Fourteen years ago, Josh Tarling stood with his family on the Champs-Élysées in Paris for the final day of the Tour de France. He was eight years old at the time, already an avid cyclist himself, watching on in awe as the yellow jersey wearer Bradley Wiggins led out his team-mate Mark Cavendish for the stage victory.
That race finale has since gone down in British cycling legend. For Tarling, it’s his earliest memory of the Tour – a race that, as of this month, the Netcompany-Ineos rider is now part of. His debut, however, has not been smooth sailing.
Three weeks before the race opened in Barcelona, the 22-year-old crashed at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, suffering a broken collarbone that threatened to derail his Tour plans. That injury is now mended, thanks to a surgeon in Germany, but there’s a pain that’s still lingering: he’s riding with a cracked rib.
“I had a rough start, but it’s coming,” Tarling told Cycling Weekly of his form ahead of the first rest day. “You just have like a rev limiter, you know? I get to the point where I get out of breath, and then I can’t get it back.”
The heat hasn’t helped, either. This year’s edition of the Tour looks set to be one of the hottest on record, with temperatures already exceeding 40°C in the opening week. They’re conditions that are attritional enough, even for those with all their ribs intact.
“It hurts when I breathe anyway,” Tarling said. “With the heat as well, obviously you’re breathing harder and the pain’s catching up. It just feels airless.”
On stage one, the former European time trial champion helped Netcompany-Ineos to second place in the team time trial – just eight seconds off the victory. He has since spent the remaining days within the peloton or the gruppetto, saving his energy perhaps for stage 16’s individual test against the clock.
How has he found his Tour experience so far? “I’ve never been in a race where there’s constant crowds,” Tarling said. “Here it’s just all day crowds. It’s crazy.”
Fourteen years ago, the Welshman would have been at the roadside with them.
It’s credit to his resolve that he’s riding through his discomfort, even finding the joy in it, determined to live out the Tour dream of his eight-year-old self.
“He’s a tough cookie for sure,” his father, Michael, posted on Instagram before the start of the race.
His mother, Dawn, shared the same sense of pride. “If anyone had any doubt about the sheer grit and determination needed to be a pro cyclist this is it,” she said, commending her son’s three-week crash comeback.
“This young man has given us so many reasons to be proud on and off the bike but this is mind blowing.”
