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Editor’s Letter

Why the Tour de France is a unique and all-encompassing event

After all, writes Lawrence Ostlere, where else can you get inches from the athletes’ grimacing faces?

Tuesday 08 September 2020 00:05 BST
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Tadej Pogacar claims the ninth stage of the Tour de France on 6 September
Tadej Pogacar claims the ninth stage of the Tour de France on 6 September

As a sports writer, the best way to make the words flow is to immerse yourself in the action. When you spend several days living and breathing a sport or a team or an event, it can almost feel like the keys on your laptop press themselves; the sentences are already formed in your mind and the article is absorbed by the screen in front of you like ink on a page.

At the Tour de France there’s more opportunity than most events to get close to the action. After all, where else can you get inches from the athletes’ grimacing faces, standing in the midst of their arena as they ride?  

In many ways the Tour is a unique experience. You drive to the start, where fans and officials and riders all buzz around. There you speak to other journalists or a team director, or simply observe something worth writing later. Then you head to the media centre at the finish to hole up and watch the race, perhaps via a stop along the way to watch the peloton go by.  

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