Promotional feature in association with GCN+
Tour de France fever.
It happens once a year, always in the month of July, and it takes an irrepressible stranglehold on you. Like the normal, seasonal flu, it takes weeks to shift, and it leaves you longing to do absolutely nothing else but sit down on the couch and be unmoved for hours on end.
People try to talk to you about different things, but there’s only one thing on your mind. Can’t they see that you’ve got the fever? You wake up, and the symptoms are still there; you go to bed, and your thoughts remain dominated by it.
How will you ever get over its grip on you?
With GCN+, you don’t need it to, for the they, too, are also overcome with Tour fever in the month of July, broadcasting entire stages from start to finish with the best commentary around, and bookending the show with The Breakaway that provides the kind of quality analysis that we all crave.
Perplexed as to why Wout van Aert went in the break on stage 6 whilst still in possession of yellow? Adam Blythe has a theory for that.
Querying why Mathieu van der Poel hasn’t been at his scintillating best so far? Alberto Contador proposes a reason.
Not quite understanding how Fabio Jakobsen can squeeze himself past the other fastest sprinters in the world? Robbie McEwen can explain the intricacies of a sprint.
And want to know exactly what’s going on in the middle of the race, and how it might be about to explode into action? Bradley Wiggins is on the bike ready to impart his first-hand account.
We know that from time-to-time we may miss something, or be tempted to actually do some riding on our own. Before we’d plan our days entirely around the Tour, fearful of missing a crucial split or intriguing move.
Not much has changed in that regard, but thanks to the advent of pause and rewind on GCN+, you can now stop the action, go and do whatever you need to do (you may even opt to crack out a short effort in a lull of a stage), and then return, picking up where you left off, meaning that actual life needn't get in the way of being kept abreast of every development in the race.
It may also be that you’re not always home or in front of your TV, but GCN+ is also available to stream from your mobile device, allowing you to watch the action in a cafe, in the queue for food in a supermarket or any time you're on the go.
As you’re watching the world’s best produce a masterpiece, the commentators will doubtlessly remind us of other exhibitions in other races, prompting us to want to watch the final 20km of Paris-Roubaix or the closing stages of a Giro d’Italia stage. Thanks to GCN’s backlog of races, we can do just that, allowing us to relive hair-raising moments once again, before returning to the current day action of the Tour.
And after being awed by another stage and then intrigued by the analysis on The Breakaway, we can keep cycling at the forefront of our minds during the evening as we sit down to watch one of the vast array of cycling-themed movies and documentaries that are available to stream whenever we like.
For just £39.99 a year, and with the option to have a monthly subscription only, GCN+ will give us Tour fever like never before, even leaving the symptoms hanging around long enough for August’s Vuelta a España.
Before then, however, the Tour fever will persist for a week longer than usual this year, refusing to budge when the annual withdrawal symptoms typically tend to kick in. As soon as the men’s race comes to a conclusion in Paris, the Tour de France Femmes gets underway, with eight days of drama to keep us just as glued to our screens.
That’s a month's worth of world-class racing on GCN+ with uninterrupted, ad-free racing coverage, on-demand replays, comprehensive highlights and the best pre- and post-race analysis to keep us firmly in the grip of the greatest fever there is.
You can subscribe to GCN+ for just £39.99 and never miss a second of the Tour de France. Click here to subscribe
