{"id":829410,"date":"2026-07-27T15:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T15:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/829410\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T15:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T15:17:17","slug":"spain-italy-and-france-set-a-negative-record-in-the-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/829410\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain, Italy, and France Set a Negative Record in the Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

If we look back at the history of cycling, France, Spain, and Italy are undoubtedly among the top five cycling nations in the world. These countries have produced stars such as Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain, Fausto Coppi, Mario Cipollini, and Alejandro Valverde. In this year\u2019s Tour de France, however, the three countries have set a negative record never before seen in the race.<\/p>\n

France certainly didn\u2019t do badly at the Tour. Paul Seixas was the home country\u2019s big hope, and the 19-year-old prodigy from Decathlon CMA CGM just missed the podium. He finished fourth in the general classification<\/a> on his debut. Not far behind, Lenny Martinez<\/a> (Bahrain Victorious) surprised everyone with a fifth-place finish, while Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies) also finished tenth.Spanish cycling fans were especially focused on Juan Ayuso<\/a>. The Lidl-Trek climber was in contention for a podium finish for a long time, but lost too much time to his rivals in the third week<\/a>. He ultimately finished the Tour de France in seventh place. In addition, riders like Pablo Castrillo and Ra\u00fal Garc\u00eda Pierna (Movistar) provided excitement in the stages suited for attackers.Italy didn\u2019t have much of a say in the general classification. Davide Piganzoli (Visma | Lease a Bike) was brought in at the last minute as a domestique for Jonas Vingegaard, but was allowed to ride on his own after his team leader dropped out. This earned him a fifteenth-place finish. Filippo Ganna<\/a> (Netcompany INEOS) was the second-to-last rider to finish in the team time trial, but couldn\u2019t keep up with Remco Evenepoel in the individual time trial.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"filippo-ganna\"\/<\/p>\n

Ganna could not match Evenepoel in the individual time trial<\/p>\n

Spaniards, French, and Italians without a single stage win<\/p>\n

On paper, these weren\u2019t the worst performances among the three countries, but what was still missing? That\u2019s right\u2014a stage victory. Not a single Italian, Spaniard, or Frenchman managed to win a stage in this year\u2019s Tour de France. And that has never happened before in the entire history of the race. There has always been at least one rider from one of those three countries on the top step of the podium.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not uncommon for one of those countries to fail to win. Spain, for example, has been waiting for a new stage winner ever since Carlos Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s stage victory in 2023. Jonathan Milan ended a six-year drought for Italy last year when he won two sprints. The last Italian stage winner before the \u201cBear of Buja\u201d was Matteo Trentin, who struck on the way to Gap in 2019.<\/p>\n

For France, however, this marks a new low. Last year, Valentin Paret-Peintre barely managed to save the day with his victory on Mont Ventoux, but this year Martinez delivered the best French performance with a second-place finish on Alpe d’Huez<\/a>. They didn\u2019t manage to win. This is the first time this century that a Frenchman hasn\u2019t won. The last time that happened was in 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If we look back at the history of cycling, France, Spain, and Italy are undoubtedly among the top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,74722,42478,18782,82,262636],"class_list":["post-829410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-filippo-ganna","tag-juan-ayuso","tag-lenny-martinez","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829410","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=829410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}