Next: the Côte de Trillonnière #TdF2026

They sent this man to the moon - proper rocket science! - and he still can't work out whether to wear the standard neck-tie or the bow-tie, so he just wears both. Americans. They are definitely sent by God, to try us.

#NeverSayNevers #TdF2026

- Hey, Claude, did you write this slop for the @nypost.com? - No. - Claude, are you telling me the truth? - No. #TdF2026

That's one ghost exorcised. #TdF2026

Best descender in the peloton my arse. #TdF2026

- Hey, Claude, who is the Côte de Murat named after? - The Côte de Murat is named after Joachim Murat a French Army officer and statesman who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. - Are you sure? - No. Still, at least we get good weather... thanks AI! #TdF2026

I have many questions about his next climb, the Col de Prat de Bouc. #TdF2026 1) Has anyone been to Bouc? 2) Who was the prat? 3) Just how prattish was his behaviour that he got a mountain named after him? Was he sent to milk a goat and ... well, I don't want to go there.

They're on the climb of the fearsome Col de la Griffoul. Beware of wild animals! #TdF2026

For the day that's in it. #TdF2026

OMG! Ben Healy is really real! He actually exists! He's in the break! #TdF2026

Stg 7 Hagetmau to Bordeaux & Stg 8 Périgueux to Bergerac - Back to back wins for Tim Merlier #letourdepoupees #couchpeloton #sbscycling #TDF2026

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Out-performing Western brands will not be easy, but as Chinese bikes become a more common sight in cycling tournaments, their credibility will grow

#DIBLives The first woman elected to the British parliament and the only female cabinet minister in the first Dáil Éireann, revolutionary, nationalist, labour activist, suffragist and politician Constance Markievicz died #OTD 1927. www.dib.ie/biography/ma...

I was asked to contribute to this article a few weeks back, apparently I'm an economist with deep knowledge on this subject. 🤷

You know the story about the Pélissiers riding on dynamite, how in 1924 they showed Albert Londres their medicine bag, including the cocaine they used for their eyes? That would have been something like this, a mild cocaine solution that had a localised effect. #TdF2026

Obvs, first response to the climate crisis should be solutions that solve the climate crisis. So, yeah, the irony is rich. But, if we're going to have to act like frogs in boiling water, should getting out of bed a couple of hours earlier to miss the 15:00-17:00 hrs temp peak be limited to the TdF?

Tom Holland is the grand-nephew of Charlie Holland, one of the first Brits to ride the Tour de France. I'll leave to work out which Tom Holland for yourself #TdF2026

You know the story about the Pélissiers riding on dynamite, how in 1924 they showed Albert Londres their medicine bag, including the cocaine they used for their eyes? That would have been something like this, a mild cocaine solution that had a localised effect. #TdF2026

#PrintTheLegend Everybody knows it's a lie. Everybody knows it's a journalist's invention. But it's a lie that makes Simpson's death somehow seem noble, when it was nothing of the sort. Cycling, the sport that seeks the comfort of lies, rather than face reality. #TdF2026

You think coping with two rest days in a Tour is too much to ask of you? In the first Tour, in 1903, the riders had more rest days than they had race days. #TdF2026

Van Der Poel! #TdF2026

"Fucking SRAM!" #TdF2026

Cá bhfuil Ben Healy? #TdF2026

Hi! Mr Vaughters, can Ben come out and play tomorrow? #TdF2026

Third yesterday, second today ... first in Nevers? #Tdf2026

Bill Hicks used to make a joke abt being addicted to watching TV after seeing JFK shot in Dallas. Something that big might happen again. Being a TdF fan is a bit like that. You remember the shock of 2020, or 1989, or 1968 or whatever. And you forget all the normal, dull Tours inbetween. #TdF2026

Is Milan Fretin worried about Ukrainian drones? #TdF2026 #ZebraDazzle

Bordeaux has long been a happy hunting ground for sprinters. This is the 1936 Tour, Pau to Bordeaux, René le Grevès (France Ouest) getting the better of Éloi Meulenberg (Belgium). #TdF2026

Crowds on the Tourmalet back in the B+W days. #TdF2026

'Tis but a flesh wound. #TdF2026

Right, the #TdF2026 is now on the Tourmalet and this is the only warning I'm giving on this one today: if you claim that the statute at the top of the mountain is Octave Lapize I will personally come round to your gaff and slap you upside the head with a rolled-up copy of L'Équipe.

As Macron is at the #TdF2026 today, the long, long thread of politicians at the Tour. Starting with the daddy of 'em all, 'la grande asperge', Charles de Gaulle in 1960, when the Tour came to him/

As the #TdF2026 begins its ascent of the Col d'Aspirin (p/b Bayer), this is what it looked like more than a century ago, crowds at the summit to cheer on the riders as they passed.

Speaking of military metaphors in cycling. See if you can guess which Sky-related autobiography this nonsense appeared in:

The #TdF2026 is about to cross the Cols d'Aspin + Tourmalet, two of the climbs first crossed when Henri Desgrange discovered the Pyrénées in 1910. Much has been said about that discovery, much of it wrong. Here's a long read on what really happened, based on archival research. Please share.

Did they take his soap and anti-deodarant, again?

After two stages of having to play Mother Hen to Arnaud De Lie at the back of the race, all I can say here is ... chapeau, Baptiste, chapeau!

Yesterday @matildaprice.bsky.social drew attention to Tom Pidcock's tin-earred comparison of the Tour to a war zone even as the race passed through exceptional wildfires that are destroying real lives. Needless to say, some chose to miss her point.

Last week it was all the Second Coming. This week? Cancer Jesus has returned. Cycling, the most Catholic sport in Christendom. #TdF2026

"Cá bhfuil Ben Healy?," asks the man on TG4, before going on to call him the Invisible Man. #TdF2026

Arvid De Kleijn playing tail-end Charlie again again. Does he have a dead goldfish he can tell the hacks got him through to the finish today? #TdFsGotTalent #TdF2026

Thanks to @womenridersofyore.bsky.social I now have an archive of three years of Austrian women's cycling magazine I was previously unaware of to work my way through. You'd be surprised at the things that keep me happy.

In light of Arnaud De Lie's personal Calvary today, here's the diminutive dipsomaniac Alfred Jarry's 'La Passion considérée comme course de côte' ('The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race') from 1903, translated by Roger Shuttock. Enjoy. And share. #TdF2026

I dee Arnaud De Lie is off the back again. Poor old Baptiste Veistroffer is again having to look after him like a mother hen. 20' back already, the climbing just begun. Time cut's likely to be in the 45' area. But at least this time they'd got some company from Tudor and Picnic. #TdF2026

Well, it was 100 years ago today that the Tour went from Bayonne to Luchon and it all went tits up. That's putting it lightly. Read the story of those who were plucked from the mountainside, nearly 24 hours after starting the stage. www.amazon.co.uk/We-Rode-All-...

Early cyclists wore breeches and boots to protect themselves from getting their legs sliced open? Presumably these were chain-mail breeches.