The 2026 Tour de France starts on Saturday with a 19.7-kilometre team time trial around Barcelona, the first time the Catalan capital has hosted the race’s ‘Grand Depart’.Defending champion Tadej Pogacar, previous double Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard and 19-year-old sensation Paul Seixas will not, however, be following the example of June 1992, when most of FC Barcelona’s squad made the much more testing climb out of the city and up the slopes of nearby Montserrat.As part of the celebrations after Johan Cruyff’s ‘Dream Team’ had just won the club’s first European Cup trophy, Pep Guardiola, Hristo Stoichkov and Jose Maria Bakero were among the players who pedalled the traditional 50km (31 miles) pilgrimage up the holy mountain with half a million happy fans lining the route.“Climbing Montserrat from Barcelona by bike was a promise often made in such circumstances,” says Spanish football historian Angel Iturriaga. “There were no open-top bus parades in those days. This was the chance for the supporters to line the streets. The images of the players all climbing the mountain are really iconic.”Coming a week after Barca had also won the Spanish title by overhauling Clasico rivals Real Madrid on La Liga’s final day, players and staff gathered at the old ‘Mini Estadi’ by their Camp Nou stadium. Three-time Grand Slam winner Arantxa Sanchez Vicario saw them off. Future Tour winner Pedro Delgado and long-time Kelme sporting director Rafael Carrasco were also present.Accompanying the players on the road was Melcior Mauri, a Spanish pro cyclist who had won the previous year’s Vuelta a Espana race — another of the big three Grand Tours.Barcelona’s players embark on their ride in 1992 (FC Barcelona/Segui)“It was a special day, a celebration,” Mauri tells The Athletic. “And the players quickly realised the size of the challenge of climbing Montserrat. They thought it would be easier. I remember Bakero saying to me, ‘Yikes, this is tougher than I thought; you all suffer like this every day?’. And I just replied, ‘Yep’. They realised just how difficult cycling is.”Barca president Josep Lluis Nunez and Cruyff took cars up the mountain, as did injured trio Andoni Zubizarreta, Txiki Begiristain and Richard Witschge. The only two players not present were Ronald Koeman, on international duty with the Netherlands, and Michael Laudrup, who cried off with flu.First to the top was future Barcelona and Manchester City manager Guardiola. That surprised those who had earlier seen the 21-year-old struggling to keep his front wheel straight early on the officially rated category 2 climb, which has a fearsome gradient of 11.3 per cent over the final 7.4 kilometres.It quickly emerged that Guardiola had hitched onto a motorbike ridden by club vice-president Joan Gaspart, while Stoichkov was among the other players to receive similar help.