"Mes que una Cursa": Barcelona unveil 2026 Tour de France start
Barcelona will host the start of the Tour de France in 2026 with three days of racing unveiled by organisers and local officials on Tuesday showing off the Catalan region at its best.
The world's greatest bike race will speed past the crowds of Spain's most vaunted avenue the Ramblas and take in some of Barcelona's architectural wonders such as Antoni Gaudi's modernist cathedral the Sagrada Família.
Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni said the city was honoured to welcome the July 4 'Grand Depart' after previously hosting the Olympics, men's World Cup and the America's Cup.
"Today we fulfil a dream, the dream of seeing the Grand Depart of the Tour de France become a reality, a dream that Barcelona has pursued for years," he told gathered press in Catalan.
The motto for the Catalan city's most famous football team is "More than a club" and the organisers latched onto this by calling their Grand Depart "Mes que una Cursa" ('More than a race').
A fierce struggle for the first yellow jersey will be decided in the form of a 19.7km team time-trial passing by the Olmypic port, the Sagrada Familia and ending at the Olympic stadium.
This type of challenge would on paper at least suit Jonas Vingegaard's Visma outfit, rather than defending champion Tadej Pogacar's Team UAE Emirates.
Stage two starts along the coast at Tarragona and runs back to the Barcelona Olympic stadium over 178km while stage three starts at Granollers and runs towards France to a finish which will be revealed in October with the rest of the 21 stage route.
Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme mentioned former Spanish cycling greats Miguel Indurain and Luis Ocana, and described Barcelona as a shining city.
He said he could hardly wait to "see the fervour of the fans as the race climbs the slopes of Montjuic," the mountain where Barcelona's 1992 Olympic stadium stands and which is now temporary home to Barcelona football club.
After Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023 and Florence in 2024 Barcelona's Mediterranean sea port provides the latest exotic backdrop for the globally broadcast extravaganza.
The whole cycling world will gather in and around the city several days ahead of the race with the cream of world cycling, fans and curious onlookers alike and a huge tourist boom arriving fast on the heels of the worldwide audiences that tune in to the 21-day race in 190 countries.
The remainder of the route will be unveiled in October and is likely to culminate July 28 on the Champs Elysees in Paris.
The 2025 Tour de France will be raced exclusively in France for the first time since the 2020 race as it starts in northern captal Lille.
jk/rbs-dmc/nr
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Romeo wins Dauphine stage three to take yellow jersey
Ivan Romeo's only previous professional win came on the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in February [Getty Images] Ivan Romeo rode solo to victory on stage three of the Criterium du Dauphine to claim the yellow leader's jersey. The Movistar rider made a couple of attacks before going clear of a group of 10 riders with about 6km left in the 202.8km route from Brioude. Advertisement Mathieu van der Poel led the chase group, but they had left it too late and Romeo crossed the line first in Charantonnay, near Lyon, some 14 seconds ahead of Harold Tejada, Louis Barre and Florian Lipowitz. That gave the the 21-year-old Spaniard his second senior professional win and meant he claimed the overall lead from Lidl-Trek's Jonathan Milan, who won stage two. "I don't believe it," said Romeo. "It was one of the toughest days of my life so far. "The breakaway, it was so hard to get into it, and I wasn't feeling really good, so I waited to the last moment. "I know in this kind of flat finish in a small break, I have good instinct, and that if they give me some seconds I can make it. Advertisement "I had this stage on my mind for a month. We've been doing altitude [training] at Sierra Nevada, working super hard with all the team, and they gave me this chance at the beginning of the week." Romeo was the under-23 time trial champion at last year's World Championships and Tuesday's success means he has a 17-second lead in the Dauphine's general classification standings heading into the time trial. Reigning Tour de France and Giro d'Italia champion Tadej Pogacar is just over a minute back in ninth and will aim to close the gap as the eight-stage race heads into the mountains on Friday. Stage three results Ivan Romeo (Spa/Movistar) 4hrs 34mins 10secs Harold Tejada (Col/XDS Astana) +14secs Louis Barre (Fra/Intermarche-Wanty) Same time Florian Lipowitz (Ger/Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) Mathieu van der Poel (Ned/Alpecin-Deceuninck) +27secs Axel Laurance (Fra/Ineos Grenadiers) Same time Brieuc Rolland (Fra/Groupama-FDJ) Julien Bernard (Fra/Lidl-Trek) Andreas Leknessund (Nor/Uno-X Mobility) Eddie Dunbar (Irl/Jayco-AlUla) General classification after stage three Ivan Romeo (Spa/Movistar) 14hrs 9mins 1sec Louis Barre (Fra/Intermarche-Wanty) +17secs Harold Tejada (Col/XDS Astana) +18secs Florian Lipowitz (Ger/Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) +24secs Mathieu van der Poel (Ned/Alpecin-Deceuninck) +29secs Eddie Dunbar (Irl/Jayco-AlUla) +37secs Brieuc Rolland (Fra/Groupama-FDJ) Same time Andreas Leknessund (Nor/Uno-X Mobility) Tadej Pogacar (Slo/UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +1min 6secs Fred Wright (GB/Bahrain Victorious) +1min 12secs Advertisement


USA Today
34 minutes ago
- USA Today
Who is Aaron Rodgers married to? Former Jets QB talks about it at Steelers camp
Who is Aaron Rodgers married to? Former Jets QB talks about it at Steelers camp Show Caption Hide Caption Greg Olsen expresses excitement for upcoming Olympic flag football Former TE Greg Olsen is excited for some NFL players to showcase their skills in the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympics and the debut of flag football. Sports Seriously Is Aaron Rodgers really married? It appears so, as the future Hall of Famer told reporters about it during Tuesday's interview session at Pittsburgh Steelers camp. Rodgers, who spent the past two seasons with the Jets, signed a one-year, $13.65 million contract with the Steelers and is participating in their mandatory minicamp. The 41-year-old quarterback told reporters that he's been married for a couple months now, and that he has been wearing a wedding ring. Here's a look at Rodgers' media session with reporters on Tuesday: Who is Aaron Rodgers' married to? Rodgers did not reveal more information to reporters on Tuesday, other than to say he's been married for a few months. Rodgers has mentioned having a girlfriend named Brittani during an appearance this past winter on "The Pat McAfee Show", though it's unclear if she is the person he married.


USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Travel bans, visa crackdowns and deportations: What to know as Trump bars the door
Travel bans, visa crackdowns and deportations: What to know as Trump bars the door Show Caption Hide Caption What we know now about President Trump's new travel ban taking effect How could President Trump's travel ban or restriction of nearly 20 countries impact you? Here is what we know now. WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump has launched a sweeping crackdown on legal entry into the U.S. through a revived travel ban, as his administration takes dramatic steps to block millions of people from taking up temporary or permanent residency. Trump's extensive effort to keep visitors from nearly two dozen countries out of the U.S. had led the administration to block most travel from places including Haiti and Somalia, revoke temporary protected immigration status for hundreds of thousands of people from nations trapped in conflict, clamp down on student visas − and all but cease refugee admissions. An unconventional approach melding immigration reforms and national security policy has resulted in the most dramatic restructuring of admissions policy in a generation, with the second Trump administration taking full advantage of a rare do-over in government. President Trump bans travel from 12 nations, partially restricts entry from seven others Trump expands first term policies to target new countries The Supreme Court in 2018 gave Trump permission to keep out foreign nationals whose presence the administration says would be detrimental to U.S. interests. Trump reinstituted and expanded a program last week that puts full or partial restrictions on travel to America from the citizens of 19 nations, with notable exceptions. Citizens of 12 countries were completely banned from entry beginning on June 9: Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Visitors from another nine countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, were hit with partial immigration and travel bans. More: LA, Olympic officials have 'every confidence' travel ban won't disrupt 2028 Games Athletes, relatives and coaches traveling for sporting events like the 2026 World Cup and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028 were exempted. So were immediate family members of some existing visa holders, Afghan nationals who were employed by the U.S. and ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran. Trump's administration also said Chinese students connected to China's communist party or studying in critical fields would no longer be welcome. And tried to stop international students from studying at Harvard. A leaked