Fans have been asked not to gather along the final section of stage 3 of the Tour de France today due to major wildfires in the Pyrenees-Orientales by the race organisers ASO.Stage 3 runs from Granollers, Spain, outside Barcelona, where the race began. It then heads to the Pyrenees before crossing into France and ending in Les Angles.Yet forest fires raging in southwest France, some 60km (37 miles) from the finish line, have prompted ASO to make changes to the stage.Changes to stage 3 The stage 3 route will remain unchanged for riders and essential vehicles Tour de France While the race route will remain unchanged, the public has been banned from attending the stage and the race caravan will not drive along the last 40km. The event willbe limited to the passage of the riders and essential vehicles.These measures aim to limit the mobilization of public resources to what is strictly necessary, so that they can be prioritized for rescue and firefighting operations, ASO said in a statement released last night (Sunday 5 July).The frontline of the fire stretches for 18km with roughly 750 firefighters, 200 vehicles, nine water-bombing helicopters and other aircraft working to contain the blaze, according to Reuters.Extreme heat has spread across Europe, with wildfires breaking out in France and Spain, which has led to safety concerns around the Tour de France.Ahead of the Grand Depart, race director Christian Prudhomme said the organisers were taking extra measures to protect the riders and fans with temperatures set to hit 40C along the route.Highly changeable conditionsASO said the conditions today along stage 3 remain highly changeable and further adjustments could be made.The Prefect of the Pyrnes-Orientales and the Director of the Tour de France salute all those involved (firefighters, internal security forces, staff from government agencies, local authorities, accredited civil protection associations, and all other responders) who have been working tirelessly to combat this fire.They express their full solidarity with the communities affected by this event and thank both residents and visitors for their understanding and civic-mindedness in the face of the exceptional measures made necessary by the situation, ASO said. More on the 2026 Tour de France We weighed Tadej Pogaars 2026 Tour de France bike and its heavier than you might think Jonas Vingegaards Cervlo S5 for the 2026 Tour de France is bang on the UCIs 6.8kg weight limit Can the Tour de France ever be Pogaar-proof? The race organisers face a near-impossible task From a rare team time trial to a brutal Alpe dHuez finale: 8 questions answered about the 2026 Tour de France route These 2 Tour de France rule changes could reshape the 2026 race Cycling just got weirder Netcompany-Ineos adopt peculiar tactic for Tour de France team time trial Live Tour de France coverage to be broadcast on S4C and BBC iPlayer

After the most extraordinary couple of hours of blokes kicking a pig's bladder about, Callum is grateful to his bosses for their forgiveness in allowing today's live blog to get underway a little later than usual, and that Mexico only had one major sporting victory to celebrate yesterday...

The 2026 Tour de France will not be decided by the events that have taken place in Barcelona, but in the two stages that finished at the city's Olympic park, the two main teams have dealt psychological blows to each other. After stage 2 however, UAE Team Emirates - XRG had the last laugh and Tadej P...

Paul Seixas started the Tour de France with high ambitions, and they could've ended on stage two. The Frenchman had a highly dramatic pursuit of the peloton through the streets of Barcelona, having a badly-timed puncture, a near-crash with an organization car radio issues; before having to battle it...

