Key events<\/p>\n
123km to go: The leaders are now heading up the second climb of the day, the category three C\u00f4te de Lajoux.<\/p>\n
Share<\/a><\/p>\n 129km to go: Puck Pieterse was first over the Col de la Faucille, bagging 10 points, ahead of Nikola Noskova. The peloton is nearly 1km ahead of the group containing the current race leader, Lorena Wiebes.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n 132km remaining: Dina Boels has abandoned. The Belgian was 139th and last after yesterday\u2019s second stage, and only just crossed the finish line inside the time limit.<\/p>\n And now an email! From Jez Smith, who was in Geneva for the start of today\u2019s stage. \u201cThanks for the updates from the Tour today. I went with my family to the start area in Geneva. There was presentations of the teams and long queues for the chance to win publicity caravan merchandise. We went to the Rolex Bridge about 300m from tbe start to watch the Femmes as they set off. A great spectacle.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s a pic of my two-year-old Australian Shepherd, Shadow, taking in the Tour with the impressive Swiss broadcaster tower in the background.\u201d<\/p>\n And what a view Shadow had!<\/p>\n Jez Smith’s two-year-old Australian shepherd, Shadow, watches the start of the third stage of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes. Photograph: Jez Smith\/The GuardianShare<\/a><\/p>\n 133km remaining: The peak of the Col de la Faucille approaches!<\/p>\n Anyway, moving on from pipes, Jura\u2019s top industries include the unexpected entries bar turning, which is not some kind of pub crawl but a mechanical manufacturing process that removes material from a rotating object using automatic lathes to create parts with specific shapes, and \u201cluxury goods subcontracting\u201d, which so far as I can does not involve actually doing anything industrious at all, but rather telling other people to do it.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n 136km remaining: Some 11 riders have been dropped from the peloton, two-thirds of the way up the Col de la Faucille. They include St Michel\u2019s Alison Jackson, and Amalie Dideriksen of Cofidis and Britain\u2019s Pfeiffer Georgi of Picnic.<\/p>\n Photograph: Alex Broadway\/Getty ImagesShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.34 EDT<\/p>\n 138km remaining: There has, apparently, been a small and non-serious crash. I meanwhile am still, mentally at least, in Saint-Claude where it turns out there is a Musee Pipe et Diamant, a joint museum created by the Association of Diamond Dealers from Haut-Jura and the Brotherhood of Master Pipe Makers from Saint-Claude. Two unlikely bedfellows, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll agree. The Confr\u00e9rie des Ma\u00eetres Pipiers de Saint-Claude, to give them their full and proper title, confers the highly-regarded Premier Fumeur de pipe de l\u2019ann\u00e9e award on the person who has done most to improve the lot of pipe smokers. It appears that they quite often announce that there is \u201cpas de premier fumeur\u201d in any given year, which I suppose is a good thing. The Confr\u00e9rie was created in 1966 by Edgar Faure, whose first decision was to name himself the premier Premier Fumeur du pipe. The last winner, after nine years without one, was the writer Daniel Pennac in 2025.<\/p>\n Incidentally the British Pipesmokers\u2019 Council ran a similar Pipeman of the Year award between 1964 and 2004, when they gave up due to a lack of outstanding pipemen. Previous winners include Jimmy Greaves, Ian Botham, Rod Hull, Harold Wilson and Warren Mitchell, who reportedly rejected the award \u201csaying it was silly, that he smoked a pipe, but also used a lavatory brush so he might just as well be Lavatory Brush Man of the Year\u201d.<\/p>\n That, I think, is enough about pipes.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.27 EDT<\/p>\n 143km remaining: Today\u2019s stage largely takes place in the Jura region. While the list of specialities of the Jura, according to the Tour\u2019s website, starts with \u201cComte cheese, Morbier cheese, Vache Qui Rit cheese\u201d there\u2019s a lot more to the place than that. It is home to Saint-Claude, \u201cthe world capital of pipe making\u201d and site of a bloody enormous pipe should you ever want to be photographed next to such a thing, which can be found outside the town\u2019s museum.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.11 EDT<\/p>\n 147km remaining: They\u2019ve already started up the Col de la Faucille, today\u2019s category one climb. The first part of today\u2019s stage is a) perhaps the most interesting bit, apart from the flat and speedy approach to Poligny, and also b) not being televised. Only Wednesday\u2019s fifth stage and Sunday\u2019s concluding ninth are being televised in full.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n The stage began a few minutes ago. The first interesting place today\u2019s route passes is Cessy, the small town (population just under 6,000) under which the Large Hadron collider runs. It\u2019s Cessy and it knows it, etc.<\/p>\n Not long before Cessy, and just before the French-Swiss border, is the fabulously-named Bossy. Bossy is part of the Collex-Bossy municipality and traditionally listed as such, but I for one would be a supporter of independence.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Before today\u2019s stage heats up, catch up with what happened yesterday through the medium of Jeremy Whittle\u2019s report:<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Preamble<\/p>\n Hello world! Today, then, the second-longest stage of this year\u2019s tour at 156.5km, and the first in the hills, with four categorised climbs and about 2,500m of elevation gain, with the steepest, longest and hardest section coming in the first 25km. By way of bonus the forecast is both hot (33-35C) and with a chance of rain, particularly in those tough early stages heading north out of Geneva.<\/p>\n The day ends in Poligny, and if the name of that town rings a bell that\u2019s probably (well, there\u2019s a slight chance that it\u2019s) because you read about it in April, when it featured in the Guardian\u2019s list of fun and fabulous reasons to visit France this year. Nothing to do with cycling \u2013 our reasoning was entirely cheese-related, Poligny being home to La Maison du Comt\u00e9<\/a>: not just somewhere to learn about a marvellous cheese, but also one of the finalists for the 10th French National Wood Construction Award in 2021!<\/p>\n (It didn\u2019t win, because the Halle des Fenottes in Ancy-Dornot<\/a>, despite basically just being a glorified roof on legs, was better. It is, to be fair, a fabulous roof)<\/p>\n Important fact: the average wheel of Comte, at 75cm in diameter, is 128mm, or about 1.2 times, bigger than the average wheel of a road race bicycle. According to Cycling<\/a> Weekly \u201cmost wheel brands these days can hit 1,300g or lower in a 50mm-deep wheelset\u201d, which makes the average single wheel of Comte 30.8 times heavier. You would, to summarise, not want to cycle up a mountain using wheels of Comte.<\/p>\n