulting.

Once you have your saddle fitted, you will want to set your saddle height. It surprises me how often I see people with their saddle at the wrong height as despite being an in-depth subject all of its own, it's a simple process to get a good ballpark. For a basic initial setup, I recommend using the heel method as it is the easiest and generally fosters a decent result.

To do this, sit on your bike with your riding gear on while leaning against a wall. Place your heel on the pedal and spin your cranks so it's at its furthest away point from the saddle. It’s worth noting that this won’t be the 6 o’clock crank position due to your effective seat tube angle, the slacker the effective seat tube angle, the more rotated forwards the longest extension point will be. Adjust your saddle height so that at peak leg extension with your heel on the pedal your knee is almost locked out. Once you have set your saddle height you should now have a nice bend in your knee when your feet are level on the pedals in your normal riding position.

Experimenting with saddle setup

From here is a case of diagnosing any issues that may need to be addressed, with the most common being any pain, numbness, or instability when pedalling.

While numbness and pain may seem like the most important to address, instability or rocking while pedalling should be a priority. If you find that your hips are rocking from side to side while pedalling, this is a sign your saddle is too high. A saddle that is too high can be the cause of many other issues and even dropping the saddle by 5mm can take off a huge amount of pressure and alleviate knee, back, and hip pain or saddle sores. It’s not just undercarriage and joint problems, even symptoms like tingly hands and toes can be caused by restricted blood flow caused by a high saddle and fixed with a minor height adjustment. Lower saddle height isn’t a solution for all cycling ailments, but it's a great place to start.

If tweaking your saddle height hasn’t sorted you out, then it's a case of experimenting with other adjustments. Here are some common issues and adjustments that could fix them:

It's worth noting after each adjustment, assuming you don’t experience excessive discomfort, you should do at least a couple of decent rides to let yourself readjust as changes may feel a little off at first.

The Specialized Crux 5 had possibly the most successful launch of any bike ever.

It leaked at the Scottish UCI Gravel Worlds qualifier, the Gralloch, beneath Gee Schreurs as she rode to victory, and then after an official launch on Thursday, it took six of the 10 wide-podium spots in the Elite 200-mile races at an ultra-muddy Unbound on Saturday. For a gravel race bike, it has already proven it can race.

It was also tested among a cohort of competitor gravel race bikes here at Cyclingnews, and spoiler alert: it did well.

But before we get into the minutiae and results of that test, here are some basic details about what is still a very new bike at the time of writing. I'll spare you a regurgitated press release and instead outline some of the headline claims from Specialized.

1. It's no longer a 'cross bike and has instead gone all-in on gravel racing.
2. It's 15.2 watts more aerodynamic than its predecessor.
3. It boasts 55mm tyre clearance front and rear.
4. Builds start at 6.9kg with lightweight wheels, growing to 7.1kg for aero wheels.
5. It's mega expensive, at 14,000 US dollars for the top-spec S-Works model.

Wind tunnel testing

As mentioned, Cyclingnews had exclusive early access to wind-tunnel-test the bike against a cohort of competitors, including the Wilier Rave SLR ID2, the Argon 18 Anti Matter, the Trek Checkmate SLR, and the ever-popular Lauf Seigla.

The results are already live in our full gravel race bikes wind tunnel test write-up. But for those of you who want to focus solely on the S-Works Crux, you're in the right place. We'll be doing similar for other popular bikes from that test in the coming weeks, too.

Protocols and caveats

As ever, we used the wind tunnel at the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub and, for the most part, mimicked the test conditions used in our road bike wind tunnel tests.

This means we tested each bike in a size 56cm (or equivalent), both with and without a rider, in the bike's as-sold setup, and then again with a pair of 'control' wheels. We tested each bike at seven different wind angles ranging from -15° to +15° (in 5° increments), and the results below will show a weighted average.

Rather than the 40km/h speed we use in the road bike tests, we adjusted the speed slightly to 35km/h to better reflect what you'd experience in gravel races.

To caveat that, I am aware 35km/h is still fast for gravel, but we settled on this speed for a few reasons.

Firstly, to ensure accuracy. The slower the wind speed, the less force is placed on the force balance inside the tunnel, which ultimately is what measures the drag. What's more, with lower resolution and testing with a real rider, slight movements would have an outsized effect on the result. We could have tested for longer at each yaw angle to offset this, but holding the correct position for longer has its own issues, as it can lead to more movement as the rider fatigues. Therefore, testing at as high a speed as is relevant made the most sense.

Secondly, I did some research into average speeds of entire races, and average speeds of key points within them (such as chases or attacks), and found that 30-35km/h was a good balance in competitive racing.

We used each bike as it would be supplied by the manufacturer, save for a couple of standardisations: We added bottles and cages, since that's how riders will use the bike in the real world. We swapped the 45mm Specialized Pathfinder tyres for a 45mm Pirelli Cinturato Gravel RH control tyre to ensure no bike gained an unfair advantage from speccing slick tyres.

We removed the out-front computer mount simply because not all bikes come with one. And we swapped the S-Works Power Mirror saddle for an Ergon All Road SR. This gave us a consistent 80mm point to measure to when setting the saddle setback, and meant no bike was unfairly hampered by a 3D-printed saddle (which can catch the wind when there's no rider sitting on top).

For the extra test using the 'control' wheels, we used a pair of Enve G SES 6.7 wheels shod with 50mm Vittoria Terreno Dry tyres. I feel that 50mm is a good balance of progressively wide, but not so crazy that half the bikes couldn't fit them.

Confidence margin

The below data is subject to the following confidence interval.

This is calculated by testing the same bike at the start of the day, then again at the end. Given that the same identical setup can achieve two different results, we cannot trust that any other bike is more accurate than this difference.

Results

Now, to get into the results. I will first share the raw data as it comes out of the tunnel. Then the processed data, which takes the average CdA from each of the seven yaw angles and calculates a weighted average that better reflects real-world conditions. Specifically, we weigh heavily toward zero degrees - or a direct headwind, as per the research and PHD of Cannondale's Nathan Barry.

Bike only: Stock wheelset

The Crux doesn't have the most aero-looking design, at least based on common convention, but it's clearly better able to slip through the wind than the Trek Emonda ALR and most of its gravel-focussed peers.

Since there's no rider on the bike here, a bike's ability to harness the wind at wider yaw angles becomes clearer, signalled by how flat this V-shaped line becomes. If you check out the same graph for all-out aero bikes like the Factor One or Colnago Y1Rs, you'll see it becomes more of an M shape, as the deep tubes help the bike to sail in the wind.

Next up, I will work out the weighted average of these data points and use it to calculate the watts required to overcome the aero drag. Those calculations won't include things like rolling resistance, but it's only the aero differences we're interested in here, not the absolutes.

We're pretty confident that thanks to the Crux's low weight and 55mm tyre clearance, it would outshine its competitors in a comparative rolling resistance test, but such a test would be fraught with variables. It is therefore easier to measure the rolling resistance difference of tyre models and tyre widths alone, both of which we've done.

• What is the fastest gravel tyre setup?
• Is a wider tyre a faster tyre? We combine aero and rolling data to find out

The above graph shows the watts required for the bike to overcome aero drag, and that the Crux is in 2nd place, just 1.21w (+/- 0.26w error) behind the much deeper-tubed Argon 18 Anti Matter.

There's around a kilo difference between the two, but bear in mind that the Argon 18 was equipped with the slightly heavier SRAM Force XPLR.

The graph above is a slightly clearer view of the differences between each bike.

And in the graph above, you can see every bike we've ever tested, listed as a difference against the baseline Trek Emonda, with the weighted CdA solved for watts at 40km/h, for consistency against the road bikes.

Some context to add here is that this baseline bike is kept completely unchanged from test to test, and it is retested at the start and finish of every single test session, so the differences between it and whatever cohort of new bikes we're testing are valid no matter when the test occurred.

Evidence that this works is that we tested the same Scott Foil in 2024 and 2025, and it performed similarly in both tests (bike-only and with-rider) over the two test days. In the bike-only test, it was 34.98 watts faster in 2024, and 35.66 watts faster in 2025; a difference of just 0.68 watts. With the rider on, it was 19.79 watts faster in 2024 and 19.15 watts faster in 2025; a difference of 0.64 watts.

Especially relevant today, though, is that we kept it in the road bike position, rather than adapting it to a gravel position. There are two reasons for this. First, the amount of adjustment needed to get it into a gravel position was impossible to achieve without a very strange stem setup. And second, road and gravel bikes do put you into a different position. By testing it this way with the road position, we could see a fairer difference in how the gravel bikes compare to the road bikes, in a way that is likely to be experienced.

Bike and rider

The 'road' position of the Emonda makes a world of difference to the results here, so please don't let your takeaway be that the fastest gravel bike is a 10-year-old road bike.

But for a consistent comparison machine, it's as good as we need, and comes with the nice bonus of allowing us to compare (loosely, given not everyone will adopt the same positions as we did) across genres.

With a rider on, the Crux lands a very impressive top spot, albeit well within the error margin of the Wilier, the Argon 18, and the Pinarello. If we couple this with the bike's impressive weight – a full kilo lighter than the similarly-specced Rave SLR – and ample tyre clearance, it's a very strong case for concluding the Crux is the fastest gravel bike we tested.

Here's a clearer view of the differences between each of the bikes. The Crux and Rave are super close, separated by just 0.05 watts.

It's very caveated by the positional difference and the fact that we've got gravel tyres fitted here, but as the fastest gravel bike we tested (with a rider), the Crux is the closest to all the aero bikes we've tested. It's still in the region of 20 watts off the Cinelli Aeroscoop, though, and 28 watts behind its road-going stablemate, the S-Works Tarmac SL8.

When we tested gravel tyre widths, we found the difference between a 40mm road tyre (Goodyear Vector) and a 47mm Vittoria Terreno Dry gravel tyre to be 8.7 watts when using the Zipp XPLR wheels, and 6.6 watts on Hunt CGR wheels. That's roughly what I'd expect to save if we swapped the Crux onto a road tyre, and it helps you understand the deficit in a slightly more comparable way.

With all that said, I am planning on running a more in-depth head-to-head between the Crux and the Tarmac soon. However, since a new Specialized has been spotted at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in recent days, I'm hoping Specialized will oblige me with the opportunity to test it against that. Watch this space.

Bike only, Enve wheels

A similar graph to the one above, but the Crux has actually dropped down the table a little, now into 4th.

When we calculate the weighted average and solve for watts, the Crux sits in third.

When we swapped in the Enve G SES 6.7 wheels and 50mm Vittoria T30 tyre, all bikes improved.

That could come down to the difference in tread between the Cinturato and the T30 tyres, but given the depth of the Enves, I'd be surprised if that's not the real reason.

Still, in a complement to the Roval Terra Aero CLX wheels that come on the Crux, it was Specialized that improved the least, at just 2.37 watts.

Essentially, this says the Roval wheels were the closest to the Enves, in a cohort that also included 3T's Discus, Miche's Graff Aero, and Zipp's 303 XPLR S.

Conclusions

As the most aero bike with a rider on, and 2nd place as bike only, the Crux 5 has held its own very well despite others here having a more obviously aero-looking design, such as the deep head tube of the Argon 18 and the integrated aero bottles of the Wilier.

Importantly, though, the Crux is a full kilo lighter than the competitors that accompany it on the podium.

It weighed 7.1kg on our scales, with Red XPLR, (empty) bottles in the cages, no pedals, no out front mount, and no sealant in the Pathfinder tyres it comes with.

Under those same conditions, the Argon 18 is 8.2kg (albeit in a Force XPLR spec, as tested), while the Wilier Rave SLR ID2 is 8.1kg with Red XPLR.

With that in mind, and the fact that neither beats it on tyre clearance, the Crux is the fastest gravel bike out there right now.

That could be about to change, though, because Giant just showed off an interesting-looking contender, Factor has a new wide-tyred aero bike on the way, Ridley has what is essentially a gravel-going Noah Fast coming, and Canyon's been busy too. Once again, watch this space.

Further questions

As ever, our testing has led to as many questions as answers. For example, I'm now curious how many watts would separate the Crux 5 and the Tarmac SL8 if we were to match the tyres and the rider positions?

Similarly, are those Roval wheels actually two watts slower than the new Enves, or is some of that down to the tyre tread? And how does the width affect it?

Likewise, what's the difference between the Terra CLX Aero wheels and the Terra CLX III (which are shallower and weigh 261g less)?

A saddle that suits your needs perfectly is one of the holy grails of cycling. That makes getting a saddle that complements your rear end one of the most important upgrades you can make. It can be the difference between enjoyable, comfortable rides and a very painful posterior, especially on long days in the saddle.

In an ideal world, it is best to try a new saddle before buying it. However, it's highly unlikely your local bike shop will have every option out there and even less chance they'll allow you the luxury of "trying before buying", even if they have a lenient return policy. So, where do you start?

One of the most important things you can do to aid you in your saddle search is to measure your sit bones, as that will enable you to look for a saddle that is the correct width. But, what are my sit bones, you ask? And how do I measure them? Read on to find out.

What are sit bones?

So firstly, if you don't know, the clue is in the name, but your sit bones, or to give them the correct medical name, the Ischial Tuberosity, is the V-shaped bone at the bottom of the pelvis that makes contact with a surface when you sit down. If you’ve ever sat on a hard seat for a long time, you’re no doubt familiar with this pokey bone and the discomfort you can get.

Bike saddles are designed to provide optimal support to the sit bones for maximum rider comfort. Too narrow and the sit bones are unsupported, causing the rider undue muscle and tissue stress. Too wide and the sit bones can rest awkwardly on the edge of the centre channel, where saddles offer little to no padding.

How to measure sit bone width using cardboard

This is both the most low-tech and the most accurate at-home method. Grab a flat piece of corrugated cardboard and place it on a flat surface. Sit down on the cardboard, and settle in so your sit bones make an indentation. You can even pull up on the chair to press your butt and sit bones into the surface.

