Join us for our Tour de France road trip

Preview episode online now, daily coverage starts on Saturday

by Lionel Birnie

So here we go again, all set for another lap around France. Our XL preview episode is in the can – part one is online now and part two will follow a little later today. Appetites have been whetted, if not by Tadej Pogačar’s dominance in the mountains at the Dauphiné then by the myriad other potential storylines we’ll see unfold over the coming three weeks.

It’s a summer of significant anniversaries – it’s 50 years since the Tour first finished on the Champs-Élysées, the introduction of the polka-dot jersey for the leader of the mountains competition, and the white jersey for the best young rider. I’ve also reached the half-century – Theo Smit of the Netherlands won a 222-kilometre stage from Sablé-sur-Sarthe to Merlin-Plage the day I was born. Having said that, I reached life’s KM0 in the late afternoon so without knowing precisely when Smit crossed the line, the first stage winner of my existence may well have been Eddy Merckx, who won a short time trial the following day.

Attitude Camp was a resounding success, although as I write this I can appreciate why I’ve not attempted the Glastonbury Festival-Tour de France double since 2014. Like the Giro-Tour double I’d assumed it was no longer realistic, but then Pog came along. Having said that, I’m no Pog and I know that five nights camping in a field is not ideal preparation for three weeks on the road, although the mini heatwave in the south of England may mean I’ll acclimatise better than usual.

I’ve got Graham Willgoss alongside me, brimming with the enthusiasm of someone relishing the prospect of their third Tour de France. This will be my 22nd – 15 of which I’ve done in (almost) their entirety. I must confess, to borrow Ciro Scognamiglio’s catchphrase, when I stood on the Champs-Élysées at the end of the race two years ago, I had a little look round, taking it all in, and wondered whether it might be my last full Tour. It certainly felt like it at the time but, after a fallow year, I’m looking forward to it, although I’ll be taking it day by day. After all, the Tour is the Tour – is there any other way?

Talking of anniversaries, it’s 40 years since France last celebrated a Tour victory. Bernard Hinault took the last of his five wins in 1985 and the following summer François Thomazeau was despatched to the Pyrenees to cover the race for the first time. We’re assured François had nothing to do with the nation’s long drought. There have been some near-misses and a spectacular slump in French fortunes in the four decades since and it is remarkable that the wait for a successor to the Badger goes on.

We’re delighted that François has come out of (semi) retirement for the opening weekend. As the author of the Tour’s Guide Touristique for many years there’s very little he doesn’t know about France but I’m especially looking forward to his perspective on Lille, the city of his birth.

We’ve split The XL Tour de France Preview – or should that be XXL Tour de France Preview – into two parts. The first focuses on the first half of the race and the battle between Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, who are tied 2-2 in the head-to-head Tour de France stakes. (Pogačar has three Tours to his name but Vingegaard didn’t ride in 2020). As I said in the episode, although they are almost equal in lots of ways we’ve yet to see a truly close battle between them. The time gaps have been large one way or the other – the closest race was 2022 when the Dane was 2:43 ahead of the Slovenian – which suggests that once someone gets the upper hand they press home their advantage effectively. The aggregate time gap between them in the four Tours they’ve gone up against each other puts Pogačar 1:22 ahead. Since 2021, they’ve won 18 stages between them (Pog leads 14-4) and have held the yellow jersey for 65 of 84 days (Pog 38, Vingegaard 27).

Part two covers some of the sub-plots and the stages in store in the second half of the race.

Our daily coverage begins on Saturday after the first stage. Follow (or subscribe) to The Cycling Podcast’s free feed in your preferred podcast player to ensure you get the episodes as soon as they are released each evening. We’ll keep in touch with regular shots of 11.01 Cappuccino throughout the race and if you see The Cycling Podcar on the road in France, come and say hello.

Online now

• KM0 Archive: The very first episode of KM0 (2015)

• KM0 Archive: Mont Ventoux – Heat, Wind & Fear (2016)

• KM0 Archive: Tour de la Musique (2017)

• The XL Tour de France Preview, Part One

Coming soon

• The XL Tour de France Preview, Part Two – Thursday afternoon

• KM0 Archive: François’ Tour Tales, Part One – Friday morning

• Daily episodes from the Tour de France start on Saturday

Marking 10 years of KM0 episodes

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first episode of our spin-off show KM0. The idea was to create a format that would give us the space and flexibility to explore different stories we didn’t have room for in the daily Tour de France stage recaps.

Daniel came up with the title – KM0 being the official start of each day’s stage – which worked perfectly because our plan was to release the episodes on weekday mornings. Over the years, we’ve made mini-documentaries, focused on specific stories, looked at the history and culture surrounding the Tour, and the archive of episodes is packed with episodes I remember fondly – and a few that didn’t quite work out the way I imagined, but that’s the beauty of the format. KM0 can be almost anything and the fact I’m so excited about some of the ideas we’ve had ahead of this year’s Tour demonstrates the strength of the format.

