Tour de France 2025 Diary on the ground: Week 2

Tuesday July 15: Tour de France Rest Day 1

There was a time when a Tour de France rest day consisted of an endless stream of team press conferences, with stressed-out journalists pounding from one anonymous industrial estate hotel to another, frantically trying to get one story written up from the rear seat of the hire car before heading onto the next, and the next, and the next…

These days, there are far fewer to attend. But when they happen, rather than quickfire questions yelled over a barrier in a mixed zone like most interviews these days, rest day press conferences still remain the best chance to gain some in-depth understanding of how riders are tackling the race.