Stand up and use a pen to circle the indentations. Mark the approximate centres with a plus sign, and use a ruler to get the distance between the centre marks. Make sure your clothing isn’t giving a false result; for example, jeans rivets poking the cardboard instead of your sit bones. A firm chair works best, so don’t bother trying to do this test on the couch. If you’re not sure if you did the test right, grab a fresh piece of cardboard and do it again just to make sure.

The cardboard sit bone test works similarly to the high-tech, pressure-sensitive devices saddle brands have at their disposal, so the results are generally quite accurate.

How do I use my sit bone width to find the right saddle fit?

Every brand provides slightly different information when it comes to saddle width. Some offer a range of sit bone widths for each size, while others simply give the overall width of the saddle. In most cases, your saddle should be wider than your sit bone width by 15 to 20mm. This will ensure you’re not right on the edges of the saddle, where your sit bones will be poorly supported.

If after purchase, you find that a saddle is uncomfortable even though it’s the right size, check to make sure you have the saddle positioned appropriately. For example, if it is installed too far back away from the bars, your sit bones could be resting closer to the nose of the saddle where it narrows. The saddle angle can cause similar problems if the tilt causes you to slide toward the front or back of the saddle and away from the widest spot where sit bones are supposed to rest.

Having done the test myself on two of my saddles, it was an interesting result. My Syncros gravel saddle shows a slightly narrow fit, while my Scott mountain bike saddle is wider with an almost perfect fit. Although there are only a few millimetres in it, and both saddles seemed fine to me when I rode, it was definitely worth checking and I've fine-tuned my saddle position as a result. It also means when I come to upgrade, I have the ideal saddle width in mind.

Modern bikes come loaded with rider aids and tech that allow us to ride faster than ever. However, without a doubt, one of the most important components of a bike are the tyres. Even if you have the fanciest drivetrains, the most sophisticated suspension, and the most powerful brakes, tyres are your sole connection to the ground, and if they aren’t up to the job or set up correctly, you'll be struggling on the trails.

If you're looking to upgrade your bike, opting for a set of the best MTB tyres is usually the best place to start. They will offer the best bang for your buck upgrade and can transform how a bike rides.

Choosing the right mountain bike tyres is a bit more complicated than just picking the grippiest-looking set off the shelf though. Most tyres are designed for specific types of riding or trail conditions, so it is important to do a little research to choose correctly. Here, I have broken down everything you need to know about tyres and tyre choice so you can easily choose the right tyres for your riding.

Choosing the right size tyre

Before we delve too deep into tyre tech, you need to choose a tyre that is the right size for your bike. There are a few factors that should be considered when choosing a tyre so you know it will fit.

Firstly, mountain bike wheel size, most modern mountain bikes will have either 29in or 27.5in (sometimes referred to as 650b) diameter wheels. It may also have a mixture of both (29 front and 27.5in rear) if it has a mullet, aka MX setup. Older mountain bikes and dirt jump bikes will most likely use 26in wheels, and some smaller kids' bikes will have 24in wheels.

While inches are the most common unit of measurement for MTB wheels and tyres, they may also refer to the ISO size, which is the inner bead diameter of the tyre, measured in millimetres. For reference, 29in tyres are ISO size 622, 27.5in are ISO size 584, and 26in are ISO size 559. This sizing will be correct for the majority of all MTBs. In the unlikely event that you’re reading this and have a very old and obscure bike that doesn't use the above sizing, I suggest you head over to Sheldon Brown's website for all the niche information on tyre sizing you will ever need.

Next, you will need to consider frame clearance, as this will determine the maximum possible tyre width. Almost all frame and fork manufacturers will state the maximum tyre clearance of their product. Alternatively, you can simply measure the gap between the fork legs, chainstays, and seatstays yourself. If you are measuring clearance yourself, remember to factor in mud clearance, the International Organisation of Standards (ISO 4210) quotes a minimum of 6mm between the shoulder of the tyre and frame.

Unfortunately, even with these measurements, tyre clearance can be a bit of a guessing game. Not only are there discrepancies between different brands' measurements (some tyres are narrower or wider than stated), but the rim you mount the tyre on can have a massive effect on the tyre shape. Essentially, a narrow rim will give the tyre a taller light bulb shape, while a wider rim gives the tyre a rounder, wider profile.

A rim’s effect on the shape of the tyre will affect the performance, so it is worth checking that your rim's internal width is suited to the size of the tyre you are planning on using. We are seeing 30mm inner rim diameters becoming the standard and it's generally accepted that any tyre between 2.35in and 2.8in will work well with this inner rim width. Cross-country bikes may have narrower rims, which will work better with narrower tyres (2.35in and below), and ‘plus’ (2.8 to 3.0in) tyres will need the support of a wider rim (35mm to 40mm). Rim width and corresponding tyre size aren’t an exact science, however, staying within recommended sizing will ensure your tyre performs properly and safely.

If in doubt, it's worth checking with your wheel or tyre manufacturer to see if they have recommended guidelines for their products. Here are some quick links for the main tyre brands and their tyre/rim width charts:

• Schwalbe
• Maxxis
• WTB
• Kenda

Understanding MTB tyre construction and characteristics

To understand how a tyre will perform, we need to dissect the tyre and talk about its construction, as this affects how a tyre will ride on the trails.

The tread has the most obvious effect on how a tyre’s performance. There are a wide variety of different tread patterns, but they all essentially aim to do the same thing, grip the ground when cornering, pedalling, and braking. Brands can use different tread patterns, shapes, and spacing to change how the tyre interacts with the trail surface. Manipulating tread shape can play a huge role in how a tyre performs – square edges offer more traction, while adding forward-facing chamfers increases rolling speed.

The tread can also be sipped – these are the cuts or grooves in the tread block allowing more deformation to the blocks and another edge for grip. Horizontal sipping will affect braking and acceleration grip, while vertical sipping improves cornering performance. Tread patterns are often direction-specific and can also be front and rear-specific (more on that later).

The tyre tread is made from a rubber compound which can also be used to change the ride characteristics and durability of a tyre. Softer compounds are grippier and rebound slower to reduce vibrations, but wear faster and have more rolling resistance. Harder compounds last longer and roll faster, but don’t have as much grip. Many brands will use a combination of compounds (usually referred to as dual or triple), layering softer rubber over hard to get better performance.

The casing or carcass of the tyre is the base structure of the tyre to which the tread is attached. The casing will be made up of single or multiple layers (sometimes referred to as plys) and may feature cut and abrasion-resistant inserts on the side walls and under the tread to protect against punctures.

The casing is measured in TPI (Threads Per Inch). Casings with lower TPI numbers will be more durable but heavier than higher TPI casings. High TPI casings are lighter and more supple, allowing them to conform to the terrain, but are more fragile. Dual-ply casings will use two layers to give a better balance between strength, suppleness, and vibration dampening.

A specific tyre may come in different widths as a tyre width can have a dramatic effect on how it performs. Increasing the width of a tyre also increases its footprint, overall diameter, and air volume. That means narrower tyres will roll faster on smooth terrain while larger tyres with bigger air volume will have more grip and float over rough terrain better.

None of these elements work in isolation and will have effects on other characteristics of the tyre. So while all these different parts of a tyre's construction are important, they must be considered as a system.

Tailoring tyres to your riding and the conditions

Tyres are often MTB discipline or terrain-specific and all the big manufacturers have a range of tyres to cater to every type of mountain biking, all you need to do is pick the right one. Well sort of, there is a lot of cross over and often manufacturers will have multiple different versions and price points of the same tyre, all with different characteristics. Let's break it down.

Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than just picking the best MTB as tyres fall into an “iron triangle”, aka a three-constraints scenario. These are grip, speed, and durability. Fast and grippy tyres will have thinner sidewalls and are more prone to punctures. Start beefing up those sidewalls though and the tyres will become heavier and feel numb and disconnected in corners. The extra rubber and protection to make a grippy, durable tyre adds a lot of weight and rolling resistance. Choosing the right model is about finding a compromise.

From discipline to discipline, tyres will have different tread patterns, compounds, and casing construction. Cross-country tyres will have a shallower tread designed to roll quickly and less puncture protection to keep weight to a minimum. Enduro, downhill, and e-MTB tyres prioritise grip and sidewall protection. Using large tread blocks and multilayered and reinforced sidewalls to protect against sharp rocks and race-ending punctures while giving more support on high-speed descents. Trail tyres sit in between the two, although a lot of trail models are becoming more heavy-duty as bikes become more capable and progressive.

The trail conditions you ride in will also play a major role in which tyre will perform the best. These are often broken down into the following tyre categories by manufacturers to make it easier:

• Mixed terrain - This usually indicates the do-everything tyre in the range, capable of performing well in a wide range of terrain and weather conditions.
• Loose - Rocky, gravelly, or sandy surfaces can shift around under the tyre and demands supportive, well-spaced knobs to search for solid ground under the loose stuff.
• Hardpack - Hard compacted dirt or slick rock in the dry. A low-profile tread or semi-slick with a soft compound is a good option as it increases the tyre contact with the surface and allows the rubber to do its work. Minimal tread severely limits loose surfaces and wet weather traction.
• Rocky - Rocky terrain has some crossover with loose and hardpack but usually indicates that a tyre has increased puncture protection against jagged edges.
• Mud - Deep mud, soft and very loose trail conditions. Mud tyres (or spikes) are usually reserved as race-only due to their very specific use case. They feature wide-spaced tall lugs and a narrow tyre width to dig into the soft surface and avoid getting clogged up. If the tread can't dig into the trail surface, they struggle for grip, making mud tyres lethal on rock slabs and hardpack sections. Back in the day, World Cup downhill mechanics used to cut the blocks on mud tyres shorter, since then some brands have released cut-spike-specific tyres that share the same wide spacing but with a more versatile tread block height.

The gradient of a trail will also play a role in choosing a tread pattern. Steeper trails demand more braking performance, so speccing a tyre with a broad soft tread pattern will help slow you down faster. On flatter trails, braking performance isn’t as demanding, however, without gravity pushing you down the hill, you will want to prioritise rolling speed.

As we previously mentioned, tread patterns can be front and rear-specific. The front and rear tyres perform very different tasks, with the front wheel handling cornering and the rear braking and acceleration. With that in mind, it makes sense to tailor the tread pattern accordingly, particularly with gravity-orientated tyres where grip is of the most importance. That doesn’t mean they can’t be run as a matching pair, Maxxis’ Minion DHF and Minion DHR II are the perfect examples of this. Using two DHFs or DHR IIs is a popular setup, with the front and rear DHR IIs proving to be a quick rolling cornering combo, while two DHFs are almost unbeatable on steep, fast terrain.

Mixing and matching different models of tyres is also a great way to tailor performance. Running a soft grippy tyre up front and a harder compound or lower profile tyre at the rear is a go-to for most rugged XC, downcountry, and trail riders as it helps enhance cornering grip without sacrificing too much rolling speed. On the other hand, e-MTBs and downhill bikes may run a thicker casing rear tyre with a thinner front enduro tyre to help save a little weight.

How much should you spend on tyres?

With tyres, you can absolutely buy speed. Better materials, more advanced rubber compounds, and improved manufacturing processes all add up to faster, grippier, and lighter tyres. That's not to say you should go out and spend all your money on tyres, as ultra-grippy models may be overkill for your type of riding and will usually wear out a lot faster as well.

As a general rule, for dry weather XC and trail riding, an endurance rubber or dual-compound tyre will have adequate grip and roll quickly. For wet weather or a more gravity-focused, softer rubber and triple compounds are the way to go. For full enduro and downhill, look at getting the stickiest rubber and most robust sidewalls.

For a good quality MTB tyre, prices range between $60 / £40 and $90 / £70.

After nine days of exciting racing, culminating in a thrilling final stage which decided the overall winner, the 2026 Giro d’Italia Women is over.

The second women's Grand Tour of the year saw a host of storylines fill the 1,151km between Cesenatico and Saluzzo, from the early sprint stages to the breakaway days and the GC-focussed mountain tests.

Two-time winner Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) featured prominently, completing her comeback from illness with victory on the final stage. It would have been nice to see that stage live from start to finish instead of ‘only’ the second half when the race had already exploded.

Another contender, Marlen Reusser (Movistar), also returned from injury. However, her comeback was less successful, as she overestimated herself while trying to follow the best in the Dolomites, before shipping over 14 minutes on the last day.

Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek) held fourth place overall until stage 9, when she couldn't follow the best anymore, losing six minutes and dropping to seventh place, though she hung onto the white under-23 jersey.

These are just some of the honourable mentions from the Giro, so let's move on to our five major conclusions from the nine-day Italian Grand Tour.

Lauren Dickson key to Demi Vollering's win

Still 49 seconds down on maglia rosa Anna van der Breggen after the curtailed queen stage that ended up finishing a kilometre from the top of the Colle delle Finestre, and with the final stage’s hardest climb cresting a whopping 90.8km from the finish, it seemed as if Demi Vollering’s bid to win the Giro d’Italia Women would fall short.

But the FDJ United-SUEZ turned the almost insurmountable challenge into an asset, splitting the race wide open from afar. Apart from Vollering, the team’s Giro line-up did not include any of their other big names on paper. However, rising starlets Célia Gery and Lauren Dickson, as well as dependable domestiques like Amber Kraak, Eva van Agt and Vittoria Guazzini, plus Ally Wollaston, showed what a dedicated team effort can do. Gery even got carte blanche to go for a stage win of her own on stage 7.

The team set up Vollering’s stage 5 victory by sending Dickson and Kraak in the breakaway, and on stage 9, they drilled it up the brutal 8.9km, 9.4% climb to Montoso with all they had. Dickson reduced the peloton to fewer than 10 riders before swinging off herself and leaving Vollering to take over.

In her first WorldTour season, the 26-year-old Scotswoman then returned in the valley – after Antonia Niedermaier, Elisa Longo Borghini, and Niamh Fisher-Black had attacked – to pull Vollering and Van der Breggen to the Colletta di Brondello, giving her GC leader time to recover.

