Tour de France

The Tour de France is an event defined by tough stages, national pride and sporting supremacy. But above all it is an event defined by rivalry.   The origins or the Tour de France are as arcane and shrouded in legend as they are typically Gallic, and as the 100th edition Read More

With continued ill-health Bradley Wiggins will not defend his title at this year’s Tour de France, Team Sky have announced. Two weeks ago, a worsening chest infection caused his withdrawal from the Giro d’Italia and he returned home for treatment, rest, and further assessment of Read More

Of course there are no end of books on various aspects of the Tour de France and numerous biographies of those you have ridden it to fill in the more personal (often painful) minutiae. But now, thanks to publishers Quercus, comes a book as rich and beguiling as the race itself. Read More

Hard to move without bumping into another book on Bradley Wiggins – his autobiography, My Time, is out, as is an update of his In Pursuit of Glory, and the official Team Sky’s 21 Days to Glory. Then there are the books Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe, Press Association Sports, et Read More

Following the International Cycling Union’s announcement that Lance Armstrong would be stripped of his seven Tour de France wins (1999-2005), they have further confirmed that no substitute winners will stand in the now vacant spots. Given the breadth and depth of the Read More

The route for the 100th Tour de France was unveiled yesterday at the Paris Convention Centre, in front of an audience of 4,000 people; as had already been widely rumored the historic centenary edition will me a monster of a climb with the kind of hills likely to rule out a second Read More

Gino Bartali was born into near poverty in rural Italy on the eve of the First World War, yet rose to become one of the greatest names in European cycling, winning the Giro three times – 1936, 1937 and 1946 – and the Tour de France twice, first in 1938 and again in 1948 (the Read More

In an official statement seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has announced that he will no longer fight the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) over doping allegations dating back to his World Tour days, saying, ‘There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to Read More