logo
Kilgetty cyclist completes Le Loop's Tour de France route

Kilgetty cyclist completes Le Loop's Tour de France route

Ceri Stone, from Kilgetty, took on the challenge once again as part of Le Loop, a charity ride that follows the exact course of the Tour de France, just one week ahead of the professionals.
This year's route covered more than 3,500 kilometres and more than 55,000 metres of climbing over 21 days.
Mr Stone, who grew up in Begelly and was educated at Pentlepoir CP and Greenhill Comprehensive, is believed to be the first person from Pembrokeshire to complete the feat.
He said: "This year's tour was the toughest so far.
"I put it down to two reasons: the first is that I was ill for the first three days of the event and regularly had to stop for comfort breaks in cornfields.
"I don't know how I made it through those first few days.
"I put it down to determination and resilience and also the fact that I have been so well supported by my sponsors that I could not let them down."
Le Loop raises funds for the William Wates Memorial Trust, and this year's ride has already brought in £435,000.
Mr Stone is a member of the Pembrokeshire Dragons Cycling Club and credits the club with helping him prepare for the challenge.
He is also the author of Le Loop, How to Cycle the Tour de France, which tells the story of his 2019 ride.
This year's route began in Lille on June 28 and was described as the toughest in more than 50 years.
Only about half of the 50 riders who started the challenge completed every stage.
Mr Stone said: "Despite all of this I somehow found an inner resolve to ensure that I made it to Paris, having cycled every single inch of the route.
"I have now cycled 71 stages of the Tour de France, but I am pretty sure that is my last."
At 58, Mr Stone celebrated his achievement with a glass of champagne in Paris, though he says he isn't ready to commit to riding the tour again just yet.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Olympic champion Evenepoel to join Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe team
Olympic champion Evenepoel to join Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe team

Reuters

timea day ago

  • Reuters

Olympic champion Evenepoel to join Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe team

Aug 5 (Reuters) - Belgian Olympic gold medallist Remco Evenepoel will leave Soudal Quick-Step and join Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe at the end of the 2025 season, his current team said on Tuesday. The 25-year-old former Vuelta a Espana winner, who won gold in the road race and time trial at last year's Paris Games, joined Soudal Quick-Step in 2019, and was contracted to the team until the end of 2026. "Representatives of Remco informed the team's management that he did not wish to discuss an extension of his current agreement," Soudal Quick-Step said in a statement. "The team's ownership and management have decided that it is in best interest of everyone to agree that Remco can move at the end of the current 2025 season." In December, Evenepoel collided with the open door of a vehicle while training in Belgium, suffering multiple fractures, a dislocated collarbone and contusions to both lungs. He underwent surgery and worried he might have to retire, but returned to competition in April. Evenepoel was third overall when he abandoned the Tour de France during the 14th stage last month.

Tour de France Femmes 2025: Pauline Ferrand-Prevot seals home glory
Tour de France Femmes 2025: Pauline Ferrand-Prevot seals home glory

Times

time2 days ago

  • Times

Tour de France Femmes 2025: Pauline Ferrand-Prevot seals home glory

In April, having just won Paris-Roubaix Femmes, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot made her next goal clear: 'The Tour de France is the No1 objective of the season,' she told L'Équipe. 'I want to win it over the next three years.' On Sunday she took that victory at her first attempt and the final stage along with it, against an all-star field, becoming the first French winner for 36 years. 'This morning I told my directeur sportif, 'I want to try to win in yellow,' ' Ferrand-Prévot said. 'It wasn't easy, quite a tactical race, and at the end I told myself, 'Let's see how I feel on the last climb.' I attacked and I didn't think that I could win that way. I really gave it my all until the last metres, so I didn't have time to savour it all, but I'm so happy to be able to win this stage and the general classification.'

Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has made history for France – and shown the way forward for women's cycling
Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has made history for France – and shown the way forward for women's cycling

The Independent

time3 days ago

  • The Independent

Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has made history for France – and shown the way forward for women's cycling