On the final climb of the race, Vollering launched what she later admitted was an all-or-nothing attack, and it worked. She quickly left Van der Breggen behind, taking 2:20 minutes on her rival in the last 40km to win the Giro overall.

Anna van der Breggen is back with the best

Within the span of four weeks, Anna van der Breggen started the final stages of both the Vuelta Femenina and the Giro Women with the leader’s jersey, only to lose the overall lead on the final day both times. This confirms two things: She is back with the best, but the differences at the top of women’s cycling have become smaller.

A year and a half after coming out of retirement to return to the women’s peloton, the 36-year-old is absolutely back at her best level, as proved by her impressive stage 4 victory when she put over a minute into everyone else on the mountain time trial to Nevegal. But unlike the last years before her retirement after the 2021 season, when the only rider really capable of threatening Van der Breggen’s GC ambitions was Annemiek van Vleuten, there are now several riders and teams that can beat Van der Breggen.

The lack of a dedicated team with a singular focus also hurt Van der Breggen’s chances at the Giro. SD Worx-Protime’s main goal going into the race was sprint victories with Lorena Wiebes, but this plan was derailed by Wiebes’ disqualification after stage 1.

When Mikayla Harvey had to withdraw due to crash-related injuries ahead of stage 4, Van der Breggen was down to only four teammates. Of those, Elena Cecchini, Femke Gerritse, and Barbara Guarischi had clearly been picked to support Wiebes. Although they did their best to help, Van der Breggen had to rely on Valentina Cavallar for support on the hardest stages.

Cavallar did well, providing key support on stage 5 after having been sent in the breakaway as a satellite rider, but FDJ United-SUEZ's teamwork isolated Van der Breggen on the Colle delle Finestre and, more importantly, on the final stage that turned into a long-range pursuit.

Antonia Niedermaier has arrived as a first-rate GC contender

Antonia Niedermaier has been racing the women’s Giro every year since 2023, when she won a mountain stage with a late attack, only just holding off Annemiek van Vleuten as a 20-year-old, before crashing out of the race the next day. She returned in 2024 to finish sixth overall, then moved up one place to fifth overall in 2025, also winning the white under-23 jersey.

Now aged out of the under-23 ranks, Niedermaier went into the race hoping to crack the top five again in 2026 in a star-studded field that included Vollering, Van der Breggen, Marlen Reusser, defending champion Elisa Longo Borghini, and many others.

The 23-year-old ended up being one of the very strongest climbers of the whole race. She finished fourth in the Nevegal mountain time trial, only 16 seconds slower than Vollering, and on stage 5 through the Dolomites, Niedermaier had no trouble following Vollering’s attacks and finished third on the day to move up to an overall podium spot.

On the Colle delle Finestre, Niedermaier herself was the one who started to set the pace in the group of favourites after all helpers were gone, suffering but never showing her discomfort and always keeping a poker face. She followed an unsuccessful attack by Isabella Holmgren with 3.3km to go before finishing third on the stage again.

Having mostly followed the other GC favourites until then, Niedermaier made her own move on the final stage by attacking in the valley after the Montoso climb. Joined by Longo Borghini and Niamh Fisher-Black, they built an advantage of over two minutes, putting Niedermaier in the virtual maglia rosa.

In the end, Vollering bridged to the group to take the overall victory, but Niedermaier’s runner-up finish shows that she has to be considered a genuine contender for a GC victory in the future.

Elisa Balsamo's sprint domination

Lorena Wiebes is the dominant sprinter in the women’s peloton, and the occasions in the last several years where she didn’t win a sprint, often by several bike lengths, can be counted on one hand.

With such an all-conquering force out of the race after being disqualified for an underweight bike on stage 1, it was hoped that the sprint finishes would become more evenly contested among the remaining sprinters, like Elisa Balsamo, Lara Gillespie, Chiara Consonni, or Charlotte Kool.

The opposite happened. Elisa Balsamo, already having been awarded the stage 1 victory, went on to win stage 2 in a mass sprint ahead of Gillespie, Consonni, and Kool. She then proved her staying power on stage 3 by coming back to the front after a short, steep climb and winning the sprint of a reduced peloton on an uphill finish in Buja, beating Lily Williams and Femke Gerritse.

On stage 6, Balsamo profited from the excellent lead-out skills of teammate Lucinda Brand, who led her through a very technical final and dropped Balsamo off in the last 300 metres to take yet another victory, this time ahead of Maggie Coles-Lyster and Georgia Baker. With the red points jersey all but secured for Balsamo, Brand then got the nod to go for stage 7 herself, breaking away in the final and only being beaten by Gery in a small group sprint.

Positives and negatives of the date change

For most of its history, the women’s Giro had been held in early July, sometimes starting in late June, overlapping with the men’s Tour de France. This put what was then the biggest women’s stage race in a fight for attention it could only lose.

When RCS Sports & Events, organisers of the men’s Giro, took over the organisation of the women’s race ahead of the 2024 season, they announced their intention to move it to late May and early June, directly following the men’s edition.

The 2026 edition was the first in this new calendar slot, and the race has profited from it: For six days from Monday to Saturday, there was no men’s WorldTour race to compete with, and many cycling fans turned to the women’s Giro after having followed the men’s race.

However, moving the race a month earlier also had its drawbacks, exemplified by the need to shorten stage 8, while the race was already on the Colle delle Finestre, due to the threat of ice falling on the road.

The men’s Giro has often been struck by late snow or bad weather that caused route changes or stage cancellations, and now the women’s Giro is in the same boat.

Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our Giro d'Italia Women coverage. Don't miss any of the breaking news, reports, and analysis from one of the biggest women's stage races of the season. Find out more.

The Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, formerly the Critérium du Dauphiné (RIP), is always the traditional pre-Tour outing for brand new bikes. As always, ripened in the Grenoble sunshine, I have harvested a bumper crop of new machines to show you from trawling around team hotels before the race, and from the pits of stage one.

The biggest story of the week was of course the brand new Specialized Tarmac SL9, followed swiftly by the will-he-won't-he saga of whether Remco Evenepoel was going to make a surprise appearance, but we were also treated to new machines from Ridley, Orbea, Cube, and Van Rysel.

We've seen a lot of trends towards all-out aero machines in recent years, but now the pendulum seems to be slowly swinging back towards lightweight all-rounders. Now they can be made more or less as aerodynamic as their more chunky (and heavier) counterparts, but it's far from a ubiquitous theme.

Ridley's new machine appears to be a super lightweight climber, while Orbea had what was very much an aero bike on debut.

Let's dig into it and see what we can glean before the biggest race of the year is upon us.

Paul Seixas is riding the Tour de France – we've just about got over the excitement of that announcement – but which seven riders will be joining him on the Decathlon CMA CGM bus for a 21-stage lap of France?

The fast-tracking of super-talent Seixas to a debut Tour at the age of 19 has led to question marks over the make-up of Decathlon's Tour squad, which at the start of the year looked heavily set to revolve around sprinter and new signing Olav Kooij.

But Seixas' stunning breakthrough, coupled with Kooij's long absence, has led to major selection dilemmas. All-in for Seixas? That's been the big question, and there have been rumours in recent days that this could well happen. French newspaper Midi Libre reported this week that there'd be no room for Kooij, and while their article was mysteriously taken down, Het Laatste Nieuws has now reported the same thing. For now, the team insist selection is very much open.

The argument for taking Kooij – who looks to have answered doubts surrounding his form with two wins on comeback at the Boucles de la Mayenne – would be that it keeps a big-money signing happy, spreads the team's chances of success, and takes some of the pressure off Seixas' shoulders. But then again, neither Seixas nor the team seem inclined to shy away from that pressure one bit, stating their ambition with abandon.

Big calls lie ahead, and with that, Cyclingnews takes a closer look at the riders who are in the frame to fill the eight spots, whichever way the team decide to balance it.

Paul Seixas

The only rider so far publicly confirmed for the Tour de France, Paul Seixas leads the line and will target the general classification at just 19 years of age.

After a strong debut season last year, he has taken the world by storm in 2026, which has seen him not only fast-tracked to the Tour de France but also treated as a genuine contender against the likes of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard.

Whether the team decide to take Kooij remains to be seen, but either way, Seixas is the focal point of this squad.

Matthew Riccitello

The US pocket climber has had a brilliant first season with Decathlon since his move from the Israel-Premier Tech team, which he finished with 5th overall at last year's Vuelta. What's more, he has linked up nicely with Seixas on a number of occasions.

Riccitello won the Tour de la Provence at the start of the year before catching the eye in support of Seixas at the Volta ao Algarve (where he finished 6th himself). A top-10 while supporting Felix Gall at Catalunya followed, and then it was back to Seixas' side for Itzulia Basque Country, not that he needed much help obliterating the field there.

Runner-up at GP Besançon-Doubs and winner at Tour du Jura rounded off a great start to the year, and while the Vuelta was on the cards at the start of the season, Seixas' decision to target the Tour appears to have pushed Riccitello in that direction, too. He was part of the recent altitude training camp with Seixas in the Sierra Nevada, is with him at the newly-named Dauphiné, and all signs point to the 24-year-old being his closest domestique in the big mountain stages.

Nicolas Prodhomme

The Frenchman hasn't set the world alight this year, but his 2025 exploits – where he won the Route d'Occitannie and a mountain stage of the Giro d'Italia – are not so quickly forgotten.

Perhaps his most notable moment of last year was winning the final stage of the Tour of the Alps, crossing the line arm-in-arm with none other than Seixas, who 'gifted' him a first pro win, despite being 10 years younger and yet to win a race.

That sort of thing goes a long way, and Prodhomme is seen as a loyal and trusted ally for Seixas, who is widely expected to make the cut.

Aurélien Paret-Peintre

There was a time when Aurélien Paret-Peintre was seen as a general classification prospect by the French team, but he has not been able to turn a couple of Grand Tour top-15s into a more concerted push up the leaderboards.

Heavier than his pocket-rocket brother Valentin at QuickStep, Aurélien is nevertheless a classy rider with a big engine. Measuring out his efforts in service of a leader, he can be a solid carriage in a mountain support train.

He's had a disrupted season and has failed to finish his last three races, but he remains very much in the team's plans, attending the recent altitude camp and lining up at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (the new Dauphiné).

Stefan Bissegger

The Swiss rider has been in line for the Tour de France all season and that doesn't appear to have changed with the decision to send Seixas.

The 27-year-old has impressed since joining Decathlon in 2025 and has recently seen his contract extended following his second successive top-10 at Paris-Roubaix.

Bissegger has developed from a pure time triallist into an exciting Classics rider and solid all-rounder. He looks almost certain to line up and while the opening-day team time trial is an obvious point where his services will be relied upon, he also has the versatility to provide support across a number of terrains.

Daan Hoole

At nearly two metres tall, Hoole is going to be nowhere near Seixas in the mountains, but his selection for the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes would suggest he is in line for selection regardless of what happens to Kooij.

The Dutchman is made for the flatlands and cold play an important role in pulling pelotons and setting a sprint train in motion, but equally, he could shepherd Seixas on the flat, in the wind, and when times get chaotic. What's more, Hoole, like Bissegger, was part of the squad that placed 3rd in the Paris-Nice team time trial, so would slot into that role – the TTT coming up at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes could almost be read as a dress rehearsal for the Tour's opening TTT.

Every GC rider needs a burly domestique and Hoole's presence at altitude camp and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes point to a place on the eight-man squad.

Tiesj Benoot

In ordinary circumstances, Tiesj Benoot would be one of the first names on the teamsheet, having twice been a part of a Tour de France winning team with Visma-Lease a Bike and Jonas Vingegaard. But the Belgian all-rounder has yet to pin a number onto the back of a Decathlon jersey, placing his participation in doubt.

Benoot's debut and Spring campaign went up in flames due to a herniated disc in his back that required surgery, and that has given way to a race against time to be ready for the Tour.

Benoot has been training in the Sierra Nevada, overlapping his training camp with that of Paul Seixas, and he has so far put a block of 18 days together, which bodes well. He is set to take on the Tour de Suisse later in June, which perhaps represents the make-or-break moment in terms of his Tour de France selection.

He'd bring versatility, experience, and leadership, and you can't help but feel the team managers will be praying he can make the fitness grade.

Olav Kooij

The Dutch sprinter might feel astonished, and somewhat aggrieved, that his selection is even being brought into question. After all, this was the reason he moved from Visma-Lease a Bike, where Jonas Vingegaard left no space for a sprinter in the Tour team. Decathlon, a team on the up who paid decent money and didn't have a Tour de France leader, seemed like the perfect fit – until Seixas suddenly emerged as one of the very best riders in the world.

Confined to the sidelines for half the season due to a lingering virus, Kooij must have been behind his sofa, barely able to watch each latest exploit on TV. Seixas was confirmed for the Tour in late April, and Kooij has responded in the best possible way, coming back and winning two stages at the Boucles de la Mayenne. But will it be enough?

In a way, it would be convenient for the Decathlon management if Kooij had been off the pace at Mayenne and the upcoming Belgium Tour. But if he looks capable of winning stages at the Tour, then it's a huge call to renege on a plan that will have been outlined in pretty concrete fashion during transfer talks.

With Kooij in decent form, the question would now seem to come down to personnel; is there enough room for a lead-out train, as well as adequate support for Seixas? Kooij is surely sweating right now.

Cees Bol

If Kooij does go to the Tour, then it's highly likely that Cees Bol will also be on the team-sheet, forcing one of the climbers above to make way.

Kooij might see his lead-out diluted but he's not going to be going as a free electron – at that point he might as well stay at home. Bol, a fellow Dutchman and former lead-out man for Mark Cavendish, was signed along with Kooij to be his last man at Decathlon.

Although we've seen little of the partnership so far, Bol was there to help guide Kooij to two stages at Mayenne, and he also has a couple of high-profile stage podiums to his name this season from the UAE Tour and Paris-Nice.

Robbe Ghys

Like Bol, Belgian sprinter Robbe Ghys was part of the sprint package that accompanied Kooij's transfer to Decathlon. The track star had proven himself to be a useful lead-out rider on the road, notably making Alpecin's Tour de France team with Jasper Philipsen in 2024.

