Chasing the story

The Tour de France is a different beast from what it was a few decades ago, and not just for the riders. Reporting from the race has changed hugely over the years as well, as one veteran journalist reveals

- Words Jeremy Whittle Photography Pete Goding

Organised chaos and hot stress. That's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Tour de France. Then I worry if I will have enough shirts to last over four weeks on the road covering first the three-week men's race and then the ten-day Tour de France Femmes.

For anyone who works in professional cycling, the Tour is almost certainly the most lucrative - and most stressful - job of the year. It's also unmissable, a mobile trade fair for the riders, the sponsors, the teams, the media and everyone on the scene - right down to the VIP guest car drivers, most of whom are ex-pros.

It is everything they say it is. The Tour is indeed, inimitably, the Tour. It is overblown, filthy, hot, chaotic, grandiose, pompous, flash, infuriating and - every now and then - wild, breathtaking and spectacular.

There are always major stories, sometimes connected to the racing, sometimes not. There are always moments when you hit a Tour 'sweet spot', when a story flows onto the page, when a soundbite - 'Are you calling me a liar?' or 'Spitting is a French cultural thing' or 'I'm gone, I'm dead' - goes viral. There is door-slamming, bidon-throwing, urine-tossing, fisticuffs and rudeness, and as the long days rob you of much-needed sleep, frayed tempers finally reach their volcanic limit, invariably resulting in terrible, cringeworthy scenes that everyone regrets afterwards.

But there are also the unexpected little epiphanies: a dinner table of colleagues swapping stories outside a late-night pizzeria, a sunset beer and barbecue at Hautacam, a bleary-eyed coffee at sunrise on Alpe d'Huez, seafood and ice-cold rose wine on the beach at Arcachon after a twilight swim...