Forty long years have passed since a French rider won the Tour de France. Forty years of hand-wringing in L'Equipe and feverish tension every July. The great Bernard Hinault has endured a long wait for a successor. As Pauline Ferrand-Prevot crossed the line in Chatel, soaking in the adulation of the crowd, forty years of hurt came to an end. She held out her arms, slipped off her bike and lay flat on her back in the finish area, the weight of her achievement sinking in. The 33-year-old's palmares is among the most impressive in history, spanning nearly every discipline: a win on the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix earlier this year, 12 world titles, Olympic mountain bike gold, to name just a few standouts. But there was a sense that this one meant more than any other victory. What seemed like a very bold statement at the time of her comeback to road racing after seven years away, that she wanted to win the Tour de France, now seems simply prophetic, a sign of the steely-eyed determination that delivered her to the title in her first season back. 'I've realised a little girl's dream, it's a perfect day,' Ferrand-Prévot said after taking yellow on stage eight. 'I have to thank the public and my family who were here at the roadside.' Her historic individual triumph has the potential to be much more than purely another glorious win for one of cycling's serial winners. It could also change the course of women's cycling. A women's version of the Tour de France has been run intermittently since 1955; a race known as the Tour de France Féminin was won three times by French great Jeannie Longo in the 1980s, while compatriot Catherine Marsal won its successor, the Tour de la C.E.E. Féminin, in 1990. But a lack of stable, committed sponsorship and funding, indifferent media coverage, and either ambivalence or outright opposition from the Tour organisers meant the women's Tour was always teetering on the verge of collapse. Operating in such an atmosphere, it's hardly surprising that the women's Tour became a stunted, half-hearted thing in the 2000s. Britain's Emma Pooley joked that the crisis-hit 2009 Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale, which she won, was more of a 'Petite Boucle'. It shuttered that year. Then came progress in the form of ASO finally agreeing to helm a women's version. La Course, a one-, sometimes two-day race, was formed under pressure from a group of female campaigners, including Pooley and Marianne Vos. The race took place at the same time as the men's and was entirely overshadowed by it. Fast-forward only four years from the inception of the Tour de France Femmes – finally, a real, fully-fledged counterpart to les hommes – and the days of the petite Boucle and La Course feel very far away. This is the final year that the women's edition will directly follow, or clash with, the men's race, taking an entirely separate slot in the calendar from 2026. 'Our Tour is getting too big to be run at the same time as the men's race,' race director Marion Rousse said. 'We need to change the model and create our own timescale.' Far from the patronising course design of previous incarnations of the Tour, which riders complained did not challenge them enough, the trend in recent years has been to make the race more difficult. In 2023 Demi Vollering wrote herself into the history books as a winner on the mist-shrouded slopes of the Col du Tourmalet; last year's route finished on possibly the Tour's most legendary climb, Alpe d'Huez. This year the race again reached a climax in the Alps, with Ferrand-Prevot winning on the Col de la Madeleine. Those proved the standout moments of each Tour; we can only hope next year's route is even bigger and bolder. The race had been talked up as the blockbuster rematch between last year's champion Kasia Niewiadoma and 2023 winner Demi Vollering. While those two were deservedly on the podium at the end of the race – both for the fourth year in a row – this year's edition was also notable for the breakthrough of several other challengers, as the women's peloton continues to go from strength to strength. Kim Le Court made history for Mauritius, becoming the first African rider to win a stage of the race and to wear yellow, while Australian Sarah Gigante proved herself a force to be reckoned with on the toughest climbs, and a potential GC contender if she can overcome her descending woes. None of Lotte Kopecky, Marlen Reusser or Elisa Longo Borghini were at full strength for this race, with the latter two abandoning. If they had been fit we could have seen similar drama to last year's race, when an unprecedented four-second gap separated yellow from second place. The margins for success in such a talented peloton are finer than ever. For the home nation in particular, this is a moment to celebrate. French riders have won nearly half the stages in this race, the brilliant youngster Maeva Squiban and veteran Ferrand-Prevot taking two apiece. Alongside the pair, the nation has a host of present and future stars in Cedrine Kerboal – winner of stage six last year, the first-ever French winner of a stage – Marion Bunel, Juliette Labous, and Evita Muzic. While France's male cyclists struggle under the weight of history and the overbearing expectations of the public, its women have more than risen to the task. Even a frustrated Vollering, second on the final stage and second overall to add to her heartbreaking second on the podium last year, could see the bigger picture. 'Cycling is in a great place now, new riders coming up and coming back. It's an exciting time,' she said. Jeannie Longo, watching from the roadside in Chatel, must have agreed. What next for women's cycling, and its biggest race? Perhaps to look forward, we have to look back: to Longo, Marsal, and the early blueprint for the Tour de France Femmes. The first Tour de France Féminin, won by American Marianne Martin, was 18 stages long; Longo's triumphs were over 15, 12, and 11 stages, each with an additional prologue. With the ever-increasing professionalisation of the women's peloton, and its huge strength in depth, there is no reason why the Tour de France Femmes cannot reach the length of its 1980s counterpart. Could a race of true parity, a 21-stage race traversing every kind of terrain, with equal billing to the hommes, be on the cards? Ferrand-Prevot's victory is the perfect launchpad: for a new wave of enthusiasm in France for women's cycling, and for taking this race to new heights. As Ferrand-Prevot rode herself into yellow and sealed the race's queen stage atop the infamous Col de la Madeleine, Rousse embraced her compatriot at the roadside. She later said, 'I really felt something big was happening. I had tears in my eyes. I was a little overwhelmed because women's cycling has come so far.' This race has proven just how much further it can go.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store