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Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
This is the last Tour de France on free-to-air and cycling will never be the same
When the peloton rolls out of Lille on Saturday for the start of the 112th edition of the Tour de France, it will mark the beginning of the end of one of British sport's great institutions. Nearly 40 years after Channel 4 first screened the highlights of the Tour de France in 1986 – played in by that iconic Pete Shelley theme music – ITV will this year broadcast coverage of cycling's biggest race on free-to-air for the final time. As of next year, the Tour will be behind a paywall in the UK, on TNT Sports. It is the end of an era. 'It's going to be emotional,' admits commentator Ned Boulting who has been part of ITV's coverage since 2003, and who will reprise his role this year alongside David Millar, continuing a line going back to Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett. 'That's very nearly 40 years of continuity. So that's almost three generations of viewers within families. You know, that's grandparents, parents, and children, all of whom have come through the same very familiar routine. The same faces and voices, the same look and feel, the same style. It's unique in broadcasting.' 'A hammer blow for cycling' Once the emotion dies down, the question is: what does it mean for cycling in the UK, both in terms of viewing figures and participation? Will the sport wither on the vine, stuck behind a paywall where no one will watch it? Will the next generation of potential Geraint Thomases and Tom Pidcocks be starved of inspiration? Or might cycling benefit from being lumped in with bigger sports in the TNT Sports portfolio such as football and rugby, attracting new, crossover fans? It is fair to say fan reaction when the initial announcement was made last autumn that Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns TNT Sports, had bought the exclusive UK rights to the Tour, was not positive. There was sadness at the demise of the much-loved ITV coverage, particularly the daily highlights show. But public opinion really nosedived when WBD announced in January that it was axing Eurosport UK and cycling fans would have to shell out for the full TNT Sports subscription to access bike races in the UK. Not just the Tour, but the Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta a España, the spring classics, the whole caboodle. From £6.99 a month for Eurosport to £30.99 a month for TNT Sports – a price hike of some 400 per cent. Outraged fans – who, a couple of years ago were so spoilt they could get every obscure race under the sun for £5 a month on the GCN+ app, before it was bought and shuttered by WBD – threatened to boycott the channel, while others claimed WBD would get more people into piracy than they would cycling. The debate even reached the Houses of Parliament with Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP, securing a debate on the merits of free-to-air coverage of professional cycling in Westminster Hall on March 5. In an impassioned speech, Obese-Jecty told of how he had been inspired as a child by the exploits of British mountain bike rider Jason McRoy, whose races were occasionally shown on Eurosport. Describing the channel's demise as 'a hammer blow for coverage of cycling in the UK' he argued that cycling going behind a paywall would have a number of unintended consequences. It would mean children in the UK were not exposed to a sport which was patently good for their health. It would impact on the next generation of wannabe Bradley Wigginses. 'To be popular, a sport must be visible,' he said. 'To be visible, a sport must have a television presence. The Government would never allow the Fifa World Cup, the Olympics or Wimbledon to be put behind a paywall. With an estimated 12 million spectators attending the race each year, the Tour de France is easily the most attended sporting event in the world. 'Will the Government consider how it can inspire a new generation of Froomes and Cavendishes to take up the mantle and consider what they are doing to restore a sporting jewel, in which we have enjoyed such recent success, to the masses, lest its absence from our screens cause the sport to wither on the vine?' Stephanie Peacock, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, replied to say that she was grateful to the honorary member for bringing the matter to her attention, and that she 'sympathised' with his points, but that it was entirely up to the rights holder to determine whether any coverage will be available to free-to-air television in the future. New coverage, but less viewers TNT, understandably keen not to be painted as the villains here, say that is already happening. There is already a new hour-long programme called The Ultimate Cycling Show, hosted by Orla Chennaoui and Adam Blythe, shown on its free-to-air Quest channel, as well as daily highlights shows on the same channel during the recent Giro. The same is planned for the Vuelta a España in August. Only the Tour will remain fully behind a paywall, although a TNT spokesperson suggested the possibility of free-to-air highlights being shown on Quest next year, or in 2027, when the grand depart is once again