VARIOUS CITIES AND TOWNS, France — The Tour de France is over. I hope you enjoyed my 16 dispatches from France, on topics such as the race's impossible future, how cycling solved sleep, the unforgiving life of a photographer, France's vibrant unc ecosystem, and the chaotic frenzy of Alpe d'Huez. It was a privilege to be able to cover all three weeks of the race, and we couldn't do it without your support, so thank you. This is the final dispatch before I go sit in the ocean for a week and try to become normal again.
As I wrote at the end of last year's Tour, covering the race is both incredibly fun but also somewhat daunting, since there is simply so much to see and experience. Not everything can fit comfortably into a blog post, though I took copious notes every day on little stuff I saw, blog ideas that never quite panned out, and NBA jerseys worn by people. Here are some highlights:
- Every team brings 50 bikes to the Tour: eight race bikes, 16 spares, eight time-trial bikes, eight spares, and 10 backup frames in case of emergency. This means there were 1,150 bikes at the Tour de France.
- Alex Baudin rides with a sticker of his cat on his stem. He said her name is Arya, but her nickname is Nini.
- You can learn a lot by how teams treat the crowds at the start and finish paddock. Some teams, like Caja Rural, Astana, and Picnic, are extremely accessible because they're not doing anything at the race and therefore have basically no public interest. Some teams, like EF, Uno-X, and, surprisingly, Red Bull, are super welcoming. Some teams, like Visma, Ineos (more on them in a second), and Jayco want nothing to do with the public.
- The vast majority of attention was focused on UAE and Decathlon. UAE mostly regard the attention as a burden, though they do let the public hang out by the bus and their press officer is actually a reasonable guy. But Decathlon openly court the public's attention, giving away hundreds of logo flags every day to the gathered crowd. Because there's a battle underway for Paul Seixas's signature, and the core of their pitch is "We're French," they want to show him that he'll always have the love of the public as long as he's on a French team.
- Speaking of Decathlon, they hired the best working sports photographer, Pauline Ballet, away from the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) to work this Tour for them. They also hired an extra press officer just to handle the Seixas attention.
- After I talked to the Italian backpackers who hiked over the Pyrenees and straight into the Tour de France by accident, I ran into at least three other groups of backpackers who were similarly stranded. None of them were as charming or friendly as my Italians, though.
- Some stories I wanted to do but either didn't have the time or didn't get the access: an interview with Derek Gee about why he went to Denver in January on his honeymoon to watch the Nuggets; a day on a motorbike in the race (my Shimano connection left the company); a day spent eating the same diet as a Tour de France rider (access to gels was tricky, and also I would have experienced immense pain); and obviously even more ham truck coverage.
- Best town: Évian-les-Bains.
- Worst town: Aurillac.
- Netcompany-Ineos has a miserable vibe, with sports director David Brailsford looming over everyone like a hawk. The team doesn't talk to the press unless they have to, and the one time I budged in to ask a director a question, he got all pissy with me. This adversarial posture is a hangover from when they used to win Tours de France as Team Sky, and it's embarrassing to have maintained it under a new identity. I mean that both in the sense of having new sponsors, and in that they don't win anymore. Congrats on Egan Bernal's 20th place, guys!
- Something I learned at the Barcelona Grand Depart is that the closest restaurant to the Sagrada Familia is a KFC. The second-closest is a Burger King.
- In Bordeaux, I met an Ilan Van Wilder superfan from Japan. I wondered, how did this person get into the seventh-best rider on something like the ninth-best team in the peloton? She said it was simply because Van Wilder raced the Japan Cup in 2024.
- Among the several new additions to the publicity caravan this year, M&Ms stand out for the quality of trinkets and the considered design of the floats. It's a little much. Don't they know the caravan is for obscure and mildly janky French products?
- Best meal: dinner at the Gite du Bois in Orcieres-Merlette, homemade vegetable lasagna.
- Worst meal: a bite of Iain's andouillette in Grenoble. Ass, in the figurative and literal senses.
- Here is a non-comprehensive list of the best NBA merch I saw in France: bootleg Brooklyn Nets shirsey with the word "BASKETBALL" on the back; Oakland Steph Curry Warriors jersey in Pau; Dylan Harper Spurs at the start in Aurillac; guy unsuccessfully trying to hitchhike off of Alpe d'Huez in an all-star Joel Embiid jersey; an entire family in Gavarnie-Gedre in Knicks logo hats. The most popular jerseys were Curry, Victor Wembanyama, and LeBron James.
- Everyone kept trying to do World Cup tie-in stories, and other than Uno-X cheekily doing the Norwegian rowing chant thing, basically every cyclist and DS would have to explain to whoever was asking them questions that they were too locked in to watch the World Cup.
- We stopped for lunch in some crappy French town during Stage 15, and came across this place: Pearl Arb'Or sushi, which featured a huge, wall-sized mural of a plane diving into a warship.
- We stood basically right behind the podium celebration in Paris. If you saw me, Joshua Robinson, and Caley Fretz lurking, please email me a photo.
- I am going on vacation now. Goodbye!
