‘I was on the verge of crying’ – heartache and salvation inside the broom wagon on Tour de France queen stage

“Quel est l’écart?” – what’s the gap? Dorian Godon asks the driver of the broom wagon, the last vehicle on the Tour de France route, essentially the peloton’s backstop. Fall behind it and you’re out.

“Six minutes,” Stéphane Bezault, the man who drives the Tour’s most feared vehicle, replies. Godon bows his head. He takes another bidon from Bezault, drinks a splash of it, and pours the rest over his head. It’s only 19°C, nothing like the infernal heat of week one, but he’s suffering like a dog.

Godon’s still got 15km left to the top of the Col du Galibier, one of cycling’s hardest and highest climbs. And he’s bereft of support from his Netcompany-Ineos teammates. He’s got a mountain to climb – literally and metaphorically. His Tour de France participation is so cruelly hanging in the balance – on the penultimate stage.

But he’s not alone. Luigi from Super Mario pushes him up the 8% gradients for 50 metres. Ditto a man dressed head to toe in polka dot. Three young men dressed in hot pants follow suit. Likewise three young men dressed far less revealingly.

This is Godon’s solo battle against the broom wagon, but the tens of thousands of fans by the roadside, many of whom recognise Godon for being the French champion until just one month ago, are with him every slow, sluggish, weary pedal stroke. It takes an entire mountain to resist the broom wagon.

But even the broom wagon, that most anxiety-inducing of vans for cyclists, is here to help. Thanks to this white van, the Frenchman will make it to Paris – it will not scoop him up in a ball of anguish and heartache.

Others won’t be so lucky on stage 20, however.

A century of collecting stragglers

The broom wagon, or voiture balai in French, has been in the Tour since 1910. Its only role is to collect the dropouts. Whether through injury, illness or fatigue, if a rider can’t go on anymore, the white Volkswagen sponsored by a window and skylight company, Velux, is there to sweep up the oft-distraught stragglers.

Once upon a time there was, but nowadays there is no broom. But the name, and legend, lives on. What there are spaces for are several bikes, two empty seats next to me, and a commissaire from the French cycling federation who’s more interested in eating his mid-morning burger and hot dog than actually policing misdemeanours (and boy are there many).

This year 13 riders have been mopped up by Bezault, the driver of the Tour’s broom wagon since 2017. Although it’s rarer and rarer that a rider actually gets into the van these days (they typically hop into a waiting team car or persist to the finish, even if they’re outside the time cut) it does still happen. Hence the van’s continued presence. And stage 20, the queen stage of the 2026 edition, poses a far greater threat to the peloton’s backmarkers.

5,600 of elevation metres, three HC climbs, and the possibility of thunderstorms. The gruppetto – the collection of riders, mostly sprinters, at the back of the race – will have the spectre of the voiture balai hanging over them up and over the high Alps.

Two quit in half-an-hour

On the lower slopes of the Col de la Croix de Fer, the day’s torment begins for the race’s biggest bodies. Aaron Gate, the race’s oldest debutant at 35, is pedalling squares, and he’s only done 10km. His XDS Astana teammate Davide Ballerini, no stranger to seeing the broom wagon in his rear view mirror, drops back and helps him. The pair each take aero bottles from their team’s soigneurs. Given their speed, it’s like a cruel, ironic joke.

But Gate and Ballerini will find a second wind. 35 riders will finish after them on Alpe d’Huez. That’s how this race ebbs and flows, and even more so in the third week.

Pascal Ackermann, out of nowhere, takes their place at the rear of the race. His head is bowed and his legs are like jelly. Just 22km into the 171km stage, he grinds to a halt halfway up the Croix de Fer. He gently puts his bike down on the road, and sits down. The tears are next to fall. He’s abandoning. His Jayco AlUla sports directors, Mat Hayman and Steve Cummings, step out of their car and console him. But they’re unable to. Still the tears flow for Ackermann.