scheduled to take place in the UK, was under consideration. What might the impact be on UK cycling by then, though? Again, WBD defend themselves. They claim over half of Eurosport viewers already had access to TNT Sports at the time of Eurosport's closure. They maintain that being part of a package which include Champions League and Premiership Rugby will introduce new fans to the sport. They also point out, rightly, that ITV declined to renew its broadcast rights for the Tour, whereas it is investing millions into cycling. Like football and cricket on Sky Sports, they promise to innovate and raise standards. That may all be true. But it does not change the fact that the Tour is disappearing from free-to-air TV and millions of fans will be left without a show which was appointment viewing for three weeks every year. As Obese-Jecty MP said: 'The reassuring tones of Gary Imlach and the encyclopaedic knowledge of Ned Boulting will no longer be staples of cycling fans' summers.' Boulting smiles at that line. 'The fact it got debated in Parliament is insane,' he says. 'David and my names are in the Hansard register now.' He does find the fans' backlash interesting, though, mainly because of how persistent it has been. 'The level of engagement with the topic just doesn't seem to have died down,' he says. 'In fact, the closer we get to the Tour the more it is ramping up. I think it's because, unlike the Ashes, or the Olympics, the Tour is every summer. It's an annual event, which just anchors its place in the rhythm of the year for so many family lives. That, I think, is the reason why the noise around it is so persistent and so loud.' Like many subscription channels, TNT does not release its viewing figures; or say how many new subscribers have signed up since shutting Eurosport down. Even if it did, it would be difficult to tell how many had signed up for cycling as opposed to its other sports. But Boulting stresses he wants the new landscape to be a success, not least because a bigger fanbase will drive more listeners to the Never Strays Far podcast he co-hosts with Millar. New TMS-style podcast planned The pair have big plans for the podcast next year, which they will confirm on Saturday. But essentially they involve Millar and Boulting driving around France in a camper van, with Lizzie Deignan as their co-host, doing live podcasts from the roadside, only looking away from the race, so the cameras watch them watching the action in the style of Soccer Saturday. 'We're going to call it Never Strays Far: Live in France,' Millar says. 'So we'll be on the race, following the race, watching the race, and just relaying as much of it as we can. We'll put it out as video as well, almost certainly on YouTube, but across as many platforms as we can.' 'Think TMS [ Test Match Special ],' Boulting says. 'It will be whimsical, irreverent. We'll chat to fans. We'll broadcast from random squares or places on the route. We won't be rights holders so we won't be able to show race footage. And we won't have accreditation. That's very important. But we can always go see riders in hotels or wherever. 'The Tour de France has always been about much more than the race,' he adds. 'And I think that's one of the things that our ITV viewers really understand and value. And we want to encourage a big percentage of these suddenly disenfranchised viewers to keep the Tour de France in their lives in this new form, where they can. We are very familiar voices and faces to them. And Lizzie will be an absolutely unbelievable addition to our team.' Will they sleep in the camper? Boulting laughs. 'Funnily enough that was Lizzie's first question. No. We're going to have plastic key cards to get into Campanile hotel rooms.. In fact, we might try and do the whole thing in Campaniles. The dream.' One more emotional lap It remains to be seen how it all shakes out; what exactly the loss of free-to-air will do to cycling in the UK. But in the meantime Imlach, Boulting, Millar, as well as reporters Daniel Friebe and Matt Rendell, are preparing for one final, emotional lap of France. 'I think the producers are definitely going to celebrate the heritage,' Boulting reflects. 'You know, it's tricky for ITV because they don't want to put up on great big billboards: 'We're leaving the sport'. But on the other hand, this is a unique programme, a unique event, and a unique association that has gone on for a long time. So they acknowledge that, and they are going to celebrate, you know, in style I think. 'For sure, we're going to hear the Channel 4 theme tune that so many people are nostalgic about. We're going to drill down into all that history, repeatedly, throughout the three weeks. The Tour de France allows us that. It gives us that time to be reflective and to sort of dredge the seabed of memories that people have.' How will he feel when it's over? 'I find it emotional at the best of times. When we sign off on the show each year, when the sun goes down behind the podium and you get the Arc de Triomphe in the background, I always find that a very emotional moment. Because we're tired, we've been on the race for three weeks, we've made it to Paris, and that's it, we're signing off. Signing off for the final time in three weeks will be a very hard thing to get right.'