Like Bol, he was on hand at the Boucles de la Mayenne and he was also one of the members of the recent altitude training camp in the Sierra Nevada. His spot would not have been in doubt at the start of the year, but it's tricky to see him make the eight now, even if Kooij is there.

Léo Bisiaux

There's an interesting name on Decathlon's Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes start list and that's Léo Bisiaux.

The 21-year-old, who came through the team's junior and development squads, is seen as a big talent, and had some eye-catching rides last year in his debut season with the pros – a stage win and GC podium at Vuelta a Burgos led to a debut Grand Tour at the Vuelta a España, which he completed.

This year, he lined up at Itzulia Basque Country, then finished right behind Riccitello in a team 2-3 at GP Besançon-Doubs and a 1-2 at Tour du Jura, before bagging top-15s at La Flèche Wallonne and Liège, and finally placing 3rd at the Classic Alpes-Maritimes this week. If the team do go all-in for Seixas, is this fellow young French climber similarly about to be fast-tracked for the Tour? He's one to watch this week.

Jordan Labrosse

Another part of the young French core of this team, Jordan Labrosse has ridden extensively alongside Seixas this season, lining up at Itzulia, Volta ao Algarve, and the hilly Classics, with 11th at Strade Bianche – where Seixas was second – a notable result.

An outsider, but an option if Kooij isn't selected and others aren't fit.

Paul Lapeira

Former French champion Lapeira falls into the same bracket as Labrosse – a talented young Frenchman who is good in the hilly Classics and medium mountains. He was in that Strade Bianche squad, too, and placed 14th.

This year has also won the Tour des Alpes-Maritimes and placed 2nd at Etoile des Bessèges.

Oliver Naesen

The Belgian made a switch this year, lining up for the Giro d'Italia with the Tour de France not on his plans – there's no indication that will change, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

There is precious little experience on this longlist of riders, and as time has worn on, Naesen has established himself as one of the leading road captains in the pro peloton. He was a Tour de France bodyguard for Romain Bardet at this team back in the day, and he was the eyes and ears for Felix Gall at the Giro.

If Benoot doesn't make the grade, might the team be tempted to push the Naesen button?

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As the dust settles on the men's Giro d'Italia, attention is already turning towards the next races of the season, but before we move on entirely, we at Cyclingnews wanted to take a final look at how every team performed.

A total of 23 teams started the race in Bulgaria nearly four weeks ago now, and some came away with wins, jerseys and memories, whilst some came away with, well, basically nothing at all.

For some, just being in a few breaks and winning some intermediates would have met their pre-race goals, but for others, even a win or two didn't quite satisfy what they wanted to achieve in this race.

Ahead of the next goals and the Tour de France, we took a closer look at every team in the Giro, what they achieved, what they need to work on for next time, and one word that sums up each team's race.

We've ordered the teams based on the final teams classification, which is based on the combined GC time of a team's best three finishers, which gives us some insight into how teams did, but doesn't always tell the whole story.

Here are our 23 reviews and report cards for this year's Giro.

Visma-Lease a Bike

• One-word review: Consummate
• Achievements: Overall title plus six stage wins
• Room to improve: Just missed out on the white jersey for Piganzoli but you have to scratch extremely hard to find any shortcoming with this team.

Visma-Lease a Bike won the Giro for a second year in a row and the third time in four years, with Jonas Vingegaard collecting his fourth Grand Tour title to complete the three-week trilogy. Both rider and team strengthened their positions in the history books with a consummate display that almost made a mockery of the old adages about the Giro’s inherent chaos.

The team lost Wilco Kelderman early on, but you wouldn’t know it, and in fact, that allowed Davide Piganzoli to break through as the leading mountain domestique and a revelation of the race. The 23-year-old finished eighth and nearly snatched the white jersey from Afonso Eulálio. That would have been the cherry on the icing, but Visma still found room in the final week to engineer a stage victory for Sepp Kuss, himself completing the Grand Tour stage win trilogy.

Everything seemed to come so effortlessly to the team, who controlled the race when they needed and indeed wanted to, sat back at the right moments, and never even began to get dragged into sticky situations.

The same was true of Vingegaard, who looked like he never needed to get out of third gear, and that was the biggest success of this Giro for the team – winning it while essentially training for the Tour de France. Vingegaard won five stages, the team six, which would suggest a suffocating dominance, but this was a Giro raced with a deft touch, which is perhaps even more concerning for everyone else. (PF)

Netcompany Ineos

• One-word review: Perspective
• Achievements: Stage win with Filippo Ganna, 4th overall with Thymen Arensman
• Room to improve: The 37-second gap between Arensman and the podium was probably the line between success and disappointment at this Giro

This was a decent enough Giro for the British team, but it depends on which way you look at it, and them. Thymen Arensman finally found the consistency required to build a GC bid, Filippo Ganna won the time trial stage in overwhelming fashion, and Egan Bernal chimed in with a top 10 on GC and a humbly heartwarming display as a domestique for Arensman in his hours of need

It wasn’t a bad display, but for a team like Ineos, you wonder whether that’s enough, and that question was brought into even starker relief given this Giro was the first race of the Netcompany era, in which the slump of the past few years will supposedly make way for Tour de France glory once more. In that light, the team must be wondering where their next Grand Tour winner will come from. Bernal, for all that his comeback from a life-threatening crash has been admirable and extraordinary, may never find his way back to his old status.

Arensman showed progress but did slip off the podium, and the gap to the winner was a complete chasm. It feels like, with Ineos, the bar for success has been lowered in recent years, and while this Giro had plenty of positives, you sense that soon enough it won’t be good enough. (PF)

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe

• One-word review: Struggle
• Achievements: 3rd overall with Jai Hindley
• Room to improve: Giulio Pellizzari looked like he could be best of the rest but his GC bid went spectacularly up in flames

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s Giro was a struggle, for the most part. Both their leaders were set back by illness, with a stomach virus seeing them lose time in the first week and unable to train on the second rest day. Hindley’s perseverance was the highlight, as the former winner of the race rallied, clawed his way back up the standings, and came good in the final week when he disposed of Thymen Arensman for the final spot on the podium.

Given that the top step was well out of reach, that represents a successful outcome for the rider and team. But when your other leader is saying he’s going to burn his race numbers, it’s not a 360-degree success.

Having placed sixth in both the Giro and Vuelta last year, Pellizzari’s early-season form – in which he won the Tour of the Alps and was third at Tirreno-Adriatico – suggested this could be his breakthrough as a Grand Tour contender, and many saw him as the closest challenger to Vingegaard. But he never found his feet, losing 18 minutes on the first mountain stage of the final week and plummeting to 21st overall by the race’s end. (PF)

Tudor Pro Cycling

• One-word review: Encouraging
• Achievements: 7th and 11th overall through Michael Storer and Mathys Rondel
• Room to improve: More presence in sprints and breakaways could be expected from a team that’s not among the top GC squads

Fabian Cancellara’s second-division team continue to go from strength to strength, and they punched above their weight again at this Giro. Michael Storer now has his third Giro top-10 finish in a row, recording his best Grand Tour result of seventh overall. The Australian was consistent enough in the end, and he was adventurous in trying to improve his position in the final week.

He wasn’t the team’s only GC card, with 22-year-old Frenchman Mathys Rondel also impressing. Having shone early on, Rondel faded as the race went on and dropped out of the top 10. But this was his first-ever foray into three-week racing, and his performance bodes very well for the future. Luca Mozzato couldn’t do anything for Tudor in the sprints, and they didn’t feature heavily in breakaways, but the twin GC cards still represented a good Giro for the ever-improving squad. (PF)

Decathlon CMA CGM

• One-word review: Impressive
• Achievements: Second place overall with Felix Gall
• Room to improve: Tobias Lund Andersen fell flat in the sprints

Decathlon CMA CGM may well lose Felix Gall by next season,s but they delivered the Austrian climber to the first Grand Tour podium of his career, and the first under the team’s Decathlon ownership. Ben O’Connor was runner-up in the Vuelta when Decathlon was a mere sponsor in 2024, but otherwise, you have to go back to the days of Romain Bardet to find the last three-week podium for the French team.

A comically bad time trial aside, Gall finally found the consistency to mount a proper GC bid, and while he was a mile off Vingegaard, he was best of the rest every time the road went uphill. While Gall has grown into a GC contender, his team were prominent and willing to take charge, another sign of their growing stature within the sport.

The disappointing element to the team’s Giro was their sprinter Tobias Lund Andersen, who’d raised hopes with a storming start to the season but, after placing second on the opening day, never finished higher than seventh again. A stage win to go with the GC podium would have rounded Decathlon’s Giro off perfectly. (PF)

Pinarello-Q36.5

• One-word review: Bruising
• Achievements: Presence in several breakaways
• Room to improve: Winning situations were hard to come by but their riders were still largely out-powered in the breaks.

The team placed two riders inside the top 20 on GC, which might explain their relatively lofty position in the teams’ classification, but in reality, Pinarello-Q36.5 failed to have much of an impact on this Giro. David De La Cruz and Chris Harper toiled in the breakaways, but when five of the big mountain stages are won by the overall winner and another one by his teammate, there isn’t much you can do.

Fourth place was the best it got for the team, through Sjoerd Bax in the stage 10 time trial and Harper the following day. They weren’t helped by losing their sprinter, Matteo Moschetti, in the huge opening-day pile-up, and they finished the race with just four riders. (PF)

Bahrain Victorious

• One-word review: Feel-good
• Achievements: Stage win through Alec Segaert, 6th overall and white jersey for Afonso Eulálio
• Room to improve: The team may feel they should be challenging for podium places more consistently given their budget but as far as this Giro is concerned you can’t really complain

In Afonso Eulálio, Bahrain Victorious had one of the stars of this Giro, with the Portuguese rider providing that dose of breakthrough, underdog energy, all with a Cheshire Cat grin that grew wider as the race went on. Fans love an unlikely stint in pink, and Eulálio, after the glorious chaos of his stage 5 breakaway, treated us to a gutsy defence of the maglia rosa, pushing his boundaries far beyond where he or his team would have set them at the start of the race.

Once out of pink, he gamely defended his GC status, only slipping to sixth overall by the end and hanging onto the white jersey of best young rider. Bahrain put two riders in the top 10, with the wily old Damiano Caruso ninth in his final Giro. Elsewhere, Alec Segaert took one of the best stage wins with a canny last-gasp attack into Novi Ligure, underlining his status as one of the most adventurous and exciting solo finisseurs operating right now. (PF)

Lidl-Trek

• One-word review: Chaotic
• Achievements: 5th overall with Derek-Gee West, stage win through Jonathan Milan, KOM jersey through Giulio Ciccone
• Room to improve: More stage wins would have been expected, and the aim with new signing Gee-West would have been to move one place up from his 4th last year, not down

By the end of the Giro, things didn’t seem so bad for Lidl-Trek. Jonathan Milan won the final stage in Rome, where Giulio Ciccone wore the blue jersey as winner of the mountains classification, and new signing Derek Gee-West celebrated his second top-five Giro finish in as many years. But the story of the team’s Giro was one of frustration for the most part.

Milan was forced to see his previous sprint dominance replaced by Paul Magnier, Ciccone cut an exasperated figure as his breakaways failed to stick, and his time in the pink jersey only lasted one rainy day. The Italian’s rage-fuelled ride on stage 19 was as entertaining as anything else at this Giro, but it did raise doubts over team cohesion.

There had already been question marks over the decision to save Gee-West from having to pull to close the gap that eventually saw Ciccone’s pink jersey slip away in the opening week. And then on stage 19, Gee-West was in that break with Ciccone, who went off in search of the stage win while his leader could have stood to gain even more placings on GC. Ciccone argued that it benefited the team, but the move was obviously not calculated or agreed upon. A chaotic Giro, then, but one that was far from a failure. (PF)

Movistar

• One-word review: Embarrassing
• Achievements: Runner-up placings on stages for Enric Mas and Orluis Aular
• Room to improve: Consistency, quality, communication

Movistar are fairly high up the teams’ classification, but the Spanish team had a Giro to forget. In fact, the most memorable thing about it, beyond Einer Rubio’s robbing Giulio Ciccone of KOM points out of sheer spite, was the controversy surrounding Enric Mas and team boss Eusebio Unzué, who indicated his team leader was well below the level expected.

Unzué's comments were arguably blown out of proportion in the Spanish media, but openly questioning your leader and opening him up to questions on that topic is never the greatest look. It led to Juanpe Lopez inviting critics to spend 10 minutes trying to keep up with the pro peloton, a contribution that missed the point and added to a sense of tension and unease in the camp.

Mas did bring some of this on himself, openly stating he was ready to fight for the podium despite having a long injury lay-off over the winter. Had he kept more coy, we’d perhaps be judging Movistar’s Giro in a different light, but he quickly fell flat on GC and wasn’t able to deliver from the breakaway after that.

Rubio was a bright spark, choosing to chase breaks despite twice being top 10 in the previous two editions, but likewise couldn’t land a stage win or a classification win. And neither could sprinter Orluis Aular, runner-up on stage 4, save this Giro with a stage win. (PF)

Jayco-AlUla

• One-word review: Underwhelming
• Achievements: A handful of top 10s and 16th overall for O'Connor
• Room to improve: O'Connor needs better climbing support to survive the third week

Jayco AlUla had a really promising first two weeks of the Giro with Ben O'Connor riding well and firmly in the top 10, but his GC hopes faded away in the third week as he struggled to keep up with the pace, and he eventually finished 16th, a result that he would be the first to say was disappointing.

There was not much else to redeem the Australian team's race, with Pascal Ackermann not really impressing in the sprints and breakaways, and Andrea Vendrame dropping out before the race reached Italy. We also might have expected more from mountain biker Alan Hatherly, but he was really just getting around. A pretty underwhelming race for the Aussies. (MP)

Uno-X Mobility

• One-word review: Determined
• Achievements: One stage win and close on several other occasions
• Room to improve: Andreas Leknessund just needs to work out how to turn his breakaway prowess into a win

Uno-X Mobility came away from the Giro with one of the most memorable stage wins – Fredrik Dversnes' sprint-upsetting victory in Milan, which is obviously brilliant on their debut in Italy, but they are also probably coming away with a feeling that they could have achieved even more.