Space is cleared for him in the Volkswagen van. He is pointed towards the middle seat, to take up position next to myself, but he opts to ride back down the mountain and to his team’s bus. When he gets there, he’s met by German broadcaster ARD. He’s still crying. “I was simply at my absolute limit the last two days,” he says through sniffles. “I just couldn’t get going anymore. My legs were empty. My big goal was to reach Paris. I didn’t manage that and I’m pretty disappointed.”

There’s no sigh, no distress, no sympathy from the broom wagon. To Bezault and the commissaire, Ackermann is just another rider who has fallen short.

Ilan Van Wilder is next. The Soudal Quick-Step rider is 12th on GC, an outside pick to win the stage, but after being dropped by the peloton early on, he crashes on the descent of the Croix de Fer. His left side is bloodied, bruised and cut open. He’s walking OK, and his team later confirm he’s just suffered abrasions and no major injury, but like Ackermann, he rejects the broom wagon. The ambulance is favoured.

There’s shame, clearly, in being bundled into the back of the voiture balai.

Godon's not-so-solo fight

Godon is fighting against what seems inevitable. Caught up in a high-speed crash during stage 12’s bunch sprint in Chalon-sur-Saône, he has been struggling ever since.

He drops to the back of the race at the bottom of the Col du Télégraphe just as the first (and last) drops of rain fall. His posture and riding form don’t indicate signs of trouble, but his head keeps dropping. Bezault pulls up alongside him and asks how he is. “Va bien” – I’m OK – he responds.

This is Godon’s solitary-yet-no-so-solitary long, arduous battle against the Télégraphe and Galibier. He accepts a Coca-Cola from Bezault, but refuses a bag of Haribos (thrown out by the publicity caravan) by a fan. A young boy, no older than 10, screams ‘Allez Dorian’ through a megaphone. The cries echo up the mountain. Everyone is willing him on to make the time cut.

Bezault gives him a plastic bottle of Vittel. Five minutes later it’s a Vittel-branded bidon. Two more follow. Then he’s handed a gel. The commissaire, seated in the front of the broom wagon, turns a blind eye to the questionably long sticky bottles, occasionally lengthy drafts behind a car’s slipstream, and the odd super-tuck. A gendarme on a motorbike drives past and lets out a prolonged and loud yawn. He’s evidently not riveted by Godon’s 15km/h speed. But neither will he punish the assistance Godon is being afforded. It pays to be French, clearly.

Towards the top of the Galibier, in large part thanks to the broom wagon's invaluable aid, Godon closes in on the other strugglers, but can’t quite regain touch. One kilometre down the other side and he almost comes a cropper. It was a long ascent, and it looks like it's going to be a long descent, too.

Enter Josh Tarling to play the Wout van Aert role. The Welsh time trial specialist drops back – though he says unintentionally so and more a result of his own struggles – to pace Godon down the Galibier, from a height of 2,631m to 1,184m, through tunnels, past the viewpoints of glaciers, and around dozens of sweeping bends. “There was a headwind and it [the descent] was dead straight so we could keep swapping off,” Tarling explains.

When they reach the Col de Sarenne, the alternative way up Alpe d’Huez, Godon is no longer last. Lotto-Intermarché’s Liam Slock, held up by a puncture, is. Neither he nor Godon nor the remaining 158 riders still in the race will be caught by the broom wagon.

“With the crash and especially the heat, he was just suffering. He’s alright, but he’s had a rough week,” Tarling goes on. “We actually had a big margin all day but it was scary with the time limit at points. But we didn’t need to stress it as hard by the end.”

Ackermann and Van Wilder are the day’s only casualties. The last riders, Cofidis’ Benjamin Thomas and Jenthe Biermans, arrive 43 minutes after stage winner Richard Carapaz but crucially seven minutes before the 50:56 cut-off time. It was never in doubt. But how Godon suffered.

“Since the crash, I’ve had trouble breathing through my diaphragm and I was in trouble,” the 30-year-old says. The Télégraphe and Galibier, he admits, were a “disaster”. “I couldn’t go any further," he adds. “It was pain from start to finish. Even my brain didn’t want to force it anymore. I was on the verge of crying at some points – I couldn’t do it anymore.”

As he found out, though, the broom wagon is not the enemy; it’s the aid. It doesn’t end dreams; it keeps them alive.