Tune in to almost any stage of the Tour de France and youll see a few riders put in a huge effort from the start to get ahead of the main group of riders, the peloton, and form a breakaway.On flatter stages, its often around five riders who form a breakaway group. Their lead typically increases to around five minutes, although some extend to more than 10 minutes.Breakaways may form at any point in a stage. Some get gobbled up quickly by the peloton, others splinter mid-race, while yet others get within a few kilometres of the finish before being caught after hours of effort, in some agonising cases just a few hundred metres from the line.The peloton has an advantage over the breakaway, because each breakaway rider has to put in greater effort to keep up the pace. The bunch is more aerodynamically efficient and there are more riders to share the increased effort at the front thats needed to overcome air resistance.Chapettes Law Chapettes Law predicts that the peloton will gain one minute on a breakaway for every 10km ridden. A.S.O./Charly Lpez The advantage the peloton has over the breakaway is so consistent that, based on experience, theres a rule called Chapettes Law that states that once the peloton is riding at full effort, it will gain a minute on a breakaway for every 10km ridden. This is why breakaways are often held at a fairly consistent advantage by the peloton and begin to be reeled in later in the race.The chances of a breakaway staying ahead have been found to be highest on hillier stages, where the efficiency gained from the pelotons lower air resistance is less and riders power-to-weight ratios become more significant. In a flatter sprint stage, the chances of a breakaway succeeding are calculated at around 2%. Hillier stages have been found to favour a successful breakaway. A.S.O./Charly Lpez Since they have to compete against their fellow breakaway riders plus the peloton, the odds are stacked against an individual rider winning from the breakaway and, over multiple grand tours, found to stand at around the same 2% value.So why would a rider join a breakaway? A breakaway provides riders and their team sponsors with media coverage. A.S.O./Billy Ceusters Its a question that occupies academics as well as cycling teams, with a significant body of research published in learned journals that draws on game theory and economics as well as physics to analyse the break.There are more mundane reasons, too. Its often riders from weaker teams who form the breakaway, including those from 'wildcard' teams that are not part of the WorldTour and are invited to the race by its organisers.For them, its an opportunity for the team to gain media coverage and satisfy its sponsors. For a rider, its a chance to stand out and maybe earn a more lucrative contract. A stage win at the Tour carries much kudos and can be career-changing. The odds of winning an intermediate climb or an intermediate sprint are much higher for a rider in a breakaway. A.S.O./Billy Ceusters A rider in a breakaway also stands a higher chance of winning an intermediate sprint or climb, for which theres a small financial benefit. This ranges up to 1,500 for an intermediate sprint and 800 for a climb, depending on the climbs categorisation, while an overall stage win is worth 11,000 with lower value prizes for the top 20 finishers. Read more: Tour de France prize money: how much did Tadej Pogaar win in 2025?Breakaway composition is important, too. Riders need to be strong enough to contribute and willing to do so, which is where game theory comes in. A rider or riders who don't contribute may cause a breakaway to splinter or collapse and return to the peloton, as other breakaway riders get fed up with pulling them along. They also lower the breaks overall chance of success, because their companions have to put in more effort.A rider who is too highly placed in the overall general classification is also a threat, because other contenders for the overall victory wont want them to gain an advantage. Youll sometimes see other riders refuse to work with them if they do get up the road.Riders targeting a breakaway may deliberately lose time earlier in the race, so theyre less likely to be chased down by the peloton.Tactics take over After a 174km two-man breakaway on Stage 9 of the 2025 Tour de France, Mathieu van der Poel was caught only 700m from the line. A.S.O./Charly Lpez One reason breakaways get caught in sight of the line is the tendency for riders in the break to start sizing each other up and playing tactical games in the last few kilometres.No-one wants to pull a stronger rider to the finish, only for them to sprint past and take the win. The strongest finisher will usually try to position themselves at the rear of the breakaway, where theyll conserve energy and can more easily surprise their companions when they do launch their final assault on the line.So breakaways often slow down in the last few kilometres, which puts them at greater risk of being caught by the peloton, which in turn will speed up as teams jostle to position themselves for a sprint finish.The likelihood of a rider winning from a breakaway group is still greater than from the peloton, where stage wins are typically split between the general classification riders, sprinters and a small group of powerful riders who can take the win on trickier stages.So there are incentives both for a rider and for their team that continue to tempt them to play the odds and go up the road. It makes great television too. More on the 2026 Tour de France We weighed Tadej Pogaars 2026 Tour de France bike and its heavier than you might think Jonas Vingegaards Cervlo S5 for the 2026 Tour de France is bang on the UCIs 6.8kg weight limit Can the Tour de France ever be Pogaar-proof? The race organisers face a near-impossible task From a rare team time trial to a brutal Alpe dHuez finale: 8 questions answered about the 2026 Tour de France route These 2 Tour de France rule changes could reshape the 2026 race Cycling just got weirder Netcompany-Ineos adopt peculiar tactic for Tour de France team time trial Live Tour de France coverage to be broadcast on S4C and BBC iPlayer