The Irish Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Major sporting event to disappear from free-to-air TV within weeks as ITV prepare to broadcast for final time
ITV'S iconic commentary duo of Ned Boulting and David Millar are gearing up for one last lap around France. That's because, after this year, the world's most famous bike race will disappear from free-to-air TV coverage. 2 The Tour de France will disappear from free-to-air TV after this year 2 ITV is pulling out of cycling coverage in 2026, meaning Warner Bros Discovery channels will take over When the last rider crosses the finish line on the Champs-Elysees on July 27 - in less than four weeks' time - it will mark the end of four decades of free-to-air Tour de France coverage for those on British soil. ITV is pulling out of cycling coverage in 2026, meaning Warner Bros Discovery channels - otherwise known as TNT Sports channels and online streaming service Discovery+ - will be the only place cycling fans can watch their favourite sport in the UK. Last year it was announced that TNT would be absorbing all cycling coverage shown on Eurosport, with the channel disappearing at the end of February. ITV4 will continue to show live coverage of the race this year, but fans are faced with a dilemma from then onwards - fork out £30 a month for a TNT subscription or watch the highlights later on. Read More on Cycling According to reports, Warner Bros could still show highlights on free-to-air TV, with Quest being among the contenders having shown highlights of the Giro d'Italia in May. Just two years out from Britain once again hosting the Grand Depart for a fifth time, Tour de France general director Christian Prudhomme said he hopes there will be a resolution. Speaking in March at the confirmation that the UK would host stages in England, Wales and Scotland in 2027, Prudhomme said: "I do hope, and I do believe that the stages in the UK will be live and free to air in 2027. "But there will be discussions. We're optimistic.' Most read in Cycling This year's edition of Le Tour rolls out the northern French city of Lille on Saturday, barely an hour's drive from Calais. Among the British hopefuls are the retiring former winner Disgraced Lance Armstrong reveals why he refuses to take down 7 Tour de France jerseys from wall Despite dominating the sport for years with Bradley Wiggins, Reigning champion Tadej Pogacar will go head-to-head with biggest rival Jonas Vingegaard once again. The pair have been almost untouchable in the sport for the last four years, with just 85 seconds separating the duo in their total race time at Le Tour since 2021.
The Independent
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Inside Bradley Wiggins' tragic fall from Olympic cycling hero to functioning cocaine addict
Le Gentleman is what the local press used to call Bradley Wiggins, back in the time when he was dominating the Tour de France. Fluent in French, always stylishly dressed, sparkling in interviews, the first Briton to win the world's greatest cycling race was embraced in the country like few others before or since. So beloved was the then stick-thin Englishman, he almost became one of their own. 'My God they loved him,' recalls Ned Boulting, the veteran cycling commentator. 'I remember him holding court at press conferences, turning them into a stand-up routine. On form, he was just the best interviewee. He was completely unfiltered, he would tell you exactly what he felt. And he could be so funny. A brilliant mimic, he would have everyone in stitches doing his impressions. That was on a good day. On a bad day, he could be cruel, bitter, really, really horrible.' For Wiggins, sadly, the bad days became ever more frequent. When the race he once dominated begins its annual national circuit on 5 July, the 45-year old will not be at its heart. There will be no civic receptions, no waving from balconies, no heroic grandstanding for Le Gentleman. Declared bankrupt, his family home repossessed, his financial life and reputation is now in tatters. 'It is a total mess,' says his lawyer Alan Sellers. 