Tour De France: William Fotheringham's Tour Diary

Sunday

Lorient

As France awaits the main event of the sporting weekend, the stage win goes to the most Italian of Frenchman, Sylvain Calzati, resident near Lyon and with Italian parents. In answer to the inevitable question, he replies that he will support the azzurri, 'even though I know it won't go down too well.' Six hours and a very famous butt later, it doesn't seem such a bad decision.

Monday

Bordeaux

As the Tour rests in the Gironde, on the other side of France 7,548 amateur cyclists are taking part in the Etape du Tour from Gap to l'Alpe d'Huez. They include, as is usually the case, Alain Prost, (right) but for British fans the significance lies in the participation of a little group of riders and coaches from Britain's Olympic track cycling team, including performance director Dave Brailsford, his head coaches, Simon Jones and Shane Sutton, and the last two Olympic kilometre champions Jason Queally and Chris Hoy. Hoy describes the eight-hour trek over the Col d'Izoard and up the Alpe as 'the toughest day of his life on a bike.' Given that he usually races for about a minute, and weighs in at 14 stone, that doesn't seem unreasonable.

Tuesday

Dax

A brief dash south, livened up by Veloclub, the nightly Tour chatshow hosted by the flamboyant Gerard Holtz. The topic is 'Do sex and the Tour mix?' Against a backdrop of podium girls kissing cyclists in tight shorts in very slow motion, to a panel that includes the legendary sprinter Mario Cipollini - whose PR company's idea of PR entailed a stripper - the author Matt Rendell suggests that sprinters have more sex because the finish effort is like an orgasm. I don't recall that working for me when I was the terror of every flat final kilometre in East Anglian third category races back in the distant past, but each sprint was, I suppose, a brief climax after a long period of what amounted to foreplay in a pushy, shovy, unskilled kind of way. Quite where Rendell's analogy leaves the bloodsoaked finish on day one in Strasbourg, when Thor Hushovd cut a vein and spurted gore everywhere, is up to the sexologists. The double Tour winner Laurent Fignon points out that while bonking per se does not tire cyclists out, chatting up podium girls as a prelude does, and concludes: 'Having sex on the Tour never did me any harm. Quite the contrary.' There is not so much a twinkle in his eye as a rather smug leer.

Wednesday

Pau

Part of the romance of the Tour is its capacity to create heroes from nobodies overnight. Until this afternoon Cyril Dessel (pictured) was just another French journeyman, who had missed the Tour for all but one of his seven years as a professional due to an incredible serie noire: a broken collarbone, appendicitis, team politics. For a day, this cyclist's son will wear yellow after an epic escape through the Pyrenees with the Spaniard Juan Miguel Mercado, as the favourites mark time. By Friday he is relegated to second, but his place in history is assured.

Thursday

Pla-de-Beret

Those who feel American success in the Tour will end with Lance Armstrong should look at today's result sheet. Levi Leipheimer and Floyd Landis figure in the quartet who fight out the Tour's toughest mountain stage, with Landis becoming the sixth American to wear yellow in the 20 years since Greg LeMond first achieved the feat in 1986.

Another, less public tribute to the US contribution is paid that morning in Tarbes, when the silver plate that goes to those who have attended 30 Tours is awarded to the doyen of American cycling writers, Sam Abt of the International Herald Tribune, who predates both LeMond and Armstrong, as well as the first American in Paris in 1981, Jonathan Boyer. If anyone can be held responsible for spreading the cycling message in the US, it is him.

Friday

Carcassone

Return of the Bastille Day nightmare as the best Frenchman finishes fourth. Given that the nation is still fixated by just what Marco Materazzi said to Zizou, perhaps no one will notice, so we can move on quickly.

Saturday

Montelimar

The race enters the furnace of south-east France where temperatures on the tarmac are expected to top 50C. The Tour's doctors warn of a possible spate of stomach problems among the riders due to the consumption of vast amounts of liquid. And it is not only the cyclists who are suffering. Some of the hostesses who hand out the yellow jersey on the podium each day are under the weather too, stricken by cystitis, because their employers are limiting the drinks they can take to avoid too many calls of nature as they drive the route, and conjunctivitis due to a sunglasses ban so that fans on the roadside can admire their eyes. The 'Ca va?'s we proffer each morning as they hand us our free papers in the start village are now more than a mere platitude.

The week ahead


Today

Montelimar - Gap 180.5km

Into the Alpine foothills with two second-category mountains making it likely a small group will escape the sprinters.

Tomorrow

Rest day, Gap

Tuesday

Gap - Alpe d'Huez 187km

Heavy day's climbing: Col d'Izoard is fearsome but still 100km from the finish so the decisive moves will be made at the Alpe, the toughest mountain top finish in the race

Wednesday

Bourg d'Oisans - La Toussuire 182km

Barely a level metre today, with the highest pass of the race, the 2645m high Galibier, the 14-mile climb of the Croix de Fer and an uphill finish: whoever is in yellow tonight will have a serious option on overall victory.

Thursday

Saint-Jean de Maurienne - Morzine, 200.5km

Only the final Col, the steep and narrow Joux-Plane, will really worry the race favourites.

Friday

Morzine - Macon, 197km

Classic 'transition' stage, the last chance for a breakaway over three nasty little climbs in the Jura mountains.

Saturday

Le Creusot - Montceau les Mines, Individual Time Trial, 57km

If the race is close after the Alps, this long flat contre la montre in Burgundy will be decisive.