Tweets of the week: Tour de France routes excitement and footballing cyclists

Just nine months to go until the Tour de France, the countdown starts now! Or not, not really

Tadej Pogačar
(Image credit: Getty Images)

There are just 244 days until the 120th Tour de France, and 267 until the second Tour de France Femmes. Seeing as there is little else going on in the world right now, everyone is forgiven for going absolutely crazy about some vague diagrams shown on a screen in Paris.

The presentation of route is always a bizarre affair, with confusion over the dress code, top riders - and some middling - presented on stage as if it's a fashion show, and then not actually much revealed a lot of the time. It isn't until late next spring that we will really get to see how the route actually really shapes up. As a marketing exercise for the Tour, though, it is a huge deal, and the fact I am writing this much about it shows that it clearly does mean something. Or there isn't much else to write about in late October. The Giro d'Italia would kill for this level of hype. 

Anyway, let's not get trapped in a spiral of whether this is worth writing or not, and just get on with it. The stars of the cycling world were out in Paris - Tadej Pogačar! Annemiek van Vleuten! err, Maxime Bouet! - and there was plenty of social media content as well.

Out of the Tour bubble there are tweets about football and cycling, a man with an ingenious way of transporting his suitcase, and less than ideal bike infrastructure. We have almost it all covered. Tuck in.

1. Tadej Pogačar, two time Tour de France winner, did not get the memo that everyone was wearing jeans and a jacket to the route presentation on Thursday. He looked good though, I'd say, one of the picks of an odd bunch

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2. How many Tour de France stages does it take to tie a tie? 47 apparently, as Mark Cavendish, Michael Matthews and Tadej Pogačar all struggled backstage

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3. Someone told the admin behind the Human Powered Health Twitter account to be very excited about the Tour de France Femmes route. Fair play, it is a good route

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4. I love how happy Maxime Bouet looks to just be at the Tour de France presentation. He has ridden nine so far, so I guess he knows a good route when he sees it? Nacer Bouhanni not so much, but then his Tour record has been a bit more chequered...

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5. Tour de France route crossed with Second World War history? Someone call Florian Vermeersch, his dream is happening. Maybe there's someone at ASO who is really pro or anti Petain, maybe this is a call I should be putting in today

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6. Tadej Pogačar will be hoping that his Tour de France story is not an Unfinished Symphony, and that there will be no Teardrops next year...

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7. Away from the Tour de France, EF boss Jonathan Vaughters welcome's his new overlord

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8. I hope he managed to stay upright through Edinburgh? You would not want the wheels on that suitcase caught in a tram track, would you

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9. Mark Cavendish might not have found a new team for 2023 yet, but at least it hasn't gone all completely Pete Tong for him. Oh, wait...

10. What's so good about cycling anyway? Just get a car

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11. Taco van der Hoorn clearly has not got the hang of teamwork

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12. With Nice currently 12th in Ligue 1, maybe what they need is an experienced Welsh player that isn't Aaron Ramsey

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13. Finally, here's the perfect Halloween costume if you're still scratching your head. What's spookier than Aaron Gate?

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Adam Becket
Senior news and features writer

Adam is Cycling Weekly’s senior news and feature writer – his greatest love is road racing but as long as he is cycling on tarmac, he's happy. Before joining Cycling Weekly he spent two years writing for Procycling, where he interviewed riders and wrote about racing, speaking to people as varied as Demi Vollering to Philippe Gilbert. Before cycling took over his professional life, he covered ecclesiastical matters at the world’s largest Anglican newspaper and politics at Business Insider. Don't ask how that is related to cycling.