That's because Norwegian champion Andreas Leknessund was in no fewer than six breakaways and finished second on three of those occasions. Particularly in the final week, it looked like Leknessund was just inches away from winning a stage, but it never came. It was a great showing for the team, but everyone just wanted a tiny bit more. Johannes Kulset's 18th overall was a solid result for a team which is limited in GC capabilities. (MP)

Team Polti VisitMalta

• One-word review: Lucrative
• Achievements: Two runner-up spots on stages
• Room to improve: A stage win would be huge for this team

Polti VisitMalta came to the Giro as a Classic breakaway team, but they didn't just go in moves for the sake of it; they really made the most of their race, chasing down all the prizes possible. They didn't win a stage but won over €60,000 in prize money as Diego Pablo Sevilla won the breakaway prize, which is a pretty nice haul for a ProTeam.

They also finished second on two stages, including Giovanni Lonardi's highly impressive runner-up spot in Rome behind Jonathan Milan. Debutant Ludovico Crescioli also massively impressed in the mountains, which is an advert for the team's development programme as much as anything, and some really good signs for the team.

When you're Polti VisitMalta, it doesn't matter if you don't win a stage as long as you're leaving some kind of impression on the race and come away with some prizes, and that's exactly what they did. (MP)

XDS-Astana

• One-word review: Underrated
• Achievements: Three stage wins and a stint in the pink jersey
• Room to improve: Very little!

Whilst UAE made the headlines for their successful Giro, XDS Astana's race was probably underappreciated in terms of their success. The team had a fantastic start to the race with Thomas Silva's surprise stage win and pink jersey, and then they followed that up with two more stage wins for Davide Ballerini and Alberto Bettiol.

This is what Astana comes to races like this to do, and they're very good at hunting out those wins, but to take three in one race was extremely impressive. Losing Christian Scaroni was a shame for their GC hopes, and with him, they probably would have finished a lot higher up this ranking, but in general, the team had a really great race that probably wasn't celebrated enough. (MP)

UAE Team Emirates-XRG

• One-word review: Redemptive
• Achievements: Four stage wins and came close to winning the maglia ciclamino
• Room to improve: Apart from 'don't crash', there's not much UAE could have done better – they made the very best of their situation

UAE Team Emirates-XRG came to this race without last year's podium finisher, Isaac del Toro, and then had pretty much the worst start possible when all their climbers and possible GC riders crashed out in Bulgaria, so to turn it around to still win four stages and contend for a jersey was pretty incredible to see.

After losing Yates and co, the team could have faded away, but instead Jhonatan Narvaez stepped up to be the rider of the race, and Igor Arrieta grabbed possibly the most thrilling breakaway victory of the race.

As multiple Grand Tour stage winners, obviously, we would have expected more on that front before the race, but with the hand they were given, UAE delivered the best comeback of the Giro. (MP)

EF Education-EasyPost

• One-word review: Satisfying
• Achievements: Stage win for Valgren
• Room to improve: A healthy GC rider would have been good

With Richard Carapaz forced out of the race before it started, EF Education-EasyPost pivoted to stage hunting and delivered on that goal with a win for Michael Valgren, the culmination of the Dane's comeback from a horror crash in 2022, so I think their Giro was satisfying if not life-changing.

Jardi van der Lee and Markel Beloki were great in the breakaways even if they didn't grab a win like Valgren, and Madis Mikhels overdelivered in the sprints, so all in all it was a good Giro for EF despite having to adjust their ambitions. (MP)

NSN

• One-word review: Average
• Achievements: Top 10 on eight stages with Vernon and Strong consistent in sprints, Hirt 12th on GC
• Room to improve: More commitment to breakaways needed

NSN seemed to wage most of their Giro d'Italia chances on sprint opportunities for Ethan Vernon and Corbin Strong, and were rewarded with consistent but not earth-shattering results, mainly a lot of top 10s. That's great for points-scoring and shows their strength as a team, but they didn't really come close to actually winning a stage.

They could have had a better presence in breakaways, with Jan Hirt climbing well, but riders like Dion Smith and Nick Schultz were pretty invisible, apart from their contributions to the sprints. A pretty average race all in all, though they'll be pleased with their UCI points haul. (MP)

Soudal-QuickStep

• One-word review: One-note
• Achievements: Ciclamino jersey, three stage wins with Paul Magnier
• Room to improve: Expected more from Filippo Zana

Winning the point classification and three stages along the way, Soudal-QuickStep's Giro was undoubtedly a success, but that was really their only thread of success, with relatively little to offer on harder stages or the GC.

New signing Filippo Zana arguably underperformed, scrapping in the breaks to not much reward rather than looking anywhere near the 11th overall he took in 2024. Jasper Stuyven was the MVP with some incredible lead-outs. (MP)

Groupama-FDJ United

• One-word review: Invisible
• Achievements: Third for Penhoet in Rome, Cavagna third in TT
• Room to improve: If you don't have a GC rider or sprinter, at least have a proper go at the breakaways

I regularly forgot that Groupama-FDJ United were in this race; that was how little they did. They came to the race without a proper printer or GC rider, naturally saving the few resources they do have for the Tour de France, but they seemed to just sit back entirely, not making a particular effort to go in breakaways or chase sub-classifications.

Cavagna's TT was impressive, and Penhoet had a couple of good sprints, but their most memorable rider was probably Josh Kench, who did give it a good go in his first Grand Tour. But overall, the team may as well not have been there. (MP)

Lotto-Intermarché

• One-word review: Decimated
• Achievements: Runner-up spot on stage 7 for Aerts, Van Eetvelt was riding well before his abandon
• Room to improve: Don't inhale so much cow manure right before the race next time

Lotto Intermarché's Giro was pretty cursed before it even started, with riders getting sick before they travelled to Bulgaria, and Josh Giddings was drafted in for a surprise debut after one rider was too sick to start. The impact of sickness saw sprint leader Arnaud De Lie abandon on stage 4, with back-up option Milan Menten out the next day, and the team lost four riders by stage 12 after Lennert Van Eetvelt also crashed.

That was probably the biggest blow, because the Belgian climber was looking good until then, but in the end, they couldn't really turn their Giro around. Toon Aerts had a good ride to win the sprint behind Alec Segaert on stage 12, and Simone Gualdi was in some breaks, but this wasn't a great Giro for the newly merged squad. (MP)

Picnic-PostNL Raisin

• One-word review: Anonymous
• Achievements: Ninth on a breakaway stage for Barguil
• Room to improve: The team simply need better riders in their roster

It's hard to even call Picnic's race disappointing, because truthfully, our expectations were pretty low from the beginning. The team have massively struggled for results this year, and the Giro was no different.

Casper van Uden wasn't at his stage-winning level from last year, and Warren Barguil's best efforts weren't really enough to make success in a breakaway. Riders like Barguil, Tim Naberman and Frank van den Broek certainly had a go, but the team just aren't at the level they need to be. (MP)

Bardiani CSF-Saber 7

• One-word review: Persistent
• Achievements: One third place and lots of breakaway action
• Room to improve: Marcellusi is a good sprinter, but needs to be more consistent, perhaps needs a better lead-out

Bardiani are basically only ever in the Giro to be breakaway fodder, and I mean that with no disrespect, but that is their role, and they dutifully delivered. Manuele Tarozzi was a regular in attacks with the whole team having a go, and he picked up the win in the intermediate sprint classification., Martin Mercellusi also had a good sprint on stage 15 to give them a top-three finish.

The story that made headlines was, unfortunately, Enrico Zanoncello's disqualification, but other than that, the team delivered pretty much what they had to. No stage win, but a solid three weeks of getting involved in the race in the ways that they were able to. (MP)

Alpecin-Premier Tech

• One-word review: Forgettable
• Achievements: Pair of top 10s for Plowright, Price-Pejtersen seventh in TT
• Room to improve: Maybe finally invest in a climber?

Alpecin-Premier Tech didn't send an awfully strong team to the Giro to start with, with their ambitions lying more at the Classics and the Tour, but then their ambitions were dashed even further when Kaden Groves crashed out early on, eliminating their one real chance for a stage win.

Jensen Plowright stepped up and sprinted well, and Price-Pejtersen had a good TT, but largely their Giro was pretty forgettable, because they just don't really have any riders for the harder days. (MP)

Unibet Rose Rockets

• One-word review: Promising
• Achievements: Sprint top 10s for Groenewegen and climbing top 10s for Poels in Grand Tour debut
• Room to improve: Groenewegen needs to convert those top 10s into a win

Considering they were definitely the most talked-about wildcard team in the race, it's potentially surprising to see Unibet Rose Rockets finish at the bottom of the team rankings.

They had several top results for Dylan Groenewegen and Wout Poels, who punched above their ProTeam weight in sprints and climbs, but probably gave up some ranking points by focusing solely on these two goals and not so much on breakaways or GC.

Given it's their first-ever Grand Tour, they won't have too much to complain about, though, and despite not getting the win they wanted, it was a promising race for Grand Tours to come. (MP)

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Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) appeared blissfully unaware up at Nevegal on Tuesday afternoon after completing her stage 4 time trial at the Giro d'Italia Women. “I was very happy about my effort. Marlen showed she's very strong with this kind of effort, so good job for her,” said the pre-race favourite.

She was referring to falling six seconds short of world champion Marlen Reusser’s benchmark time, but she had no idea of the damage she was suffering at the hands of Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) a short distance down the mountain.

Van der Breggen won the stage by a country mile, putting a whopping 1:09 into Vollering. We weren’t treated to Vollering’s reaction once she’d found out the full and final time gaps, but it’s fair to suspect she’d have been little surprised, and a good deal concerned.

Twenty-four hours later, Vollering bounced back to win stage 5, the first direct confrontation between the pink jersey hopefuls, and with it claimed her first-ever stage win in the Giro. However, it did little to repair the damage inflicted the previous day, and little to suggest that wrestling that pink jersey off the shoulders of Van der Breggen will be anything other than a headache and a struggle.

Stage 5 was a belter, a mountain stage with four climbs and 3,400 metres of elevation gain, which served up an open and tactical race from the start. It has to be said that Vollering and her team rode very well indeed, and it’s worth a moment to pause and praise Lauren Dickson, who infiltrated the early breakaway before linking up to work repeatedly for Vollering as the favourites’ group fragmented and key rivals such as Reusser and Elisa Longo Borghini were left behind. In many ways Dickson, riding her first season at WorldTour level, was the star of the show today.

Vollering herself launched several attacks, and she comfortably won the four-up sprint for the stage win. But this was not the sort of dominant display we’ve almost come to expect from the former Tour de France Femmes winner.

Going solo was never perhaps the clearest plan on a route that counted 16km from the final climb to the finish, but even so, Vollering’s efforts on the twin ascents of the Costa climb did relatively little to unsettle her opponents.

Van der Breggen reacted calmly and in controlled fashion each time, and while Longo Borghini and Reusser struggled, it was interesting that two others were able to follow so comfortably. In fact, Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek) and Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) looked like the easiest-pedaling members of that lead group – as Dani Rowe said on TNT Sports: “Niedermaier was astonishing, she genuinely looked like she was breathing through her nose.”

Vollering, meanwhile, had pain written on her face – on several occasions the cameras caught her mid-grimace. We’ve become accustomed to seeing Vollering operating a level above the rest but that wasn’t the case out there today.

It might seem harsh to be picking holes in the stage winner but the reality is that Vollering is still riding with a one-minute deficit to the maglia rosa, with this the first of two critical mountain road stages. The second, of course, is where this Giro will be won and lost, with stage 8 going up and over the mighty Colle Delle Finestre in what is obviously the most important point of the race.

There is ample ground and gravel there for Vollering to stretch her wings, and she’ll surely take heart from the fact that Van der Breggen only last month was leading the Vuelta Femenina, only to come unstuck on the penultimate day on a similarly savage climb, the Angliru.

But this seems to be a different Van der Breggen to the one we saw in Spain. The time trial margin of victory was already a surprise, and she issued a note-perfect defense of her maglia rosa in what could have been a tricky stage to handle. She had good support from Valentina Cavallar, she responded calmly to Vollering’s attacks, she took charge of the pace at other moments, and she even attacked on the descents.

Having come out of retirement last year, are we seeing the Dutchwoman back to her very best?

The length and severity of the Finestre will be a huge test for her, but right now she’s looking very solid indeed. And for those of us watching, that advantage she has - and will likely take into the Finestre - should set up a mouth-watering showdown on Saturday.

Big names slide, fresh faces rise

Elsewhere, it’s looks fairly clear that neither last year’s winner Longo Borghini nor the runner-up, Marlen Reusser, will be winning this Giro.

Longo Borghini conceded 1:50 to Van der Breggen and 41 seconds to Vollering in the time trial – a portent of her struggles on stage 5. The Italian champion gamely fought back and limited her losses to just 15 seconds with fifth place, but there’s no getting away from the fact that every time the road went uphill she was left behind by the best in the race. She finds herself sixth overall, 2:12 down.

The same is true for Reusser, who was always facing a challenge this year with a non-flat TT, a huge mountain to decide the race, and a heavily-disrupted season so far. The Swiss rider lost nearly a minute and dropped from third to fifth, at 2:03.

That allowed Vollering to move into second place behind Van der Breggen at 1 minute flat, with Niedermaier – who had a very good TT with fourth place – now occupying the third podium spot at 1:24 down.

Holmgren, the rising Canadian star who won over the Finestre in the Tour de l’Avenir two years ago, was the other member of the leading group and is now fourth overall, though her relatively weak TT means she’s closer to Longo Borghini and Reusser, at 2:01 down.

