Tour de France, how to watch, when does it start, can Jonas Vingegaard beat Tadej Pogačar?

Can anyone do it?

Can anyone stop the relentless march of Tadej Pogačar towards yet another Tour de France yellow jersey?

That's the question rippling through the professional peloton as the Tour de France prepares to get underway in Barcelona this weekend.

Pogačar's dominance over the peloton is a double-edged sword for cycling.

Having a rider so totally dominant makes the racing, some will say, predictable or even boring. Perhaps even suspicious to some, an unfortunate but inescapable adjective given the sport's hideous and nefarious past.

But equally, the panache and verve with which the Slovenian star rips up the play book and makes the rest look decidedly ordinary is historic — and to be honest, a genuine treat to fans of the remarkable.

Nobody since Eddy Merckx has excelled over such varied terrain as Pogačar, the two-time reigning world champion, as adept on the cobbled classics of northern Europe as he is in the high mountains, where even goats fear to tread.

Yet the contenders are massing in what could be the deepest ever start list to a grand tour in history.

Jonas Vingegaard, fresh from Giro d'Italia success that was as cruisy as a three-week grand tour could be and the only man to ever beat Pogačar on a lap around France, will be there and likely Pogačar's most significant challenger.

By winning the maglia rosa in Rome just a few weeks ago, Vingegaard has completed the grand tour set.

He is the current Giro and Vuelta champion. Adding the Tour will make him just the third male rider in history to hold all three of cycling's most prestigious stage race jersey's at the same time, after Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Chris Froome.

Remco Evenepoel will also suit up, even if he needed a doctor's note to excuse him from the Belgian national championships that had about as much legitimacy as all those Socceroos fans who packed Fed Square last Friday to watch the World Cup clash against Paraguay.

Florian Lipowitz, Evenepoel's Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe teammate is probably flying in under the radar a little bit; Germany's best stage racer since Jan Ullrich put very much in the shade given all the attention being diverted towards his Belgian teammate.

Juan Ayuso, Pogačar's former teammate, is now free to spread his wings in the distinctive yellow, blue and red of Lidl-Trek and, having shown some serious class at the Volta ao Algarve earlier in the year, is bullish of his chances to claim yellow in Paris.

Then there's Paul Seixas, the 19-year-old French phenom who shouldn't have any right to challenge the elites at his age, yet became the first Frenchman to win a week-long World Tour stage race in 19 years by winning the Itzulia Basque Country.

Seixas's rise to Tour challenger has been remarkable.

Already one to watch, this year Seixas has taken the significant step up to win major races and contend for others.

He came second overall in the Volta ao Algarve behind Ayuso in February, and backed that up with a second-place finish at Strade Bianche behind Pogačar.

Then came his historic triumph in the Basque Country and a maiden classics win at La Flèche Wallonne.

How big a deal was that win at the Itzulia?

Well, his triumph knocked the country's best football team, Paris Saint Germain, off the front page of French sports daily L'Equipe.

Later that week, he showed just how good he can be, matching the accelerations of Pogačar at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, earning praise from the great Slovene.

"I am impressed and amazed by how good Paul is — chapeau to him," Pogačar said after that race, which he won by 45 seconds.

"Having him at such a good level, being just 19 years old, is a source of motivation for everybody to keep trying to improve, he is just 19yo and the best age for us riders usually is 26 or 28.

"We have to keep working hard if we want to keep fighting for victories, before he destroys everybody."

In fact, Seixas's only setback came at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (neé Critérium du Dauphiné) where he crashed with sufficient force to force his abandonment of the race.

The Dauphiné has been one of the key predictors of Tour de France form for several generations and hopes had been high for Seixas to lay down a marker.

France has not had a winner in the men's Tour de France since Bernard Hinault in 1985, although legendary figure Pauline Ferrand-Prévot ended France's lengthy wait for success with victory in the week-long Tour de France Femmes just last year.

Seixas's acknowledgement of his own failings at the Dauphiné have somewhat dampened expectations — while France's seemingly inevitable run to the World Cup title in America will keep Seixas off the front pages for at least a handful of days — but don't doubt that all eyes will be on the Decathlon CMA CGM rider as long as he is in within touching distance of the leaders come the back end of the Tour.

But those leaders are expected to still be streets ahead, with nothing to suggest that world champion Pogačar won't be exchanging his rainbow bands for the yellow jersey as early as the first mountain stage on Monday.

Pogačar won three stages and the overall at the Tour de Suisse, four stages and the overall at the Tour de Romandie, and claimed one-day victories at Strade Bianche, Milan-SanRemo, the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

His worst finishing position on any race day in 2026 was when he rolled in 12th position in the lead group on stage three of the Tour de Suisse, the day after his partner Urška Žigart had to leave the race with a badly broken jaw following a horror crash.

Isaac del Toro will be Pogačar's chief support in the mountains and that alone should strike fear into the hearts of many of his rivals.

The 22-year-old Mexican is developing into a mini-Pog, a man whose manner on the bike is almost identical to his illustrious leader and will one day make a worthy leader in his own right.

The prospect of UAE Team Emirates-XRG having two men on the podium come Paris is not so outlandish that you'd bet against it.

What Aussies are racing?

A total of 11 Australians have been confirmed to line up for the start of the race, but none are expected to contest for the overall crown.

Jayco AlUla have named a big contingent of Aussies, which sport director Mat Hayman described as "well-rounded".

"We have Pascal [Ackermann] there for the sprints and then a lot of rouleurs looking for stage opportunities, whether that's in the medium or high mountains," he said of his eight-man squad, five of whom are Aussies.