State Department cable also revealed the administration may require prospective international students at other universities to undergo social media vetting. The administration has also taken steps to deport pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Trump crackdown on legal entry draws less attention On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that slammed America's doors to new refugees, halting admissions from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq and other war-torn countries. Trump moved to end temporary protected status for roughly 350,000 Venezuelan nationals in February, and is not expected to renew TPS for an upcoming batch. His administration also declined to extend TPS for Afghans and rescinded an extension for 521,000 Haitians that had been approved by the Biden administration. Citizens of Cameroon, in West Africa, will lose the protections in June. Without an extension, Hondurans' TPS will expire in July. Supreme Court lets Trump revoke safe-haven program for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans The administration also ended humanitarian parole for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuela immigrants, making them eligible for deportation. Trump's claw-back of temporary protected status for citizens of countries experiencing conflict − a program run through the Department of Homeland Security that former President Joe Biden greatly expanded − also removes work authorizations and deportation protections. Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Trump is pursuing the "same sort of anti-legal immigration push" he pursued in his first term, the refugee program was substantially curtailed. "The areas that he has the clearest legal authority over are the ones that he is reducing," Nowrasteh said. While the number of refugees who come to America varies from year to year, 60,050 people were admitted in 2023, according to DHS. Trump's administration is only allowing refugees from one nation, white South Africans known as Afrikaners. He has repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that they are the victims of genocide. Stephen Miller, the president's Homeland Security adviser, told reporters in May, as he sought to justify the policy, that the U.S. refugee program has historically been used as a solution to global poverty and it should not be. "Wherever there's global poverty or wherever there is dysfunctional governments, then the U.S. refugee program comes in, swoops them up, relocates them to America, and you have multi-generational problems," Miller said. "The U.S. refugee program has been a catastrophic failure." Trump administration cites national security concerns The administration has cited broad national security concerns for many of its actions while refusing to go into detail on individual cases. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters during a May 29 briefing that seemingly disparate actions such as Trump's slashing of foreign aid, directives to universities and revisions to visas were all part of the administration's pledge to get serious about security. Bruce, who was being pressed to say how many Chinese students would be affected by new visa restrictions, stressed: "What the story is here is that the issue of being serious about safety for the country matters, and we're going to look at that at every single front." Trump's approach "perhaps has not been done before," Bruce said in the remarks, which preceded Trump's travel ban. An analysis of State Department data by the American Immigration Council, which opposes Trump's moves, found the policy could prevent 34,000 immigrant visas and more than 125,000 non-immigrant visas − typically for business and tourism − from being issued each year. The group's analysis of 2022 data found that 298,600 people from affected countries came to the United States. The countries included were identified by the Trump administration as nations "for which vetting and screening information is so deficient" to warrant a full or partial travel ban and those whose nationals "pose significant risks of overstaying their visas in the United States." Of the countries on Trump's list, Haiti had the most overstays in 2023, by far. Stephanie Gee, the senior director for U.S. Legal Services at the International Refugee Assistance Project, a group that has taken Trump to court, criticized "very arbitrary exceptions" for people like athletes. "I think it raises questions around that rationale that they're picking and choosing how to say and when to say somebody is a national security threat," she said. Trump did not explain in his order why athletes were a lesser concern. But the Olympics allows athletes from all nations to participate, and Los Angeles is hosting in 2028. Contributing: Erin Mansfield, USA TODAY