Though he has come back from a forced lay-off due to a bone fracture, before falling ill at his comeback race, the 25-year-old feels like he is in good condition to push for stage glory again.<\/p>\n
The biggest issue has been the unrelenting heat.<\/p>\n
Temperatures for the last 10 days have ranged between 35-47 degrees. Organisers advised fans not to travel to the third stage over safety fears, while Sunday\u2019s stage 9 was shortened by 30km due to a forecasted afternoon peak temperature that was set to exceed 41 degrees.<\/p>\n
Healy lies 105th in the GC, but admits his struggles in the heat have affected him on the saddle, despite extensive preparation with hot baths, sauna sessions, hot rides on the turbo trainer and a couple of weeks training in high temperatures coming into the race.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m managing okay and optimistic for the rest of the Tour,” he told RT\u00c9\u2019s Inside Sport on Monday\u2019s rest day.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m definitely riding better that I ever have in the heat. It\u2019s so hot and intense, you can\u2019t be missing any sort of percentage.”<\/p>\n
![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0022e175-614.jpg\"\/)
\nHealy in the famed maillot jaune in 2025<\/p>\n
Healy, who last year became the first Irishman to don the Tour\u2019s fabled yellow jersey since Stephen Roche back in 1987, says there has been greater scrutiny on him following his exploits 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
“100%. After everything that happened last year, there was a lot of expectation,” he said. “I just want to take it day-by-day and that\u2019s what I have been doing.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve been enjoying the moments I can and getting stuck in as well.<\/p>\n
“This first week has been pretty quiet, not too many opportunities for me. People have been asking ‘where\u2019s Ben? What\u2019s he doing?<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m going to show up at some point. I\u2019m sure my day is coming.”<\/p>\n
Healy\u2019s optimism is borne out of two factors. Firstly, a slight drop in temperature is expected, but the scheduling is another.<\/p>\n
On Friday and Saturday, category one climb Ballon d\u2019Alsace features, with Friday\u2019s stage slated to be the only one north of 200km, a largely flat day\u2019s cycling before two late climbs, while the following day contains four big climbs in the Vosges mountains.<\/p>\n
Sunday sees a summit finish on the Plateau de Solaison, and Healy is optimistic he can challenge on the medium mountain stages that suit his skillset.<\/p>\n
“Even just a five degree difference can make a difference for me,” he said. “I\u2019m in the right place to perform. There are some really good stages for me coming up. I\u2019m going to be there for sure.<\/p>\n
“The body in the right place to fight for a stage win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the serious highs in last year’s Tour de France for Ireland’s Ben Healy \u2013 including two days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-800816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}