agonist/antigonist

 After less than a week's break, top-level cycling is back in France (well, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, which is really close enough, unless maybe you are Swiss). Once again eschewing a start on French soil, the route of the Tour de France Femmes is once again nine stages (still waiting for two weeks with a rest day in the middle) with a finish in sunny Nice and a trip up the Giant of Provence somewhere in-between. When I first saw the route, I thought it looked a bit easy. At a second glance, I think it's actually quite balanced and the racing should be quite good. The 2026 route (I also had to look up the definition of "homologation") Previously... Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won ahead of Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma, then spent quite a long time being dragged over the coals for her physical appearance during the race, a bit unfairly for a professional athlete whose entire racing season focussed around those nine days. It would seem reasonable to assu...

 The return of the king...again. Previously... Tadej Pogacar easily dispatched all-comers for the second year in a row, taking four stages and the mountains classification in the process. Jonathan Milan won the points competition and Florian Lipowitz the young rider classification. Wout van Aert won the final stage on the non-traditional but now canonical  Champs-Élysées. The (only) one that got away            The Course  Starts in Catalunya, then hits the Pyrenees before the Massif Central, then the Vosges mountains, and finally the Alps before the finish in Paris. There are rumblings of independence protests in during the Barcelona stages, so we'll see if the race can start without a hitch or if we'll see some 2025 Vuelta-style neutralized or preemptive finishes .  The 2026 route in all its glory    To be blunt, we Pogacar in the race, any stage has the potential to be a decisive. But, regardless, here are some of my key sta...