'He's lost absolutely everything. His home, his home in Majorca, his savings and investments.' Worse, the achievements he accumulated, feats no amount of money could ever buy, have been permanently shadowed by an all-embracing cloud of doping allegations. And now his spiral into a cycle of debt and addiction are to be captured in a candid autobiography, The Chain, which details his childhood trauma, rollercoaster career and subsequent addiction. Ahead of its publication later this year, Wiggins told The Observer: 'There were times my son thought I was going to be found dead in the morning. I was a functioning addict. People wouldn't realise. I was high most of the time for many years.' These are not good times for the man who was knighted by the Queen as a shining example of sporting excellence. Much of the coverage of Wiggins's decline has centred on the finance, the debts, the bankruptcy. It seems incomprehensible that someone who, in 2013, was reckoned Britain's third highest-paid sportsman (after Andy Murray and Justin Rose), who accumulated more than £13m in his stellar cycling career, who once ran a grand tour team in his name, should have fallen to such a precipitous low. But some who have watched him at close quarters throughout his career reckon the money is only a manifestation, not the cause of his ills. And the clues were always there. Even at his peak, when, at the London Games of 2012 he sat atop a throne in Hampton Court after winning an Olympic gold medal just a week after finishing first on the Tour, this was a man never comfortable with success, never relaxed with fame, someone never entirely at ease with himself. 'He was a sportsman who was defined so much by his sport that he really only ever knew himself through the sporting context,' says Boulting. 'And the fact is, when his career was over, he really didn't have a clue who he was.' It is not that Wiggins has ever shied away from where he came from. It was a place of abuse, cruelty and pain. His father, Gary, an Australian professional cyclist, abandoned the family before he was two. The only use he ever had for his infant son was to smuggle amphetamines through customs in his nappy. Father and son had absolutely no contact until Wiggins became a successful rider himself, when the old man made an approach. They met and Wiggins was so appalled by the bitter angry derelict opposite him, so fearful of what he might become, he walked out of the pub where they had come together. And he never saw him again. When, in 2008, Gary died after being beaten up in a street fight in New South Wales, Wiggins couldn't bring himself to go to the funeral. Other male role models were few and far between in his life: he revealed in 2013 that he had been sexually abused by his coach when he was a teenage cyclist, something he could not tell his violent and dismissive stepfather, who consistently mocked his cycling abilities. Fuelled by self-loathing, he threw himself into his sport, pursuing the relentless training with a masochistic intensity. 'Nobody trained like him,' says the cycling journalist Tom Cary. 'He just had one thing in mind: winning.' So extraordinary was his application, that he turned himself from an excellent track cyclist, who won golds at four successive Olympic Games, into a dominant rider on the Tour, a discipline requiring not just a different set of cycling skills, but a whole other physique. 'To win the Tour you have to be able to win in the mountains,' says Boulting. 'He just made himself do it. Nobody has ever put themselves through what he had to do to win the Tour. He completely rebuilt his body.' With success came acclaim. But he never found the adulation easy. In one of his several autobiographies, he admits that as early as 2004, after becoming the first Briton in 40 years to win three medals at the same Olympics, he took to the bottle to cope with the ensuing attention. He credits his then wife Cath – and the arrival of his son Ben – with stopping him. What he did not want was to turn into his father. 'I had responsibilities,' he wrote in My Time, his autobiography. 'I had to grow up.' The trouble was, the more he applied himself to his sport, the more he won and the more fame came his way. By 2012 and his Tour victory, he was the nation's favourite sportsman. The Sun gave away free stick-on Wiggo sideburns to celebrate his mod style, Paul Smith released a line of clothing designed with him, his sleek, aloof, ironic detachment was reckoned coolness personified. It was, he later admitted, all an act. Unsure how to behave in the public eye, he hid behind a persona. 'I'm an introverted, private person. I didn't know who 'me' was, so I adopted a kind of veil – a sort of rock-star veil. It wasn't really me … It was probably the unhappiest period of my life. Everything I did was about winning for other people, and the pressures that came with being the first British winner of the Tour. I really struggled with it,' he wrote in My Time. It was a struggle, he later admitted that deeply affected his disposition. As those closest to him quickly came to recognise. 'Everyone's mood was determined by how Brad felt,' says someone who was on the Sky Team during those Tour years, who prefers to remain unnamed. 