This sets up an interesting fight for the podium between those two up-and-coming riders, and it’s worth noting that Lidl-Trek have two riders in the mix with Niamh Fisher Black (Lidl-Trek) seventh at 2:33. Femke De Vries is only a handful of seconds further back and now Visma-Lease a Bike’s leader after the team made the call for Marion Bunel – who lost time on the opening day and was disappointing in the TT – to work for her.

The Giro continues with a flat stage on Thursday and a relatively comfortable stage on Friday, and it goes on to finish with final stage that’s hilly and complicated to control but obviously decisive. That leaves Saturday’s Finestre showdown as the pivotal GC battleground.

We have a race favorite with a lot of work to do, an old hand rolling back the years, and plenty of fresh faces rising to the occasion. The scene is set rather nicely indeed.

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At 6:30am on Saturday, May 30, Unbound Gravel erupted into chaos. The peloton had just entered the first mud section of the race, and hundreds of riders came to a standstill. They grabbed their paint sticks and started whacking away at the mud, attempting to clear as much debris as possible. Most bikes were completely clogged, their wheels unable to turn, and so riders began putting them on their backs and running.

I joined my fellow racers in jogging to the top of the hill with a mud-clogged bike, and it took us all a few minutes to get going again. This was 'Mudbound' 2026, and I was in survival mode.

I'd known about the biggest race in gravel for many years, but I had yet to line up for the race in Emporia, Kansas. After years of chasing a professional road racing contract, I took a step back from racing in 2020 and began riding on Zwift. It didn't take long until I was Zwift racing five days a week, rediscovering my love for the sport from the comfort of my own home. My numbers were improving, and my competitiveness returned.

In 2025, I started thinking about gravel racing, and only a year later, I found myself signing up for the Unbound Gravel Elite 200. I didn't want to dip my toe into the shorter distances; I wanted to go straight into competing with the pros.

As a working husband and amateur cyclist, I don't have as much time to train as gravel pros. Riders like Romain Bardet, Keegan Swenson, and Matthew Beers can train 30 hours per week if they want to. Their job is to ride a bike and win races. My job is to write, coach, manage, and do things other than ride my bike. So I came into Unbound having trained 10-15 hours per week for the past few months. Would it be enough to keep up with the pros at Unbound?

My Unbound Gravel Training Plan

90% of my training is done indoors. It's a personal preference that I've had for most of my cycling career, and for good reason. Outdoor riding isn't always feasible when you live in a cold climate. Why would I spend 20 minutes getting dressed for a one-hour ride in sub-freezing temperatures?

Indoor training is also time-efficient. I'll never waste time coasting down a hill or sitting at a traffic light. There are many reasons that I prefer indoor training, yet I still got outside for a few gravel training rides before Unbound. The 207-mile gravel race wasn't my only goal for the year, so I was still doing plenty of VO2 Max intervals and explosive work, rather than 3x20 minutes in zone three. Here is an example week of my training one month before Unbound.

In the weeks leading up to Unbound, I did a last-minute training block in an attempt to peak for the 207-mile race, putting together a 15- and 14-hour week just before Unbound. This was followed by a 10-day taper to ensure I was rested and fresh for Unbound. Obviously, 15 hours on the bike isn't much compared to the pros, but I added more intensity to really drive home the 'overload' feeling in the legs during this block.

In hindsight, I think I made a mistake here. Instead of upping my weekly volume for a couple of weeks, I think I would have benefited more from doing two to three'race simulation' rides. These would be five to six hours in the saddle, front-loaded with intervals followed by long blocks of zone two and zone three. This would prepare my body for the effort I'd experience at Unbound, but to be honest, I was a bit scared of these sessions. It's quite daunting to picture yourself smashing a six-hour training ride during a typical work week.

Overall, my fitness was quite good coming into Unbound. Unlike the pros, I hadn't trained the house down, but I was in good form, having won the Wisconsin State Crit two weeks before Unbound. The legs were there; now I just needed to be prepared for anything and everything.

The 3am thunderstorm was foreshadowing

I woke up the morning of Unbound to the rumbles of thunder in the distance. There had been rumours of overnight rain, and when I rolled over in my hotel bed to check the weather radar, I knew it was happening. The radar was bright red, and there was a massive storm cloud just south of Emporia, dumping rain on the first 30 miles of the course. I knew there would be a mud section there, but few of us realised how much time we would spend in the mud.

I had done everything in my power to prepare for Unbound, and there isn't a checklist quite like it. How can you possibly prepare for 207 miles in variable weather conditions, three aid stations, zero neutral support, questionable cell phone reception, and millions of rocks that could slice your tyre open at any moment?

Packing for Unbound was almost as stressful as racing Unbound. I envied the pros who had the full support of mechanics, soigneurs, and other staff. That is one of the biggest divides in modern day gravel racing – half the Elite field has a team of professionals to support them, while the rest of us have to make do with everything and everyone we can scrape together. A local race is one thing – asking friends and family to drive 10 hours to the middle of nowhere in Kansas is another.

My support system fell apart the morning of Unbound. After weeks and months of planning, the support system I thought I had was nowhere to be found. So there I was, 10 minutes before the start of the race, frantically packing my bottles into drop bags that Life Time would graciously take to the second and third aid stations. I wouldn't have anyone at the first aid station due to the failure of communication, which meant I would have to carry enough fuel to make it to the second aid station around four hours into the race.

The stress levels were off the charts, but if I've learned anything from gravel racing, it's that stressing about stress only makes things worse. The coolest and calmest riders are those who win the race. Anyone who panics loses all hope for a result – this was another piece of foreshadowing for the eventual winner, Mads Würtz Schmidt, who suffered a tyre-busting flat while in the lead of the race. But you already know how his race went. Back to me, the everyday amateur who just ran to the start line with five minutes to go.

It was 5:50am when we rolled over the start line in Emporia, and within seconds: chaos. Instead of turning left on the official race route, the lead moto had us turn right. Hundreds of bike computers chirped like a robotic symphony as we looped around town and back onto the correct course. The neutral zone was nothing spectacular, a few jockeying for position, but nothing like the calamity of last year's Big Sugar, where we rode straight into oncoming traffic.

As we hit the first mud sector at mile 12, the peloton relaxed because the mud was packed and smooth. But as we turned left at mile 15, the field exploded on a thick uphill mud section.

Almost every rider jumped off their bikes, grabbed their paint stick, and started swiping at the chunks of peanut butter mud glued to their frame. Wheels stopped spinning, drivetrains were ruined, and more than a few curse words were flying through the air. "This race sucks," I heard one rider say as we were scraping mud off our bikes.

The next few hours were... hilarious. I've struggled to search for other words to describe these miserable moments. The suffering was off the charts, we were all soaked and caked in mud, our bikes sounded terrible, and our chains were skipping like children on a schoolground.

I made it a few miles before my chain threw itself off its ring and onto my pedal. Thankfully, I noticed it right away, so I coasted to a stop and tried to remount the chain. My muddy fingers could hardly grasp it, and it took a few tries before the teeth finally stuck. I got caught by US Gravel National Champion Bradyn Lange, and that boosted my morale. If Lange was back here – a professional rider with the best equipment there is and an entire support crew – then I must not be doing that bad.

I don't know what kind of power Lange was pushing at this point of the race, but I averaged 325 watts for half an hour sitting on his wheel. Normally, that wouldn't be a crazy effort for me, but I also knew that we had more than seven hours to go.

By the time we hit Texaco Hill, the longest climb of the race, I was gritting my teeth just to stay with my chase group. I knew the leaders were miles ahead, but I also knew that I was likely in 30-50th position at this point in the race. Considering where I was coming from, I was more than happy to be in this position. When my group splintered before aid station two, I was feeling OK. A few pros had flown past me, but I was still chugging along.

At the second aid station, I found my drop bag, grabbed a few bottles, and made my way back onto the pedals. I didn't have a crew to power wash my bike, and who knows how many watts I was losing by continuing with mud in my drivetrain. Either way, I made my way out of the aid station and saw two notable riders up ahead: Payson McElveen and Taylor Phinney. "Those guys are really good," I thought to myself. If I'm catching them at this point in the race, then I must be doing pretty well.

Our chase group grew to six as we turned east, and this is where my race took a turn for the worse.

A heavy thunderstorm began dumping rain on top of us, and the headwind grew stronger as we inched through the mud. Every hill felt like a mountain, and we were moving at a snail's pace with no end in sight.

Lightning struck the ground all around us – I wasn't the only one who thought this was extremely dangerous. We were riding in the open fields of Kansas, and I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if the strikes became a bit too close.

Thankfully, none of us got struck by lightning, but I still suffered a catastrophic injury at this moment in the race. While riding through the mud, straight into a headwind, in the middle of a thunderstorm, there was no choice but to take our sunglasses off. Keegan Swenson – who finished fifth on the day – said that he wore a prototype pair of ROKA sunglasses that had tear-off lenses. That was perhaps the only thing that could have saved us in these weather conditions, but I didn't have a pair of the prototypes.

I rode without glasses, squinting and scrunching my face in an attempt to protect my eyes, but it wasn't enough. Specks of dirt, gravel, and grit made their way into my eyes, and there was nothing I could do. My hands, gloves, and clothing were covered in mud, so I had nothing to wipe my glasses with. I stopped on the side of the road multiple times in an attempt to relieve the pain, but nothing worked. I started riding with one eye closed – if you find any pictures of me during the race, it probably looks like I'm winking at the camera. But the reality was, I was riding with one eye.

My morale was ruined, and the pain became unbearable.

The diagnosis, I would find out later at the doctor's office, was a scratched cornea. At some point, I had gotten so much dirt and gravel in my eye that it had actually sliced the surface. It made sense that the pain was a 10 out of 10 with 100 miles to go. But being the stupid cyclist I am, I wanted to finish the race. My hopes for a top result were gone, but at least I could say that I finished.

I rode with one eye for an hour and a half, but the pain kept getting worse. The sketchy roads became dangerous, and I was worried I'd do permanent damage to my eye by continuing for four more hours. At mile 127, I pulled the plug and made the decision to ride back to Emporia. I limped back into town, covering one eye and on the edge of tears. I had put so much into this – months of physical and mental preparation, hundreds of training hours, so many days of packing and planning – and now it was all over. Just like that, my Unbound had come to an end.

What went well – gravel racing tips

The biggest takeaway I had from Unbound was this: be prepared for anything.

Now that is a big statement, and being prepared means different things to different people. I was never going to have a team bus at Unbound with a mechanic ready to switch out my tyres and pedals an hour before the race. But that is a luxury that many gravel pros have.

From my perspective as an amateur, being prepared for anything meant creating a massive packing list before I left Wisconsin. It meant heat training with my CORE suit in case the race was hot and dry. It meant having a bike like the Lauf Seigla with massive tyre clearance in case there was mud. And it meant having tons of nutrition on board for a 10-hour effort.

In a race of this length, comfort is key, especially at the contact points. Any little niggle can turn into a chronic injury when you're pushing on the pedals for nearly half a day. Thankfully, I found that my custom Posedla saddle eliminated pain downstairs, Solestar BLK insoles that helped my feet stay strong, and I had done months of gym work to prepare for the full-body beating of Unbound.

My preparation was dialled. I did everything in my power to prepare for Unbound, and in the end, the race-ruining events were mostly outside my control. But I still made a few mistakes.

What I would do differently next time

Note to self: when you see 50 riders in front of you cleaning mud off their bikes, hop off the saddle and run to the grass immediately.

In the mud sector at mile 15, I rode too far into the mud before making my way to the grass. Those few extra pedal strokes clogged my bike with mud and left me wasting precious time scraping the chunks off my frame. I should have hopped off the bike sooner.

Another mistake came from one of my biggest weaknesses in cycling: positioning. I often struggle to find my way to the front third of the peloton, and once I'm there, I sometimes get scared and drop back. At this year's Unbound, I actually made my way into a good position at mile 12. But then I relaxed when I saw the mud was smoother than advertised. I slid to the back of the group, and by the time we hit the real mud sector, I was 30 seconds behind the leaders just by virtue of being at the back of the line.

In fact, I did 50 watts more than the leaders through the mud sector (leaders of a similar weight). Yet, I was minutes behind. That is a failure by position, not by fitness.

When it comes to support, I know that I lost precious time and energy compared to the pros. It isn't feasible for every amateur to have a full support crew at Unbound, but next time, I know I need to have more. The support that I thought I had left me hanging at the last minute, so I didn't have a power washer or hand-ups in the aid stations. Had I been in a leading position, I would've lost too much ground to the pros with full support crews. And when it comes to riding six hours on a muddy drivetrain, who knows how many watts I was losing compared to those who had their bikes power-washed? I'd love to see that study – I'm looking at you, Dylan Johnson.

Can amateurs compete with pros in a 200-mile gravel race?

This is the question that I pondered on the 10-hour drive to and from Emporia, Kansas. At first, I went back and forth with myself. Amateurs vs pros – can one upset the other? But the more I thought about it, the more the answer became obvious. I was driving all the way to Emporia, so of course I believed it was possible. If I didn't, I would've stayed at home.

When you look at the power files, pacing, and timing, I truly believe that an amateur can match the pros. Countless professional riders DNFed at this year's Unbound. Some suffered crashes, others racing-ending mechanicals. Yy tyres were filled up with an unreleased sealant the day before the race, and I never flatted on my 50mm Panaracer tyres. With a slightly smarter mindset, I could've gotten through the mud faster than most. If I made the right decisions, the time savings were there.

However, I lost time and efficiency by not having a power washer at the aid stations. But during a dry Unbound when drivetrain-caking isn't a factor, I wouldn't have lost significant time. I grabbed my bottles and USWE hydration pack as quickly as the pros. In fact, I caught some of them that had stopped for much longer.

Finally, when you look at the power output of the podium, anything seems possible. Those who succeed at Unbound are those who can race for 9-10 hours without imploding. No one is doing 400 watts for 20 minutes at the end of Unbound. Instead, it seems like anyone who can hold 300 watts in the final two to three hours of Unbound is destined for the podium. The rest of the peloton cracks. I was hoping to see what my legs had left in them, but my eye had other ideas.

