Life After Full-time Work Blog

This year I saw the final stage of two Tours, the one for men and the (relatively new) one for women

The Tour de France is the world’s greatest annual sporting event. Sure, periodic events like the Olympic Games and the World Cup also capture the world’s imagination – but not every year, like the Tour. In the men’s race (there is now also one for women), almost 200 cyclists, organized into more than 20 teams of eight cyclists each, attempt to complete a spectacular and grueling course of between 3,000 and 4,000 kilometres, divided into daily stages over a period of 23 days.

Each stage is a separate race, and its winner is celebrated. At the end of each stage the rider with the lowest aggregate time up to that point, who is not necessarily the winner of that day’s individual stage, is given the coveted “maillot jaune,” or yellow jersey, to wear. This allows the spectators to instantly identify the overall (“general classification” or GC) leader going into the next day’s stage, and it’s an honor to ride a stage in the maillot jaune. The rider with the lowest aggregate time at the end of the final stage is the winner of that year’s Tour, and he has the glory of placing his name in cycling history.

The Tour ends on the final Sunday in July, and begins on the Saturday three weekends earlier.

Often the first stage is called the Prologue, a short time trial in which the cyclists leave the starting block at intervals of a minute and are timed separately. This is followed by 20 daily stages in which riders start together and compete against one another. Some stages are relatively flat and some are designed to be energy-sapping, spirit-killing mountain stages. In a typical Tour, riders climb a total of about 54 kilometers, more than 33 miles straight up! How high is that, compared with Mount Everest, measured from sea level? Much, much higher – in fact it’s the equivalent of climbing Everest six times, from sea level to top.

The final two Mondays are rest days, to allow the competitors to recover. (Yeah, right!)

You might think that each team would have several riders capable of winning, but it’s rare for a team to have more than one potential victor. In fact teams are usually built around a single rider, a leader, with sprinters and climbers brought on board to attempt to capture individual stages. But all of them are “domestiques” (literally, servants) to help the yellow jersey candidate.

Domestiques help their leader in many ways. One is to shield him from having to ride into the wind, which consumes 30% more energy than riding in a sheltered position. They also carry supplies of water and high energy snacks from the team cars, which are permitted to follow the race at a distance, to their leaders. But their most exciting role occurs when one or more riders attempt to break away from the main pack, known as the “peloton” (French for platoon). It’s up to the domestiques to chase down these breaks, to let the breakaways know that they are just wasting their energy. Not that this prevents such attempts many times during a stage. The cyclists in the break hope that, since typically they are so far down the overall time classification that they have no hope of winning the Tour outright, one of them might be permitted to take that day’s stage and bring a little glory to himself and his team.

As a spectator sport there is nothing like the Tour de France. Standing by the side of the road and watching the peloton whizz by is an incredible experience. Watching the evolving struggle for ultimate victory is a lesson in the nuances of team tactics. And for the riders, standing in the first, second and third positions on the podium after the final stage on the magnificent Champs Elysées in Paris is a dream come true.

More often than not the final standings have already been decided on that final Sunday when the Tour rides into Paris. Although this stage doesn’t have a name, it’s essentially the Epilogue to three gruelling weeks of thrills and agony. And until some climbs were introduced in the last couple of years, the final stage has really been a parade of the riders who have survived to the end. The enormous crowds of fans lining the streets, often ten deep in places, have a chance to congratulate the cyclists and celebrate their incredible achievement.

My wife Susan and I have been attending the final stage in Paris (almost) every year since 1993, when we found ourselves there by chance and loved the experience. We got into the habit of bringing folding chairs on the train from London and sitting in them from around 9 a.m. to ensure we were in the front row rather than ten deep, which created its own challenges (getting food, peeing) since the finish was traditionally just before 6 pm! (And even later, in recent years.) So this year we decided we’d wander into the crowd late and take our chances – and to our astonishment we found a small gap in the front row and squeezed into it, and were thrilled to see a real race develop for the stage before the riders got to the finish line, a few kilometers away.

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There used to be a Tour for women too, but it faded over the years and was abandoned. Then it was revived in 2022, and its first stage was in Paris on the same day as the men’s final stage, so we saw it. (It’s now called the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift). And our daughter Kathryn started working for the American team, EF Pro Cycling, and this year she was able to get Susan and me passes into the restaurant taken over for the day by the EF team, along the route of the final stage, so we had a fabulous view as the riders passed many times on their circuits. And we were there as the riders came by after the stage to meet their families and friends and dine at leisure and relax without having to worry about fitness for the following day’s stage.

The women’s race now has nine stages (Saturday through the second Sunday following). This year it ended in Nice, France, after almost 1,200 kilometers and aggregate climbs of almost 19 kilometers (more than twice the height of Everest). In the restaurant, close up, I was astonished at how young the riders are – they don’t look nearly strong enough for the grueling efforts that are required of them. And I had the thrill of saying hello to Kristen Faulkner, and showing her a picture of herself with Kathryn in Paris during the 2024 Olympics, each holding one of Kristen’s two gold medals – as I told her, that’s the closest I’ll ever come to an Olympic gold!

Here are pictures of Kathryn chatting with some of the team after the final Nice stage, the team at the restaurant, and that gold medal picture.

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These are just descriptions. They can’t possibly capture the emotions I’ve felt over the years. That’s why I love the Tour de France.