This telling of the 2022 Tour de France is an addition to our two-volume The Story of the Tour de France: How a Newspaper Promotion Became the Greatest Sporting Event in the World, and three supplements, 2019: A Year of New Faces; 2020: The Tour During Covid-19: Better Late Than Never; and 2021: The Little Cannibal Dominates. Volume One told the story of the Tour’s origins and of each edition of the race from 1903 through 1975—the year Bernard Thévenet was able to conquer the Belgian Lion, Eddy Merckx, and hold the great racer to five Tour wins.

Volume Two picked up the race in 1976 with super-climber Lucien van Impe’s victory and took it through 2018 and Welshman Geraint Thomas’ 111-second win over Tom Dumoulin.

2019 had a stunning surprise winner in 22-year-old Egan Bernal, the youngest rider to wear the race-leader’s Yellow Jersey in Paris since that jersey was first awarded in 1919, and the third-youngest rider ever to have won the Tour de France.

2020 was no less surprising. Slovenian racer Tadej Pogačar was sitting in second place after stage 19, just 57 seconds behind fellow Slovenian and race leader Primož Roglič. Then in the 2020 Tour’s penultimate stage, a 36.2-kilometer individual time trial, Pogačar delivered a stunning ride, winning the stage and beating Roglič by 1 minute, 56 seconds. That superb effort made Pogačar the winner of the 2020 Tour de France. He became the first rider since Laurent Fignon in 1983 to win the Tour on his first attempt. He did more than win the General Classification. He also won the mountains classification and was the best young rider. Of the four individual prizes the Tour puts up for grabs, Pogačar won three of them. And at 21 years old, he is also the second-youngest rider to win the Tour since Henri Cornet won the race’s second edition in 1904.

2021 was Pogačar’s private property. Winning the Tour by more than five minutes, the talented rider again took those three categories: GC, Mountains and Young Rider. The big surprise was Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard. Riding for Primož Roglič’s Jumbo Visma team, he rode a superb Tour. After Roglič crashed and was forced to abandon, Vingegaard took over leadership of the team and finished second, 5 minutes, 20 seconds down. Along the way he showed that he was not to be underestimated. In stage 11, with a double ascent of Mont Ventoux, he was able to drop Pogačar. The Slav caught him and the two finished the difficult stage together, but Vingegaard had shown he could draw blood.

Except for the two world wars, the Tour has been run annually since that 1903 race, and yearly addendums seem the best way to keep telling the story. So please join us for 2022 as we go on the 109th trip around La Belle France as we see how 2021’s unfinished business was handled.