As part of our build-up to the Tour, I put the first episode of KM0 – which is on our Friends of the Podcast feed – on our regular feed. It was recorded on our way to the Grand Départ in Utrecht in the Netherlands and starts with Richard, Daniel and I following the sat-nav directions. Richard was driving, of course, I was trying to decipher the sat-nav’s errant instructions, and Daniel was sitting in the back writing a book.

The episode is a lovely montage of voices – many of which would become familiar to listeners over the years. There’s Hugo Coorevits, Kathy LeMond, François Thomazeau, and Ciro Scognamiglio. Richard, who was struggling with a painful back, also went to see the Garmin-Cannondale chiropractor Matt Rabin – although surely he had more important clients to treat on the eve of the Tour?

One of the more whimsical episodes we’ve ever made was recorded on the second rest day of the 2017 Tour, over pre-dinner drinks. It was inspired by the old music review show, Juke Box Jury, as François guided us through the quirky and occasionally catchy world of music inspired by the Tour de France. There was even a record made by Jean-François Bernard, who finished third in the 1987 Tour. We’ll let you judge whether it was any good or not.

With the Tour returning to the Giant of Provence at the start of the final week, I’ve also added my 2016 episode recorded about Mont Ventoux’s myths and majesty to the free feed. And, the opening episode of a mini-series of Tour Tales from François will be added shortly.

KM0 will be released during the Tour, and the back catalogue of episodes is available for Friends of the Podcast.

Van Rysel House is a pop-up venue for fans visiting the Grand Départ in Lille.

Welcome to Van Rysel, our Tour de France sponsors

We are very pleased to welcome Van Rysel as sponsors of The Cycling Podcast’s coverage of the first half of the Tour de France, including the Grand Départ weekend.

Van Rysel supplies the bicycles and kit for the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale World Tour team who count Felix Gall, Bruno Armirail and Aurélien Paret-Peintre among their Tour de France line-up.

The Grand Départ in Lille has special significance for Van Rysel because, as the name suggests, the company was founded in the city in 2019. Lille is in the heart of French Flanders and the city is known in Flemish as Rijsel. The company continues to design and innovate from its headquarters in Lille, a hotbed of French cycling history which was a regular stop on the Tour de France route in the early days, with the cobbled sections of Paris-Roubaix on the doorstep.

With cycling fans from all over the world making the trip to Lille for the Grand Départ, The House of Van Rysel, a pop-up venue in the heart of the city, will attract people to watch the stages on TV, enjoy something to eat or a drink and mix with like-minded Tour enthusiasts.

Van Rysel House is at HEIN Estaminet in Place Saint-Hubert, a short walk from the Euralille station and it’s open now until Monday (July 7). On Thursday evening there’s a party to celebrate the Tour with food, drinks and a DJ – the event is free but tickets are required and are limited. Over the rest of the weekend there’ll be a chance to learn more about Van Rysel’s bikes from their designers, product and bike displays, social ride-outs, and even a nightly quiz at 8pm to put your cycling knowledge to the test.

Graham and I will be dropping in at some point on Saturday afternoon while stage one is underway so we might see you there.

We’ll be learning more about Van Rysel during the first half of the Tour and we’re very happy to welcome them as our sponsors.

Remembering the first Giro d’Italia Femminile

To mark the start of the 36th edition of the Giro d’Italia Women – which has been known as the Giro d’Italia Femminile, Giro Donne and, more colloquially, as the Giro Rosa in its lifetime – we’ve taken a look back at the very first race, which started in late June 1988.

Tom Whalley is not only a member of our brilliant production team, he’s a very fine podcast host too, and he has interviewed Lisa Brambani, who finished ninth overall in that first edition of the Giro.

Brambani had burst onto the scene, winning the British national championship road race a few days after her 18th birthday in 1986. Still only 20, she lined up for the first Giro, an eight-day stage race which took the riders from Milan to Rome.

The race was won by the Italian rider Maria Canins, who had won the Tour de France Féminin in 1985 and 1986. The dominant rider was the East German Petra Rossner, who won five of the eight stages and finished third overall.

Brambani talks about her route into cycling, including a brilliant anecdote about her mum misunderstanding the ideal post-ride recovery routine, which led to her climbing into a bath of jelly. She remembers the first edition of the Giro and reflects on how the sport had changed by the time her daughter Abby-Mae Parkinson lined up for the Italian grand tour in 2016.

This year’s Giro d’Italia Women starts on Sunday (July 6) and Rose Manley and The Cycling Podcast Féminin team will be back to discuss the race in their next episode, which will be out on or around the first Tour de France rest day on July 15 as they continue their build-up to the Tour de France Femmes later in the month.

Toast the Tour in style with the Dvinecellars case

The Tour de France collection of wines, curated by Greg Andrews and the team at Dvinecellars, will be online any day now and available to listeners based in the UK. The six wines will match the Tour’s journey around France and, as ever, will be a great way to toast the race.