Will I be back next year? It's hard to say. The wounds are still fresh – literally – as it's still blurry to see out of my left eye. I wonder how many of my competitors have vision problems this week. Others suffered crashes and broken bikes. It was an unforgettable Unbound, one that will stay burned into our memories forever.

To answer the question from the title of this article... when it's muddy, the answer is 'No.'

The last time I spoke to Maddy Nutt was after her debut for the ultra win at The Traka Adventure, a race where she not only secured the victory but also set a new course record.

She was, despite being incredibly chipper, clearly totally hollowed out after the finish in Spain.

In Kansas, Nutt led Unbound XL for a long time, then finished her first entry in 27 hours, 46 minutes, 13 seconds, which was a runner-up position a little more than 34 minutes behind now two-time winner Svenja Betz.

While I spoke to her over the phone this time rather than over a cold beer, it was clear Unbound XL, a race she had upgraded to from the usual Unbound Gravel 200, had taken its toll.

Her voice was cracked to a degree I hadn’t heard since those heady days of school discos.

"How are you?" I asked.

“I'm surviving, not thriving. That's how I would put it.”

Unbound XL recap

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand you will know that Unbound Gravel this year was an infamously mucky affair. Stories abound of the mud, hiking, and general carnage. As I spent most of the race weekend tending to my allotment (sorry, the strawberries needed some TLC), I was keen to hear from the horses mouth (or should that be hoarse?) how the race went:

“Oh my God, it was an absolute adventure. It started really hard; I would say it actually started harder than the elite women's 200 started last year, because this was the start with men as well. So you had the pro men in the 350, who were absolutely whacking the pace at the beginning to try and trim down the group, and everyone was trying to do their best to hold on," Nutt said.

“Considering it was a 27-hour race at the end of the day, I did some one-hour power that I definitely should not have done in the first one hour of the race, and at that point it was only me, Heather Jackson [2025 XL champion - ed.] and this girl called Larissa [Hartog], who I've never raced before… people were literally racing like it was a 100-mile race.”

Unlike The Traka Adventure, where it is technically a non-draft race (although this rule gets bent at the start to some degree), drafting is very much legal at Unbound XL and introduces some different race dynamics.

“This race drafting is legal, which it wasn't at Traka, so you do have to think a little bit like… ‘if I can get in a group that's moving a lot faster I'm going to make quite a lot of time’.

“If men and women start together, it then becomes a little bit luck-of-the-draw as to whether you end up being able to draft someone later in the race or not. I ended up on my own for quite a bit of time, but it's so hard. I think you wouldn't be able to do a separate men's and women start with the size of the woman's field.”

Curious as to whether drafting makes life easier, it seems the answer was a counterintuitive negative:

“It felt unbelievably hard at the beginning, but I know even for the men they were saying it was unbelievably hard at the beginning. I think just everyone goes unnecessarily hard in these things and they just forget that it's however many stupid amount of kilometers they still have to ride, and they just have blinkers on, and they're just racing.”

Three key errors

While shorter races can be won error-free, there will always be mis-steps in ultra distances. Nutt recounts how she felt good for the first 300km, at which point she was leading the race, only for things to unravel in the endless cloying mud for three key reasons.

“One was wearing stiff carbon race shoes… and I'll tell you that my heels are not in a good way. So, one was like, not thinking about the fact that I could have to walk in my shoes.”

It must be said that I don’t think this is a slight on her Q36.5 shoes; hiking for hours on end in bike shoes, even those with a bit of flex, will slough the skin off most feet. I suggested, somewhat flippantly, that perhaps barefoot might have been preferable (and if you’d seen the pictures you’d probably be with me on this):

“I mean, I really should have done. I should have just taken my shoes off. And this is where the crucial error was, because we didn't know how long the mud sections were. And the problem with this kind of mud is you don’t know it's gonna get stuck on your bike until you try and ride on it. It doesn't look bad.

“It was honestly five hours [walking]. I think the fastest guys did it in four. I think Svenja [Betz] did it in about four, and when Svenja passed me she was just carrying her bike on her back, and I think she's just got much better upper body strength than I do because I tried and I tried to carry it on my shoulder and I just kept dropping it! I just couldn't carry it.

“There was some bits where it was actually hard to walk; there was bits where you couldn't even walk on the grass on the side, and it was just deep mud, and and I kept having to take breaks because I was struggling to carry my bike.”

While the footwear choice might have been far from ideal, it wasn’t the only reason that Nutt dropped from first to third in the endless slop.

“The other two: These are more crucial. One was I put wider tyres on the day of the race because I hadn't brought with me the right tyres that I needed, because I changed my mind about my tyres and I wanted thicker tyres for more puncture resistance.”

It transpires that the day before the race on a recon ride, Nutt suffered a puncture that went unseen until a puddle of sealant revealed itself on her final bike setup session later in the day. If she wanted to go for a sturdier tyre she would also have to go wider. This then reduced tyre clearance, added to the glogging factor, but it must be said Nutt did not mention any punctures from her Panaracer tyres, something that afflicted many in the race.

All of that pales in comparison to what many will see as a quite extraordinary decision to jettison her paint stirrer stick before the mud section, a decision she describes as ‘extra silly’.

“I had a mud stick in my pocket and about, I think it was like 200k in, I was, like, ‘I'm sick of carrying this stick. It's not been muddy, it's so dry’, and I just threw it in a bin at a gas station!

“FIVE HOURS of hiking was to be on the cards for later in the day, and I would have needed that stick, and instead I had to use my fingers. There was mud everywhere, and I was having to pretend my finger was a mud stick and try and get it out. It was silly.

"I lost two positions in the mud. But then after the mud when I actually was able to ride again in the bike race, I did manage to move forward quite a lot, and I actually got within two miles to Svenja, but I couldn't catch her.”

Despite these hardships, her attitude to scratching was a commendable mix of pragmatism and sheer bloody-mindedness.

“Scratching's probably as hard as continuing, so I might as well just keep going.”

Thunderstruck

While the mud was cloying and attritional, it was caused by an absolute deluge from the heavens and some quite severe weather, though preceded initially by swarms of fireflies to add some early night magic:

“We had horrific lightning storms, and it was actually really scary. And I was really lucky that I was in a little group when the lightning got really close, and we actually looked to see where the nearest town was, and it was 30k away! I guess, if we stay together, at least we're not one person on their own, and I just kept ducking really low, hoping that if I'm closer to the ground, then if lightning does go for us, maybe I'll be the last one to get struck.

“We were right in the thick of it; proper, proper, proper lightning storms everywhere. At the beginning it was kind of magical because they were in the distance, and then it wasn't magical when our turn directions started pointing towards the lightning.

"I did question whether I should stop a few times and find refuge and maybe get picked up, but I did think this would be quite a good way to go if I was to go. It's kind of ‘if it will be, it will be’.”

Having seen the footage it’s no great surprise that it had riders questioning their mortality, and Nutt casually drops in that one of the riders sent a message to a friend to give to her husband in the event that they were struck down from on high: Just tell my husband that if I go, I was doing something that I like.

Three wees, this time

If you’ve read my previous interviews with Nutt, or seen the various clips of her circulating social media (clips that got her recognised in Walmart for her infrequent urination), you’ll know she’s extremely candid, though she is the first to admit that this is elevated following a race when the filter is degraded by hours of exertion.

Amazingly she managed to complete the Traka Adventure with only two stops for a nature break, and would have matched that at Unbound were it not for a tactical stop to draft a lofty chap coming over the horizon:

“Yeah, well, I actually thought I was gonna get away with only two, and I thought, wow, that's quite impressive. And then it was this real bad headwind section towards the end, and I've been alone for hours, and I was pretty sure considering the time gap that Svenja had someone with her and I’m really sitting in the wind on my own and I look behind me, and there was a very, very tall man, and I was like that man. Looks like a brilliant draft, Maybe I should wait for him.

“So I had a wee just to wait for him. And then, when he caught me, he was like, ‘I need a wee’, and I was, like, ‘oh no’. So I had to leave him, and I felt really guilty because he asked me for a tube, but my tube was like stuck underneath my tracker in the bottom of my saddlebag, and I was really too scared like faff with trying to get my tube out to give it to you.

“So I didn't give him a tube, and I still feel guilty about that. And I owe that man, definitely a tube and a coffee.”

Her openness reached new heights after this anecdote when we touched on the subject of the risky gas station breakfast burrito:

“I very stupidly was convinced about this burrito, that it would be really good to have a breakfast. burrito in the morning, and then I accidentally picked up the wrong one with jalapenos, and I just really almost had an accident on the bike.”

What's next for Nutt?

The race clearly had taken it’s toll physically, so much so that a trip to to the hospital was needed after the podium (priorities, right?):

“Did I tell you that I ended up going to ER yesterday?! I went to the podium in the morning, and then we went to hospital because I convinced myself I'd like got a serious injury in the downstairs region, but it turns out it was not as bad as I thought.

“They’re basically like saddle sore-esque, and they've given me antibiotics, but I shouldn't ride my bike for a few days. And I would say riding bikes for 27 hours is not good for you.

"I could barely sit on the saddle at the end. I was like, this is agony.”

It’s perhaps a damning indictment of US air travel that, despite all the trials and tribulations, her worst experience came in the airport on the journey back to the UK:

"I had a horrific flight home where it was delayed by hours when I was stuck in my connecting airport for, like, three hours, not able to get on the flight until 3 a.m., which was horrible. And there was no wi-fi, so I didn't even have anything to distract me. So I literally just sat staring into space for three hours. That was worse than the race.”

It seems that the ultra bug has worn off, at least temporarily. Home, and recovering, there doesn’t seem to be any more plans to enter ultra-distance races, though Nutt clearly sounds like she’s got eyes on next year for some longer events given her impressive podium placings.

“For the rest of the season I think I am gonna stick to my original plan, which is to go back down to the short and faster staff, and just like bash out of a few UCI races and end the season on that. Then have a think about next year because I think it would be crazy if I ended up doing something like Badlands now. Obviously I would be tempted, but I think it's not sensible.”

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Over the weekend in Emporia, Kansas, riders on the new Crux 5 from Specialized claimed the top three spots in the elite men's 200-mile race and the top two in the elite women's 200-mile race.

It marks an opening weekend of blockbuster proportions for a bike that launched to the public less than 48 hours before the race got underway.

Among the many steps along the way to this result was testing in the Flint Hills both in and out of competition.

Matt Beers, winner of four Cape Epics and now second at this year's Unbound was involved in both efforts. Early on in the process, Beers and 2021 Unbound winner Ian Boswell were recruited for some tests that pitted the previous Crux against one of Specialized's other gravel bikes, the Diverge STR, which features a small suspension device at the rear.

"We came out [to Emporia] in 2024," Beers told Cyclingnews. "We came out here and we tested the Crux versus the STR which has the rear compliance in the seatpost. And we tested that with a bunch of sensors on each bike doing recon. Ian Boswell and myself.”

This testing was followed up a year later with a sensor-equipped Diverge race bike that Beers rode in the 2025 edition of Unbound, where he gathered data about where and how the rough terrain of the Flint Hills was translating into fatigue for riders.

As the Crux evolved from a pure cyclo-cross machine to a gravel racer, it was crucial to know where comfort could be gained without sacrificing stiffness and power transfer.

“We had a little black box on the saddle that took data from the race. I raced with that. The more vibrations that go through you, the more fatigue, so trying to figure that out and trying to eliminate that."

According to the brand, this is part of its 'Equation of Speed', which essentially aims to replicate Formula 1's lap times technology and measure everything between the power in at the pedals and how that translates to speed. This involves the well-known metrics like aerodynamics, rolling resistance and gravity, but also factors in frame responsiveness, tyre traction, course profile, course surface roughness, weather, rider fatigue, rider habits and so on. These are all measured, quantified, and input into an algorithm - built in-house at Specialized by former F1 engineer Marcel Keyser - which then runs simulations and calculates finish times. By iterating on bike design - adding extra stiffness here or more compliance there - the algorithm can calculate how that affects a rider's speed.

"Obviously, we've had the Crux, we've had the Diverge, the Diverge STR, and we've collected data through all those bikes. That had an effect on development on this bike, trying to make one that can kind of tick all those boxes and be super fast, and I think that was the main goal of this bike, was just to kind of make it as compliant, but very fast and super stiff all in the right places.”

As a taller rider, Beers, and his teammate Geerike Schreurs have found the new Crux design to be especially adapted to their needs.

"I think the head tube is always quite important. Mine is very long, and you can feel quite a lot of flex through it sometimes. But also just the overall fit of the bike. I think Gee will also know, the bike fits really well for a tall person.”

This is down to Specialized's Rider First Engineering principle, which promises the same ride quality for every rider, regardless of their frame size.

Schreurs agreed. “It fits perfectly for tall people. It's kind of built for me, I think."

Following the finish of stage 1 of the Giro d'Italia Women, after Lorena Wiebes had sprinted to victory and subsequently collected the race leader's jersey, the UCI issued a shock ruling to disqualify her from the race.

The reason, according to the UCI, was a "breach of article 2.12.007 – 2.2: use of a bicycle not in compliance with the regulations, specifically failing to meet the minimum weight requirements."

In plain English, she'd been banned because her bike was lighter than the UCI's minimum mandated weight limit for bikes, by - as it was later claimed by the team - just 20 grams.

The ruling is extremely rare. There is no high-profile case of a similar infraction since the rule came into force in the year 2000. The most recent we know of is Fabiana Luperini, disqualified from the Giro Rosa in 2013 after finishing 4th on stage 6.

Since Wiebes' ejection from the race, her SD Worx-Protime team has threatened legal action against the UCI, the rule itself has been dubbed outdated, blame has been passed around, and the accuracy of the UCI's bike-weighing process has been called into dispute.

This has led to countless questions, so here we're going to try to break it down and answer them. If you have more, simply drop them into the comments below, and we'll do our best to answer those too.

What is the minimum weight rule?

The UCI minimum bike weight rule is included in the UCI technical regulations under Article 1.3.019, which states; “The weight of the bicycle cannot be less than 6.8 kilograms.”

