'It's going to be heartbreaking' - Ned Boulting looks ahead to final Tour de France with ITV

“Even in a normal year, I find that Monday morning after the Tour entirely disorientating and tinged with melancholy,” he says. “Extrapolating forward, and thinking about Monday morning at the end of this year’s race, I think that’s going to be quite hard to deal with.”

Next month’s Tour will be Boulting’s final lap with ITV. In autumn last year, after more than two decades broadcasting the race, it was announced that the channel had relinquished the rights, which instead had been sold exclusively to Warner Bros. Discovery.

The deal means there will be no free-to-air coverage of the Tour in the UK from 2026. It also means Boulting will need to find another ticket to the race, an event with which he has become synonymous.

“If I’m asked which bit of the Tour might be the most resonant for me this year? Going off air for the final time, for obvious reasons,” he says. “We’ll pack a lot of emotional punch for all of us behind the cameras. There’s a big production team back in London who craft the highlights show, and most of us have been involved for decades in this production. It’s going to be heartbreaking to see it go."

Prior to that, Boulting says, he expects the Grand Départ roll-out in Lille on 5 July to be “just as moving”.

“That’s one of the most thrilling moments of any Tour de France,” he says. “[The riders] are all there. None of them have crashed. No one’s scored any King of the Mountains points. No one’s won a stage. Everyone is level on GC, and the whole shimmering mass of the peloton is just replete with potential. I think that’s an absolutely blinding moment.”

Boulting took his first steps at the Tour in 2003 as an on-the-ground reporter. At the time, he knew so little about the race, he mistakingly referred to the leader’s jersey as “the yellow jumper”, a term that would form the title of his first book.

This week, Boulting published his eighth book, The Accidental Tour-ist: (Final) Dispatches from the Road, which charts his career at the Tour. In the memoir, he writes nostalgically of his love affair with the race, from replacing the beloved Phil Liggett as ITV’s lead commentator in 2016, to descending Alpe d’Huez on a Brompton, and sending WhatsApp messages to Mark Cavendish.

“There was a lot to say, and I really wanted to get it down,” he says. Testament to the impact the sport has left on him, he makes his final acknowledgement in the book to “road racing itself – it has changed my life.”

Boulting is now just two weeks away from beginning his swansong Tour with ITV. It's unlikely to be his last time working on the race, he reassures, but he's been both touched and "stunned" by fans' reaction to the channel's rights loss.

"It got debated in Parliament, ridiculously, as if there are not more important things in the world than this," he smiles.

There's also a curiosity that has only recently hit him: for all the years Boulting has spent working on the Tour, he has never watched the race as a fan.

“Literally never," he says bluntly, repeating it as if to try and convince himself of the fact. "I’ve never in my life sat on a couch and watched the Tour de France. And the last thing I ever want to do is sit at home and watch the Tour de France. I can’t imagine being at home in the UK in July. For me, it’s total cognitive dissonance, and I’m in complete denial about the fact that it’s about to stop.”

The Accidental Tour-ish: (Final) Dispatches from the Road is available now, published by Bloomsbury.

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