An official trailer for season 2 of the Netflix Tour de France documentary, ‘Tour de France: Unchained’ was unveiled this morning, with a scheduled release date of June 11, just 18 days before the 2024 race kicks off in Florence.
The second season focuses on the drama from the 2023 Tour de France, with crashes, as they were in season 1, at the forefront and questions of doping highlighted in the one-minute trailer.
Clips from the trailer show interview segments with Thibaut Pinot, Tom Pidcock, Fabio Jakobsen, Julian Alaphilippe and Soudal-QuickStep team boss Patrick Lefevere.
Popular French veteran Pinot was riding his emotional final Tour de France before he retired at the end of the season but curiously, he is shown in the trailer being asked about doping. “So do you think he’s doped or not?” says the interviewer before cutting away without an answer, with the preceding clip also stating “The Tour seems to go from one scandal to the next”.
Only eight teams featured directly in the first season: Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, Alpecin-Deceuninck, Bora-Hansgrohe, EF Education-EasyPost, Groupama-FDJ, Ineos Grenadiers, Visma-Lease a Bike and Soudal-QuickStep as they are now known, but superstar Tadej Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates side will be one of the new squads featuring in season 2.
The news that the runner-up from the previous two Tours would star in the documentary was learned during last year’s race after it was also revealed that Mark Cavendish would star in his bid for a record-breaking 35th stage win at the Tour.
Cavendish ultimately crashed out of the race during Stage 8 with a broken collarbone, which is shown in the trailer and should feature in season 2.
The public fallout of Lefevere and Alaphilippe, which has gone on for months in the media, also looks like it will feature, with clips of both the double World Champion and his team boss forming part of the trailer.
“Julian Alaphilippe costs a lot of money,” says Lefevere, with the French star responding “Too much for Patrick” when asked how much it is he earns.
Jasper Philipsen is again shown after featuring heavily in season 1 where his journey from Jasper “Disaster” to Tour de France stage winner was documented.
“We’re not here to make friends with other teams,” says Philipsen while laughing with star lead-out man Mathieu van der Poel. The Belgian fast man announced himself as the best sprinter in the world at the 2023 Tour with four stage wins.
The pair’s Alpecin-Deceuninck team were the best sprint squad at the 2023 race, dominating the finishes with aggressive but fair tactics in the final runs to the line.
Also shown heavily in the trailer, as mentioned, are crashes for the likes of Carlos Rodríguez and Fabio Jakobsen, with this dramatic aspect of the sport an apparent priority for the producers to highlight.
Season 1 comprised of eight roughly 45-minute episodes and dropped just before the Tour de France last year and was met with mixed reviews despite being an overall success. Unchained is made by the same company, Quadbox, that produces the extremely successful Formula 1 Netflix show, ‘Drive to Survive’.
It was one of several new sports documentaries to hit Netflix with professional Golf, Tennis and Rugby among those getting their own series alongside Cycling.
Key storylines in the first season included the comeback of Jakobsen from a life-threatening crash, the chaos on the cobbled stage, the pressure of being on a French team, Pidcock's Alpe d'Huez triumph and how Jumbo-Visma beat Pogačar with Jonas Vingegaard.
Initial reviews were mixed, with expert cycling fans happy to see rarely seen behind-the-scenes moments but critical of the carefully edited narratives that focused on the teams involved and ignored key moments of the 2022 Tour de France.
It was ultimately enough for a second season to be renewed and confirmed just ahead of the start of the 2023 race in Bilbao. The series is designed to entertain and attract new cycling fans just as the Drive to Survive series has done for Formula 1 since its first season in 2019, now in its sixth.
