“It’s France, beautiful France”: why the Tour de France is more popular than ever

" Juliiaaaan" ... The cry stretches out, catches in the high notes, spreads like wildfire, Avenue Pierre II d'Aragon in Muret, and the echo makes its way behind the barriers. With a mischievous smile and a burning gaze, Julian Alaphilippe swallows the fever, lets himself be rocked, carried, enjoys the popularity that accompanies him every day. He returns to the Tour, draws from it an energy that, on Sunday, July 20, allows him to get back in the saddle after a fall and a few hours later to parade around thinking he'd won the stage before realizing his mistake: two riders had beaten him. The radio failure as much as the excitement can explain the blunder. The Tour stuns, dazzles. The Tour is a whirlwind. A parenthesis. A regressive pleasure. An unequaled popular success. This year, the crowd, in the rain or the heatwave, holds hands without stopping. From town to village or place name. Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour , likes to repeat that “the Tour is 3,500 kilometers…