With stage nine’s gravel roads providing a brutal challenge for riders, it was a mercy to watch from the passenger seat

Tom Southam is getting a sinking feeling. After four hours at the wheel of the EF Education EasyPost team car, guiding the Irishman Ben Healy through 14 sections of narrow, dusty farm tracks east of Troyes, the holy grail – a stage win in the Tour de France – is within touching distance.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat alongside Southam, one of the American team’s three sports directors, for stage nine of the 2024 Tour. It’s like sitting in the dugout at the Euros, dreading penalties, but without the existential angst.

• Pogacar retains yellow jersey after brutal stage
• Evenepoel says Vingegaard ‘lacked the balls to race’

Ineos’ Tom Pidcock came within a hair’s breadth of taking his second win in the Tour de France on a dramatic gravel stage nine over the white roads of the Aube, when he was left frustrated by the French sprinter Anthony Turgis of Total Energies.

It was his team’s first Tour stage win since 2017. “I’ve won at all ­levels but was missing a World Tour win,” 30-year-old Turgis said. “But winning at the Tour de France – it’s the holy grail.”

• Biniam Girmay holds off Philipsen for second stage win
• Norway’s André Drege dies in crash at Tour of Austria

Biniam Girmay’s second stage win in the 2024 Tour de France in Charles de Gaulle’s home village of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises was overshadowed by the death of the 25-year-old Norwegian André Drege during stage four of the Tour of Austria.

As Girmay, the first black African to win a stage in the Tour, celebrated his success, the news of Drege’s death sent shock waves through the peloton, coming about a year after Gino Mäder died in similar circumstances during the 2023 Tour of Switzerland.

• Belgian beats Tadej Pogacar to win his first Tour stage
• Debutant has been biggest obstacle to leader Pogacar

Remco Evenepoel won the first ­individual time trial in the 2024 Tour de France, after beating current race leader, Tadej Pogacar, in the 23.5km “race of truth”.

In his debut Tour, the former Vuelta a España champion ­Evenepoel has so far shown himself to be the biggest obstacle to Pogacar taking a third ­yellow jersey in Nice, with the defending champion, Jonas ­Vingegaard still short of his best form.

Record-breaking Tour de France stage winner has earned widespread admiration but also ruffled a few feathers

The seemingly bottomless drive that propelled Mark Cavendish past Eddy Merckx to hold the record for stage wins at the Tour de France outright has won him many admirers through his career. But it has also ruffled plenty of feathers among his rivals and sometimes even his own teammates.

His win in Saint-Vulbas on Wednesday that took him to 55 Grand Tour stages wins – 35 and counting at Le Tour, 17 in the Giro d’Italia and three in the Vuelta a España, earned plaudits around the world and a little bristling from some quarters in the peloton.

• Mark Cavendish blocked out in final stages of sprint
• Crash takes down several EF Education EasyPost riders

The euphoria of Mark Cavendish’s record-breaking stage win on Wednesday’s fifth of the Tour de France proved short-lived, as 24 hours later Dylan Groenewegen reminded the world that other sprinters are also in the peloton.

Cavendish, who took a record-breaking 35th stage win in the Tour, was blocked out in the 300 metres of the sprint on the Cours Général de Gaulle in Dijon and could only watch as the Dutchman edged out Jasper Philipsen and the stage three winner, Biniam Girmay.

• Cavendish breaks record for Tour de France stage wins
• Pogacar, Brailsford and Thomas all laud achievement

Mark Cavendish’s record-breaking 35th stage win in the Tour de France was hailed by cycling’s great and good, especially as it came only days after he had almost been forced to quit this year’s race due to heatstroke.

In eclipsing the five-time Tour winner Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 stage wins, at 39, Cavendish, riding for the Astana Qazaqstan team, has confirmed his status as the greatest sprinter in the history of cycling.

• Cavendish victorious on stage five of this year’s race
• 39-year-old overtakes Eddy Merckx in history books
• In pictures: Cavendish’s greatest Tour stage wins

Mark Cavendish broke new ground in the Tour de France, becoming the most prolific stage winner in the history of the French race, as he took a record-breaking 35th victory with a typically instinctive sprint finish in Saint-Vulbas.

It may not have been as grand as the Champs Élysées, but when the moment came on the Avenue des Bergeries, in a suburban town better known for its boulodromes than for its sprint spectacles, the 39-year-old from the Isle of Man kept his date with destiny.

• UAE Team Emirates rider stars on climbs and descents
• Pogacar leads Evenepoel by 45sec; Vingegaard is third

Tadej Pogacar took victory in the first mountain stage of the 2024 Tour de France, from Pinerolo to Valloire, after breaking clear of the defending champion, Jonas Vingegaard, at the summit of the Col du Galibier.

“I wanted to hit hard today,” Pogacar said following the 12th Tour stage win of his career. “This was the plan and we executed it really well.”