This includes the frame and all fixed components, with the exception of “items that may be removed during the event”. That means that accessories like bottles or bike computers do not count and are removed for weighing, but bottle cages and computer mounts do.

Why do we have a minimum weight rule?

The UCI 6.8kg weight rule’s roots stretch back to the UCI Lugano Charter which was signed in 1996. The minimum weight rule was then enforced officially from the year 2000.

The Lugano Charter put a limit on things like experimental, aerodynamic frame design, bringing many progressive designs to a halt almost overnight and placed an emphasis on athleticism, not technological advantages.

Four years later, the minimum weight limit arrived, putting a limit on the perceived technological explosion of the time as materials like carbon fibre became more common. Bikes were also becoming lighter, and it was seen as a way to prevent components or frames from being made dangerously light, which would have put riders at risk.

Twenty six years later, the minimum weight figure remains the same, and the 6.8kg rule is one of the most consistently debated UCI rulings in cycling.

Why do some riders have to make their bikes heavier?

At times, a rider’s stock team bike simply ends up being under the 6.8kg minimum weight limit. A small frame size, or particularly light wheels could contribute to this, as well as just an overall build comprised of lightweight parts.

In years gone by, team mechanics would add weight to bikes to bring them up to the limit. Bikes being under 6.8kg is certainly nothing new. For instance, in 2003 Team Saeco and Cannondale launched a ‘legalize my Cannondale’ marketing campaign after the brand’s Six13 road bike with rim brakes and tubular aluminum wheels came in under the limit.

In later years, bike brands ‘made weight’ by making frames and parts more aerodynamic, a more effective method than simply just adding brass weights to a frame.

For a while, disc brake technology and aero bikes made things heavier again, but in 2026, some pro race bikes are comfortably down at the UCI weight limit, even with disc brakes, aerodynamic frames, wheels and parts.

How does the UCI weigh the bikes?

The UCI’s official weighing protocol, and any calibration of its equipment, is unclear at this stage. The UCI’s technical regulations show an image of a bike being hung from a scale, which itself is mounted to a solid scaffold, but nothing further is to be gleaned.

According to Bikeradar, the UCI commissaires use a Kern CH 15K20 weighing scales to assess the legality of competitors' machines, backed up by the product description: “Also essential in the private sector to determine the weight of fish, game, fruits, bicycle parts, suitcases etc.”

This is similar in form to the Park Tool options you’ve probably seen in use almost ubiquitously, and requires the scales to be hung from a solid structure, with the bike hooked onto it below. Interrogation of the Kern website shows that the scales have a ‘reproducibility’ (read: accuracy) of 0.02kg, which is the amount SD Worx-Protime are alleging the bike was out of spec by. It also states a ‘linearity’ (the ability of the scale to read accuracy across its entire range) of 0.04kg.

From our experience of similar scales, the results can vary quite considerably if there is any motion or instability introduced to the suspended bicycle.

Cyclingnews has asked the UCI for detailed information surrounding the protocol and procedure for testing and enforcing its rule, but has yet to receive a response.

How heavy was Wiebes bike?

This, we do not know exactly. The UCI has not stated the weight it was measured at, or how much it failed by – just that it failed. According to the SD Worx-Protime team, it fell short by 20 grams, which would mean it weighed 6.78kg. However, this has not been verified, and one source has indicated to Cyclingnews that the bike weighed significantly lighter than that.

The complicating factor is the suggestion that the bike gave different readings every time it was weighed. The team have themselves stated there was “a weight difference of more than 50 grams between the first and second weighing of Wiebes’ bicycle”, which would indicate the bike came in around the 6.73kg mark on one test. Team manager Erwin Janssen has claimed to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that the team later weighed the bike in their team truck at the race and found a reading of 6.83kg.

So how many times was it weighed?

This isn’t clear. Janssen said it was tested twice by the UCI behind the podium, adding that the team’s proposals for a third test were denied – “the jury members were initially willing to go along with that, but they were ultimately called back by higher authorities”.

Team director Danny Stam separately said that the bike was weighed 26 times, presumably referring to the team’s own tests in their team truck, but he added of the UCI’s testing: “It kept fluctuating. One moment it was 6.75, then it was 6.78, but eventually they made the decision.”

How can those discrepancies be explained?

Firstly, it’s worth noting that those discrepancies are only claimed by SD Worx-Protime; the UCI has not given any figures or responded to those claims. There is potential for external factors to influence the readings of a weight measurement. Janssen has said “there was a strong wind” inside the tent in which the bike was being weighed, but took the legal 6.83kg reading in the “wind-free” team truck.

Wind could certainly appear to affect the reading if downward force is being exerted on the bike. The other suggestion from Janssen is that the testing jig was not calibrated properly: “The weighing equipment must be recalibrated if it has been at altitude. In our opinion, that has not happened.”

The UCI declined to comment on this allegation.

Could a change in Wiebes’ set-up be to blame?

One potentially important factor is that Wiebes decided to run a single front chainring for the opening stage of the Giro, as opposed to the standard double chainring set-up she’d use for hillier days.

Swapping from a 2x set-up to a 1x set-up does more than simply lose the weight of a redundant chainring. Aero chainrings, solid as they are, usually weigh more than their spidery counterparts, but swapping can result in an expected loss in the region of 200g dependant slightly on whether the rear cassette is enlarged in range to account for the loss of range at the front – helped by ditching the front derailleur, its mounting hardware and battery.

Effectively, if Wiebes’ bike was on the cusp of the limit before the gearing swap, and nothing was done to ameliorate the situation by way of adding mass elsewhere, this could well have tipped her bike into illegal territory. Wiebes' agent looked to dismiss this suggestion, stating: "Lorena has ridden with a single chainring on this bike before."

What difference does it make?

If we are indeed talking about 20 or so grams, then hardly any, especially on a flat stage where the weight of a bike has far less of an impact on speed than when climbing steep gradients. When you factor in that Wiebes won by a country mile, any slight shortcoming in weight would not make any difference to the sporting result in this case.

However, if you are going to have a rule then you have to draw a line somewhere in the sand and you are going to have to enforce it strictly otherwise subjectivity and grey areas emerge.

What has Wiebes said about this?

Nothing, so far. The Dutchwoman has not been interviewed on the matter and has not directly addressed it on social media. Her agent has said "she was a complete mess" and has gone away in her camper van for a few days, but he added: "Knowing her, she will only come out of this stronger."

How have her team reacted?

SD Worx-Protime have not held back.

In a statement, they described themselves as “astonished” by the disqualification, and threatened to take legal action against the UCI. Separately, team boss Erwin Janssen and team director Danny Stam have given interviews in the Dutch media in which they have questioned the veracity of the UCI’s readings – see above – and doubled down on the threat of legal action.

“They will receive a letter stating that we are going to hold them liable for damages suffered,” Janssen told De Telegraaf. “We have been in the peloton for 15 years, have been a top team for twelve years now, so we really do know what we are doing,” he added. "We have won a lot, and we are also good sportsmen when it comes to losing, but this does not sit well.”

What happens next?

Wiebes is out of the Giro, and there’s no going back. The most pressing question is whether SD Worx-Protime follow through on their threats of legal action.

If they do take it to court, the UCI faces another serious test of its authority. Only two weeks ago it suffered a humiliating defeat as SRAM successfully and definitively blocked its gear restrictions protocol via the Belgian Competition Authority, and upheld by the Market Court in Brussels.

Whereas that was a test of its ability to introduce new regulation, this would be a test of its ability to apply its existing rulebook. This specific case risks being one word against another but if SD Worx think they can indeed poke holes in the reliability and credibility of the UCI’s weight testing procedure as a whole, then the governing body has a potential headache. The team and the rider could in theory sue for lost earnings and reputational harm from the Giro specifically, but any such case could have far wider ramifications in terms of the governing body’s ability to govern.

The other thing to note is that this affair will - and indeed already has - reignite the debate surrounding the wisdom of the 6.8kg rule. It has already seen more than its fair share of criticism, notably in its pertinence in women’s cycling, and this incident will surely push that back up the agenda and strengthen calls for reform of the rule.

Our tech team will have some analysis and insight on that front later in the week, so watch this space.

Unbound Gravel always delivers such a full spectrum of racing performances - from the good, the bad and the ugly. The riders seem to get faster with each edition, this year the signature 200-mile contest celebrating its 20th anniversary, no matter the course direction or conditions.

Speaking of fast, the technological advances with gravel bikes, tyres and components is as much of a whirlwind of forward motion as the riders who work their magic on the equipment come race day. Gravel has gone aero. Tyres and wheels are bigger, bikes are lighter and riders just go faster.

The simple little outing for 34 men in 2006 has ballooned to more than 5,000 participants, pros and amateurs, who compete in five ride distances. Unbound Gravel 200 is still the showcase event for the Life Time Grand Prix. Unbound XL, the 350-mile overnight race, has boomed to 234 starters, the biggest XL yet as compared to 180 starters last year.

On the latest fast machines, the Specialized Off-road squad dominated the elite men's and women's races - all five of their riders finishing fifth or better, including four podiums. And most of the slips, slides, splashes, and wild wheel changes were seen on an expanded broadcast as well, both men's and women's races shown start to finish by Life Time cameras.

A rider named Bardet did find the top step of the podium in Emporia, but it was six-year-old Angus who stole the limelight from his retired road pro father Romain. Angus competed in his first kids' criterium and won the two-lap race on Saturday morning. Romain, however, pulled out of his first Unbound 200 after mile 98.7, calling it a day at a town where he could get a ride back to Emporia and finish his family vacation.

So who were the big winners and what were the revelations from the Flint Hills of Kansas? Yet again, Mother Nature was the conqueror, unleashing gnarly and unexpected weather on all challengers. 2026 Unbound Gravel men's champion Cameron Jones summed it up when he said the weather was "biblical".

Here's a rewind of Unbound, and how some things were good, some were bad, and some were just plain ugly.

Mudbound

All elite riders are eager to get to Emporia early on race week to inspect the route in order to dail in equipment setups for race day. However, weather predictions for a dry versus wet course are highly unpredictable.

Pre-rides in 2026 showed no complications on the horizon, with a mixed bag of puddles on potholed farm roads inevitable. Late Friday before Unbound 200 took off, the forecast was less than a 27% chance of rain. Well, all 27% of that prediction came.

The skies opened across eastern Kansas early Saturday morning around 3:00 a.m. local time. D Hill did get extremely wet, the notorious mud from 2023, but it was rideable for the elite men, then a mess for the elite women 15 minutes behind. At mile 15, the Towers climb was this year's challenge, the chunky gravel now a quagmire of mud and the creek crossings with higher flows. And by the time the 100-mile riders came through, the path was in shambles.

But it wasn't just one rainstorm that caused chaos. There were two more major downpours on Saturday, with one deluge of rain, and some hailstones, dampening progress and spirits before the half-way point. 2026 men's winner Jones called the vast weather changes "biblical".

For the Unbound XL riders, who were caught in the first nighttime storm with strong winds and rain and had five hours of walking in mud, the course delivered "what could only be described as hell" according to women's runner-up Maddy Nutt (Q36.5).

One clever development for the inevitable mud came from women's third-place finisher Cecily Decker. "I kind of was very comfortable with my mud setup. I have this scraper that I sort of made myself, a putty scraper with a U-shape. As I'm riding through [mud], inching down and scooping the mud."

A special thanks to pro rider and penman Joe Laverick (ENVE) for the headline here. He crashed out on the vicious 'rock garden' section of the course after mile 40, the same place as former Unbound 200 winner Lachlan Morton (EF Education-EasyPost). We borrowed his great one-word summary for the race. (JT)

Race made famous by US pros now dominated by global talent

It's long past the stage where Unbound Gravel can be pegged as just a national event, its global cut through has been evident for some time, with former and current road and gravel professionals from Europe, or hopefuls from New Zealand and Australia flocking to Kansas. But just in case there were any doubters left, the elite podiums of the showcase event, Unbound 200, have continued to make it crystal clear.

In fact, in the elite men's race it has been quite some time since an rider from the United States won, Keegan Swenson in 2023, and in fact the whole podium this year was from elsewhere. The three years from 2023-2025 in the women's race were also an entirely European affair when it came to the victor list.

Some are driven to make the long trip to the start line by curiosity, like Romain Bardet, others by a determination to carve out a place in the gravel world which becomes undeniable when you do well at Unbound – the case for 2025 winner Cameron Jones – but it's a race with such size and influence that if you want to truly be taken seriously in gravel its almost an essential stop.

Such is the reach that any nation that might think the same weekend as Unbound is a good time for a National Gravel Championships race – yes, I'm talking about Australia – should perhaps think again if they want to have a highly competitive field that includes the broadest spread possible of the best in the discipline on the start line. (SG)

Surprising DNFs

Bardet was one of 28 elite men who posted DNFs, many succumbing to crashes and mechanical malfunctions due to mud. Among the other former pro road riders not crossing the finish on a bike were Lukas Pöstlberger, Jasper Ockeloen, Benjamin Perry, Robin Carpenter, Thomas Dekker, Chad Haga, Thomas De Gendt and Lachlan Morton.

On the women's side, 15 women did not finish the course, including Canyon x DT Swiss ATR duo Nele Laing and Larissa Hartog who had been mixing it up at the front for the first half of the race, but pulled out around mile 140. Multi-discipline riders Nicole Frain and Peta Mullens were out just before the halfway point and Life Time Grand Prix contenders Melisa Rollins and Karolina Migoń posted early DNFs. (JT)

Start to finish broadcast of Unbound 200

Part of the lure of Unbound Gravel that riders talk about is the unknown and isolation. While part of the joy in following it is the mystery, with the stories of the race unfolding eking out not just through the long stretch of miles that riders are out there for, but also well beyond. Still, funnily enough, the presence of a live broadcast of the event seems to do little to change that, with the live stream of the race switching regularly between the men's and women's event and offering a glimpse into the experience with split screens as well that were enough to pique the interest, but not completely sate the curiosity.