'If he was in a good mood, it was a good day for all of us. When he was down, Christ it was tough. That said, he could be incredibly generous. He regularly bought everyone on the team a designer watch when we won.' But, whatever may have been going on in private, the public bought the image. And when he won gold in the Rio games in 2016 before announcing his retirement, he was celebrated as the greatest. Across the country, hundreds of young wannabe Wiggos took to their bikes. 'His legacy is huge,' says Boulting. 'There'll be several riders on the Tour, British lads riding for foreign teams, who only got into the sport because of him. He inspired the country to get on its bike.' But then, in September 2016, came the first real damage to his credibility. A bunch of Russian computer hackers called Fancy Bear leaked his private medical records online. It was clear he was using a steroid called triamcinolone. His insistence was it was to counter the effects of asthma, a so-called therapeutic use exemption (TUEs). But over the next couple of years, Wiggins and Team Sky were embroiled in a scandal about how much they had been pushing the rules, filled with tales of TUEs, jiffy bags, and dodgy medics. Damian Collins MP, then chair of the Select Committee for Culture Media and Sport, recalls the findings of a parliamentary inquiry. 'We believed that drugs were being used by Team Sky, within the WADA rules, to enhance the performance of riders, and not just to treat medical need,' he says. The very greyness of the ensuing scrutiny cast doubt over everything Wiggins had achieved. 'It basically put an asterisk against his record,' says Cary. His relationship with Cath was broken by the strain of public scrutiny. They divorced, he moved out of the family home, the companies they had run together began to wither. His personal circumstances had always been his grounding, their stability a contrast to his father's waywardness. Without them – and without cycling – he floundered. He could find no valid direction. He tried boxing, he said he was going to compete in the 2020 Olympics as a rower, he trained as a social worker, then as a doctor. Nothing ever came of anything. And he took his frustrations out on whoever came close. 'He was really appalling to me and to this day I don't know why,' says Boulting. 'But to be fair to him, we stayed in the same hotel when he was doing some punditry for the Tour in 2019 and he came over and apologised. We had a really good long chat and he admitted he could be really vicious for no reason. It was obviously a symptom of what was going on inside.' Occasionally he would undertake an interview, when, with his characteristic frankness, he would reveal much. He talked of the abuse in his childhood, of his battles with depression, of how sporting success meant little to him (in one interview he said he kept all his medals in a carrier bag and had smashed up his BBC Sports Personality of the Year trophy). And every time he would insist he was happier than when he competed. 'I'm more comfortable in my own skin,' his usual phrase. Significantly, his own skin had changed completely. In 2012, as he sat atop that throne, his arms were ink-free. A dozen years on, he is now covered in tattoos, including a replica of an album cover by The Prodigy on his left shoulder and an image of crucified Jesus on his back. Every inch of his body has been turned into a graphic novel. Through it all, the money ebbed away. Though invariably generous, he was not noticeably reckless with his cash, living comfortably rather than ostentatiously in Lancashire. He blames poor advice for the issues. His lawyer Alan Sellers says he never properly understood finance. Whatever the cause, earlier this year everything suddenly collapsed. Wiggins Rights Ltd, a shield company for his earnings, had been put into voluntary liquidation in 2020. In 2022, the IVA was wound up because he hadn't repaid £979,953, mainly to HMRC. Now has come bankruptcy and an apparent loss of all his assets. And in the last few years he has faced a challenge as tough as any in his life. While not as physically demanding as the climb up Alpe d'Huez, he didn't only needsto recover financially, but he had to find direction, purpose, meaning. 'I know it's not the same,' says Boulting. 'But I watched him turn himself into a Tour winner, and that required the most extraordinary mental determination. If anyone has the capacity to make the necessary change and find a new direction it is Brad.' And Boulting mentions the fact that Ben, Wiggins's son, is now a professional rider, one many reckon has the capacity to soon race in the Tour. Wiggins senior has tried to keep his distance from the boy's cycling, anxious not to pressurise. But the pair's relationship is warm, and Wiggins has been often spotted in the background when his son competes, performing a role he never experienced when he was competing: that of the proud father watching on. "The Chain," is expected to be published in late 2025