Key among those Australian rouleurs is Michael Matthews, back in the team after a horror run of illness and injuries.

He is joined by veteran rider Luke Durbridge, who will be racing his last Tour before he retires at the end of the year. Kelland O'Brien will make his Tour debut, while three-time national champion on the road and TT bike Luke Plapp goes around for the second time.

Ben O'Connor under-performed at the Giro, finishing in 16th place over 24 minutes behind Vingegaard and almost 18 minutes behind fellow Western Australian, third-place finisherJai Hindley, who will suit up as a super domestique for both Lipowitz and Evenepoel at Red Bull.

It would be fanciful in the extreme to think either will challenge for even a podium spot on general classification in Paris, but he may look to lose time early in the race so he's allowed a chance to go in the breakaway and claim a second career stage win at the sport's greatest event.

Michael Storer is another GC rider lining up, in his case for Tudor Pro Cycling, with stage victories in the mountains his main objective.

Robert Stannard (Bahrain Victorious), Sebastian Berwick (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Chris Harper and Damien Howsen (both Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) complete the Aussie contingent.

When is the Tour de France?

The Tour de France gets underway on Saturday, July 4, in Barcelona, Spain, and goes all the way through to July 26 in Paris.

The Tour de France Femmes goes from August 1-9, starting in Lausanne, Switzerland, and finishing in Nice.

The route

In truth, the route of the 2026 Tour de France is wild, starting in Barcelona and hitting the Pyrenees on the third day of racing.

For the first time since 1971, the Tour starts with a team time trial, albeit under different rules to the traditional TTT.

Traditionally, teams ride together and are all awarded the time of the middle rider to finish, normally the fourth or fifth rider.

Now, every rider gets their own individual time, making the entire 19 kilometre route a glorified lead-up ahead of a launching pad up a short, sharp final climb to Montjuïc.

From there, the riders negotiate a whopping 14,750 metres of elevation gain over the next five days through the Pyrenees, including three first-category climbs and the hors category giant, the Tourmalet, at 2,115m, the highest point of the entire race.

A brutal, punchy second week turns into another mountainous slog with ascents of the Ballon d'Alsace and two mountain-top finishes to end the second week.

Then, an individual time trial kicks off a final week that has all roads lead to Alpe d'Huez, which will be climbed on consecutive days before the new Paris finale that will once again feature a couple of circuits of the Olympic course up Côte de la Butte Montmartre.

All up, the riders have 3,333km of racing over 21 stages.

Stage 1 — July 4: Barcelona — Barcelona (Distance: 19.6km, Elevation gain: 200m) — Team Time Trial

Stage 2 — July 5: Tarragona — Barcelona (168.5km, 2,500m) — Hilly

Stage 3 — July 6: Granollers — Les Angles (195.9km, 3,850m) — Mountain

Stage 4 — July 7: Carcassonne — Foix (181.9km, 2,700m) — Hilly

Stage 5 — July 8: Lannemezan — Pau (158.3km, 1,600m) — Flat

Stage 6 — July 9: Pau — Gavarnie-Gèdre (186.2km, 4,100m) — Mountain

Stage 7 — July 10: Hagetmau — Bordeaux (175.1km, 850m) — Flat

Stage 8 — July 11: Périgueux — Bergerac (180.4km, 1150m) — Flat

Stage 9 — July 12: Malemort — Ussel (185.5km, 3,300m) — Hilly

Rest Day — July 13

Stage 10 — July 14: Aurillac — Le Lioran (166.6km, 3,800m) — Mountain

Stage 11 — July 15: Vichy — Nevers (161.3km, 1,400m) — Flat

Stage 12 — July 16: Circuit Nevers Magny-Cours — Chalon-sur-Saône (179.1km, 1,800m) — Flat

Stage 13 — July 17: Dole — Belfort (205.8km, 2,400m) — Hilly

Stage 14 — July 18: Mulhouse — Le Markstein Fellering (155.3km, 3,800m) — Mountain

Stage 15 — July 19: Champagnole — Plateau de Solaison (183.9km, 3,950m) — Mountain

Rest Day — July 20

Stage 16 — July 21: Évian-les-Bains — Thonon-les-Bains (26.1km, 500m) Individual Time Trial

Stage 17 — July 22: Chambery — Voiron (174.7km, 2,200m) — Flat

Stage 18 — July 23: Voiron — Orcières-Merlette (185.2km, 3,900m) — Mountain

Stage 19 — July 24: Gap — Alpe d'Huez (127.9km, 3,500m) — Mountain

Stage 20 — July 25: Le Bourg d'Oisans — Alpe d'Huez (170.9km, 5,450m) — Mountain

Stage 21 — July 26: Thoiry — Paris Champs-Élysées (133km, 1,000m) — Flat

What about the heat?

Temperatures are predicted to reach above 40 degrees Celsius in part of Spain and France over the next couple of days, which could lead to a shortening or even a cancellation of some stages.

"It's something that's very much on our mind," said Thierry Gouvenou, the Tour's technical director.

"It's not the first time we have faced this."

At the French national titles last week, Pascal Chanteur, the president of France's professional cyclists' union, proposed moving the stages to start earlier in the day.

But the Tour director Christian Prudhomme noted that race times were dictated by TV broadcasts and for logistical reasons, changes couldn't easily be made on the hoof.

Race protocol does allow for increased feeding zones and the supply of chilled water for riders.

How can I watch the Tour de France?

The Tour de France will be shown live on SBS throughout the entire three weeks.

Of course, times may clash with the World Cup, so your best bet is to check your local guides to see what channel it will be on, or else catch the stream on SBS On Demand.

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