From the bar of his family’s hotel, La Regence, in Villefranche-sur-Mer, Alexis Gigant keeps one eye on the reception of the hotel and one on the road outside. Situated just around the headland from Nice on the Basse Corniche, the low coastal road that connects the southern French city to Monaco, Gigant has a bird’s eye view of everything that happens in his neighbourhood. But it’s not the fast cars zipping past that catch his eye.
Instead, he is much more interested in the people riding their state-of-the-art bikes. “Look, there’s Tadej Pogačar,” Gigant said during a conversation we had last year, as he pointed to a figure paused at the traffic lights outside who, despite the helmet and shades, he instantly recognised as the Slovenian rider who today swept down the Promenade des Anglais in Nice to win the Tour de France for the third time.
Since La Regence is my local, where I stop for a morning coffee after the school drop-off (inevitably alongside someone in tight lycra), I’m often the one asking him: “who?” But, after more than a decade of living in this corner of the world, the names are becoming a little more familiar. It’s not just because many pros choose to live down the road in Monaco; thanks to the region’s mountains-meets-sea terrain, the Côte d’Azur is a cycling paradise. Even if road biking isn’t your thing, it seeps in almost by osmosis.
That’s definitely the case for me with Gigant and his large cycling crew who rattle off the names of legendary mountain passes and coastal routes they are fortunate to have on their doorstep: Col de Turini, Col de Nice, Col de Braus and the most mythical of them all, Col de la Madone.
That’s why it’s no surprise to anyone living here that, with Paris otherwise occupied this July with the Olympic Games, Nice was chosen as the finishing line for this year’s Tour de France. It’s the first time in the history of the event that the final day took place somewhere other than the French capital.
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“This region is made for cycling,” says Gigant’s cycling buddy and six-time Tour de France rider Christophe Le Mével, who is now an agent to today’s crop of cycling stars. “There’s the climate, then there is the topography. The…
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