Category: Cycling

• Australian cycling star holds on to lead the hard way

• Kangaroo caused Vine and others to crash during final stage

The Australian cycling star Jay Vine has survived a race crash caused by a kangaroo to win the Tour Down Under for the second time.

Despite losing two more UAE Team Emirates colleagues on Sunday’s last stage, Vine’s commanding lead was enough of a buffer. He also won the event in 2023.

• British roads will host the start of both races next year

• First time both Grands Départs have been outside France

The men’s Tour de France will start in Scotland for the first time in 2027 and make its first visit to Wales when Britain stages the Grand Départ of the men’s and women’s races in the biggest festival of elite cycling on the isles since London 2012.

Across six days of racing on British roads, the men’s Tour will visit Edinburgh, Carlisle, Keswick, Liverpool, Welshpool and Cardiff, while the Tour de France Femmes races from Leeds to Manchester, then to Sheffield and also includes a central London stage. On Thursday night all host cities were illuminated by yellow beams in recognition of them staging the Tour.

From the trauma and triumphs of Olympic cyclist Bradley Wiggins to the secret life of a match fixer

The Chain
Bradley Wiggins, (HarperCollins)
The Tour de France winner’s autobiography begins with him sneaking into his walk-in wardrobe and doing a line of coke off his Olympic gold medal: the final emblematic descent from his crowning summer of 2012. And yet for all the personal lows chronicled here – addiction, self-harm, the collapse of his marriage, the haunting memories of his difficult father and of a coach who sexually abused him – this is not your classic misery memoir. Disarmingly honest and roguishly humorous, it is a journey of rediscovery: a man knocked sideways by the toxic winds of sport and celebrity, finally learning to stand straight again.

The Escape: The Tour, the Cyclist and Me
Pippa York and David Walsh (Mudlark)
In a previous life Robert Millar was one of this country’s greatest cyclists: a stern Glaswegian who won the King of the Mountains jersey at the 1984 Tour de France. Now known as Pippa York, she returns to the race in the company of the journalist David Walsh. It’s a freewheeling, fascinating read that defies genre: part travelogue and part memoir, it dances between present and past, sporting observation and self-reflection, drugs that help you cheat and drugs that help you live. And for all the pain and anguish that gets unlocked here, this is a book without a bitter or hateful bone in its body.

• Retired rider to work closely with head of sport Brailsford

• ‘This team has been my home since day one,’ says Thomas

Geraint Thomas has been appointed as the new director of racing at Ineos Grenadiers, a few weeks after retiring from competition at this year’s Tour of Britain. “This team has been my home since day one, and stepping into this role feels like a natural next step,” Thomas said.

The move by Thomas, who won the Tour de France in 2018, has been long-expected and comes after a major management reshuffle at Ineos Grenadiers, under which the sports directors Zak Dempster and Oli Cookson moved to the revamped Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team.

• Premier Tech pulls out despite rebranding pledge

• Team’s participation in Vuelta was dogged by protests

The main sponsor of the Israel-Premier Tech (IPT) team of the four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome has pulled out of funding the team, despite a pledge to rebrand and distance itself from its Israeli identity. The Canadian company Premier Tech, in a statement issued on Friday, said that it had decided to “step down as co-title sponsor of the team, taking effect immediately”.

“Although we took notice of the team’s decision to change its name for the 2026 season,” the statement said, “the core reason for Premier Tech to sponsor the team has been overshadowed to a point where it has become untenable for us to continue as a sponsor.”

• Tarling delivers a masterclass in the points race

• Charlton emulates Wiggins with individual pursuit title

Great Britain secured their first gold medals at Track World Championships in Chile as Josh Charlton claimed his first world title with victory in the individual pursuit and Josh Tarling stormed to victory the men’s points race.

Tarling delivered a points race masterclass to land gold before Charlton picked up his first rainbow jersey in the individual pursuit – Britain’s first gold in the men’s event since Bradley Wiggins in 2008. Joe Truman claimed bronze in the men’s kilo.

• Men’s race starts in Barcelona on 4 July

• Women’s race starts in Lausanne on 1 August

The routes of the 2026 men’s and women’s Tours de France, revealed in Paris on Thursday morning, will climax on two of the most famous climbs in world cycling, Alpe d’Huez and Mont Ventoux.

The mountains will host key stages, with the Ventoux featuring in the Tour de France Femmes for the first time and a double stage finish to the ski station at Alpe d’Huez providing the pivotal moment in the 113th running of the men’s race.

A fifth successive Il Lombardia triumph completed another dominant season for the Slovenian, while on the women’s tour Pauline Ferrand-Prévot divided opinion

Tadej Pogacar’s command of world cycling now seems limitless. The Slovenian ended 2025 as he began it, dominating a coveted Italian classic, Il Lombardia, to win the “race of the falling leaves” for the fifth time straight.

The 27-year-old had started his European season by winning the Tuscan gravel race, Strade Bianche. He closed it having matched Italian icon Fausto Coppi’s record of five Lombardy wins and Eddy Merckx’s achievement of winning three “monument” races, the Tour de France and the world road race title in the same year.

• Derek Gee: ‘Decision weighed heavily on conscience’

• Team says case will go before arbitral board of UCI

Canadian cyclist Derek Gee says he is facing a damages claim of €30m from his former team Israel-Premier Tech after ending his contract over what he described as “personal beliefs”.

The 28-year-old finished fourth overall at this year’s Giro d’Italia, but left Israel-Premier Tech shortly before September’s Vuelta a España, a race which was subject to pro-Palestinian protests linked to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.