On Tuesday, it was announced that Barcelona will host the start of the 2026 Tour de France, meaning that four out of the last five Tours will not start in France - Copenhagen 2022, Bilbao 2023, Florence 2024, Barcelona 2026.
When you tell people that the Tour de France begins in Italy this year, it flummoxes them. Surely, this French totem, as French as strings of onions and a Gauloise with a terrible coffee, is always in France? But no. Foreign Grands Départs are nothing new, happening as long ago as 1965 - West Germany, for your information - and have now become a regular thing, rather than something special.