At 07:00 (CET) last Saturday morning, Mark Kowalski cycled across the border from Bulgaria into Greece, came to a stop, pulled out his phone and dialled his fiance. He had news. With that final border crossing, the London-based Canadian ultracyclist and bikepacker had just broken a bike-riding world record. Kowalskis tracker showed that he had just cycled exactly 2798.59km. But the record hed just stamped his name on had nothing directly to do with distance. Since setting off at 09:00 (CET) on the previous Saturday, from a border town in The Netherlands, Kowalski had pedalled through 21 different countries in seven days, beating the previous tally of 20 nations.In the end, the 40-year-old finished his race against the clock with two hours to spare. But for the entirety of the previous seven days he had been living on his nerves. The whole trip was super stressful, Kowalski tells me. Before starting, I was 65% sure I could do it. But I had enough doubt that I didnt tell anyone about it until just before I left. Even towards the end, I was never completely confident. Never at any point did I think it was a shoo-in. My strength isnt speed, he admits. Im slow and steady. The first day I rode for 12 hours, and the last day I had no sleep at all and rode for 24 hours. But my usual pattern was to get up at 2am and ride for 19 hours, with about 1 hours pause time built into that.(Image credit: Myrna Macgregor)A three-time veteran of the 4000km Transcontinental Race, Kowalski is no newcomer to enormous self-supported cycling challenges, but this was a bit different to anything hed done before. Chasing the erstwhile record, he had a dot on his tracker, showing where he need to be. That red dot never slept, he tells me on the phone from Greece, with fatigue still evident in his voice. Id go to sleep ahead of it and then wake up and have to chase it. At the beginning it was very stressful. I was riding through a heatwave. I called my partner on the second day, really doubting myself. It wasnt until around day four that I came out of the doldrums and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.From Vaal which is conveniently positioned on the border with the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, enabling him to tick three countries quickly off the list Kowalski went south, passing through Luxembourg, France and Switzerland. Tracing Lake Constance, he crossed into Austria, collected Liechtenstein then went east through the Tirol. After darting south from Innsbruck into northern Italy, he steered northeast to visit the Czech Republic, then dropped south through Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro doing a quick out-and-back to touch his tyres on Albanian soil and then continuing east to North Macedonia, Bulgaria and finally into Greece.Kowalski's route (Image credit: Mark Kowalski)My partner asked me to give the Transcontinental a break, and so I came up with this idea instead, he tells me. But when I first started researching it, I thought the record was 19 countries. Id had worked out that I could do 20, or 21 at a real push. Then I discovered that the record was actually 20, set by Craig Nilsson in 2025. That was a blow! I was designing my own route, and then I looked at Craigs, and it was so obviously the best one. I did try and vary it, but when I did I mostly went wrong. Like when I ran into a fence trying to reach a bike trail along the Danube, and had to backtrack. I hit a stretch of gravel and it felt wrong. I was riding alongside this fence thinking Im just going further and further in the wrong direction here. In the end I only lost about 20 minutes.A Green Party councillor in London, Kowalski used his ride to raise money for Action for Refugees in Lewisham. Confined to the capital, for the most part, he prepared for his expedition by doing endless 6-hour indoor training sessions, and working on a nutrition plan that meant he could stomach taking on 100g of carbs per hour. Wine gums and mints are great, he confides. Mentos are basically 100% carbs!During his odyssey, he was riding a Reilly Titanium Reflex gravel bike. Its got aero bars and a massive dish on the back for the hills, he says. But really it was built for comfort, and I had Redshift suspension seatpost, which really helps with back pain. I put a whole new drive chain on it, but it kept slipping. I just kept going I wasnt going to take it to a repair shop to wait hours, only to be told they couldnt fix it. Fully loaded, he estimates the bike weighed about 20kg. I carried some spare clothing, an emergency sleeping system a bivvy and blow-up mattress, which I used once. I carried tools I was probably over prepared in that sense. Slippage aside, he got away likely with technical issues, and only suffered two punctures during the entire trip, while running Continental GP5000 32mm tyres. Does he worry about Nilsson coming back to reclaim his record something hes already done once? Not really, he tells me. To reach another country, youd have to ride another 300km. To do that youd need to be Victor Bosoni [the young French rider currently winning events like the Traka].

Good morning and welcome to the liveblog of the Tour de France. Today, the peloton says goodbye to Spain and crosses into France. A gruelling day awaits in the Pyrenees, with the riders set to tackle one tough day on the bike.Everything is set, and all that's missing is you. Join us and don't miss...