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Cause of that handbags-at-dawn 'fight' with Barredo?

Rui Costa and Carlos Barredo fighting at the end of a Tour stage in 2010

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Only the best of the best get to wear the Rainbow Stripes. Plus, every few years, guys like Romāns Vainšteins 🇱🇻 and others we've long since forgotten or prefer not to remember. Someone should actually produce a listicle of the least worthy wearers of the rainbow jumper.

Romāns Vainšteins in his rainbow jersey and a bandana and his Vini Caldirola kit, riding the Giro di Lombardia in 2000.

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Re the Man City case and potential punishment. I really do hope that football learns from cycling that taking away victories is, ultimately, pretty pointless. Yes, it may have been the only way for cycling to punish a rider. But punishing a team? It's not the only way.

Now that the charges have been proved, the issue of sanction will be addressed separately in a further hearing with the independent Commission. In accordance with Premier League rules, that hearing will remain private and confidential until such a time as publication of the outcome is permitted.

Ok FWW peeps. Not a war buff in general, but this is going for a fiver. Should I? Described as a "walking, cycling and driving guide to the principal British battles of 1915 on the Western Front".

The Battles of French Flanders, by Jon Cooksey and Jerry Murland

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Not good Tour prep, by any standard. But still he made the Tour. He crashed a couple times, without crocking any bones. Made it through the Alps. Began to dream of breaking away maybe on the road to Bordeaux. Only to throw a wobbly in the Pyrénées + quit, blaming a broken pump + mean foreigners.

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Holland had only just turned pro a couple months before the Tour, in May. In his first pro outing, the Wembley Six at the Empire Pool (today's Ovo), he crocked his collar bone. While recovering from that, he went for a walk in the woods, tripped, fell, and crocked his collarbone again.

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On June 30, 1937, Charlie Holland - Tom Holland's great uncle but I'm not telling you which Tom Holland - took the line at the Tour de France thinking he and Bill Burl were the first Brits to do so.

Josephine Baker offers her flowers to the Tour’s first British entrants, Bill Burl and Charles Holland (with the 65 bike number)

Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 28/09/2026

I know that what's happening in Drumcree is no laughing matter but you have to admire the ability to turn everything into a seisiún #SpeirGorm

Protesters on the Gervaghy Road sitting in camp chairs.

Protesters on the Gervaghy Road with a guitar, fiddle and bodhrán

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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 16/09/2026

"It's chocolate Santas, sir! Hundreds of them!" Kinder? This is cruel!

Kinder cholotate Christmas Santas in Tesco. Stacked four shelves high.

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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 06/08/2026

The Amaury family didn't get round to copyrighting Le Tour until ... I want to say the 1990s, either that or a few years before. Google, say, 'Tour de France' and 'sailing' and you'll find Tour de France is clearly not copyrighted by Le Tour. You could organise a Tour de France if you wanted to.

Google results for 'Tour de France' and 'sailing' showing the Tour de France à la voile

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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 28/07/2026

The Critérium des As was a fun, end of season day out, a crit in the modern sense. One thing unusual about it was that it was a paced race, the riders behind tandems. Thus the reversed forks in the above pics. They allowed the riders to get closer to their pacers.

The riders on the Longchamp circuit for the 1927 Circuit des As, tandems pacing them

The riders picked up their tandems after the start.

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Finally (I think), I told you that no one ever said the Tour is won on the Télégraphe, but it was once lost on it. That happened in 1935 when defending champion Antonin Magne got taken out by one of L'Auto's cars on the climb in the 1935 Tour and had to abandon the race. Plus ça change...

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But! Be warned! You have to care about the right Col du Télégraphe. With the Chappe network having been as big as it was, there's a few of them.

Cycling history, eh? It really is a load of nonsense. Which is why the Col du Télégraphe and its (real or imagined) links to Terry Pratchett's Clacks towers is worth caring about, even if it isn't all that important as a climb.

To get back to ASO's duff history: it's a few years since I looked at the Guide Historique - do they even produce that as a downloadable PDF any more - but this is from the last version I have. It's only missing the Cols appearances in 2017 and 2022..

1911: E. Georget –
1912:Christophe -
1913: M. Buysse -
1921: Heusghem -
1922: E. Masson -
1924: Aimo -
1926: Parmentier -
1928: Van de Casteele
1933: Trueba
1934: Ezquerra -
1935: Camusso
1936: R. Maes
1937: -Gallien
1939: Vietto
1947: Camellini –
1948: Bartali -
1952: Le Guilly-
1954: Dotto
1955: Gaul-
1957: Nencini –
1964: Bahamontes
1966: J. Jimenez ---
1967: J. Jimenez
1969: Galera -
1972: Campagnari -
1974: Van Springel -
1975: Balague
1979: Battaglin -
1980: De Muynck -
1989: Vona -
1993: Claveyrolat -
1998: Massi -
1999: Arrieta
2003: Fedrigo
2005: Botero –
2007: Astarioza
2011: G. Izagirre. --

The story of the Col du Télégraphe post 1947 isn't all that much. It's been climbed, it's been descended, it's been there. There's not much else to say about it. A bit like Brentford FC, really.

This makes for a slightly longer climb than in the Tour's Heroic Age. And for a much duller Col du Télégraphe with nothing much to distinguish it

Rather than digging the tunnel out - the Germans really did a good job destroying it - a new road was pushed through, taking the road around to close to the entrance to Fort du Télégraphe and the site of the original Chappe tower that gave the Col its name.

If you go onto Google Maps and fiddle about a bit, you can see traces of the collapsed tunnel, just past the refuge seen in the earlier photos. www.google.com/maps/place/C...

For its final two appearances, in 1938 and 1939, the Col du Télégraphe was again part of the long descent off the Galibier. This pic is from 1937, its final appearance as a climb.

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But. While the Télégraphe appeared in every Tour between 1911 and 1939, for the most part it was as a descent, rather than a climb.

It's that tunnel that was the Col du Télégraphe for the riders of the Tour de France from its introduction in the 1911 Tour - when Henri Desgrnage rediscovered the Alps having the previous year discovered the Pyrénées - until 1947. This is the 1912 Tour.

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You can see the other side of the tunnel in this image

In the 1860s or so, a new road was developed connecting Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne and Valloire and in 1871 a tunnel was pushed through the mountain.

The network passed through the area around Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne and Valloire, which the Col du Télégraphe sits between. The tower that sat high above the town of Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne gave the Col its name: the Col du Télégraphe.

Over the years, a network of them spread across France