Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser took the first yellow jersey of her career by winning a 21km time trial from Gevrey-Chambertin to Dijon in the fourth stage of the Tour de France Femmes.

The time trial world champion, 34, completed the course in 27 minutes and 30 seconds, ending the day with a 14-second lead over Demi Vollering after the Dutchwoman was third in the trial.

Reusser beat Netherlands rider Lieke Nooijen’s formidable target by four seconds, while 21-year-old Briton Zoe Backstedt, a junior world champion in this discipline, was 20 seconds behind the leader and finished fourth in the only time trial of her debut tour.

Having started the day in yellow, Norway’s Sigrid Haugset struggled after Monday’s stunning solo breakaway and is now fourth overall after finishing three minutes behind Reusser.

As riders withstood temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius in eastern France, defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prevot also struggled and the French native lost two minutes and 14 seconds to Reusser.

Reusser, a favourite to win the time trial, admitted that she and her team had been eyeing up this fourth stage for a while.

“Of course, I’m super, super happy,” she said.

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“This was the idea that we had since a long time – my goal of the year.

“I knew we were going to start in Switzerland on the Swiss national day, and we’re going to have a time trial as the fourth day.

“We’ve been talking about it for a long time, Project Dijon, for the yellow colour of the mustard! To win the time trial and maybe take yellow. It worked out.

“Always it’s hard and you know it’s not necessarily going to happen so, that it happened like this? Super happy!”

Coventry City have signed 25-year-old goalkeeper Carl Rushworth from Brighton & Hove Albion following his successful loan at the CBS Arena.

The deal is reportedly worth a club record £22m but neither club has made the fee public, nor has the length of his “long-term contract” been revealed.

Rushworth played in all 46 of Coventry’s league games last season, keeping 17 clean sheets as they won the Championship to end their 25-year wait to return to the Premier League.

“I’m really happy, there’s so many emotions that I’ve got,” said Rushworth.

“There’s excitement, I can finally relax knowing it’s done and that I’m back with the boys and at a club I loved being at.”

Rushworth never made a senior appearance for Brighton and experienced six different loans over seven years having signed from hometown club Halifax Town in 2019.

“It’s great to have Carl back with us on a permanent basis,” said manager Frank Lampard.

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“He’s a top professional, a great character and he had a huge impact on the team to help us get promoted last season.”

“With more money coming in from qualification for the European Championships, particularly Euro 2016, we ended up being more cash-rich,” says Jonathan Ford, chief executive of the Football Association of Wales (FAW) from 2009 to 2021.

“That enabled us to put more money across the board: women’s football, grassroots football. We transformed the women’s game.”

Uefa vice-president Laura McAllister is a former captain of Wales who played a leading role in getting the FAW to formally establish a national women’s team in the 1990s.

“There was nothing inevitable about what happened post-2016 and that’s why I think we should give credit to the FAW, and Jonathan Ford particularly, for steering us out of the tournament into that era,” says McAllister.

“I was part of the FAW Trust in 2016. I can remember times before that when Jonathan came into the board and said things like, ‘Until the men qualify for a major tournament, we can’t invest in X, Y and Z’. And that included the women’s national team.

“While I bristled at that because it felt unfair, the financial realities of the FAW meant until the men got to a position where they generated income from participating and winning, it was going to be impossible for us to deliver the strategy we had for Welsh football.”

McAllister travelled to France 10 years ago as a fan, and Qatar in 2022 to cheer on Wales’ men at a World Cup.

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When the women played at Euro 2025 in Switzerland, McAllister was there again to see the legacy not only of her own pioneering work in establishing the team but the far-reaching effects of 2016.

“Something happens when you qualify. It’s flicking a switch in mentality – it becomes something realistic and achievable,” she adds.

“What matters far more is what you do with the breakthrough moment, not how you’ve performed.”

Wales’ women are now trying to take the next step of qualifying for their first World Cup, while the men looked on enviously as their showpiece event happened without them in the United States, Canada and Mexico this summer.

Disappointing as it was, that frustration itself represented a shift in mindset that came after Euro 2016 – a sharp contrast to the passive acceptance that met Wales’ previous absence from major tournaments.

Since that golden month in France, Wales feel like they belong at this level.

“The best thing we could give the teams coming after us was to say it’s possible,” says Coleman.

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Subsequent qualifications have been the legacy of Euro 2016, while future ambitions are proof of a desire to ensure generations to come continue to build on the foundations laid by their predecessors.

There is plenty more Wales’ men and women want to achieve but, whatever happens, there will never be another summer quite like Euro 2016.

“We’re so proud of each other and what we achieved,” says Ledley.

“Nobody thought we’d do it. When I walk down the street now, everyone says, ‘Thank you for 2016, the best summer of my life’.”

James can attest to that. “It remains the best month of my life,” he says. “I don’t think you often know it’s the best month of your life as it’s happening.”

With the benefit of hindsight, it is laughable to think you could find a Welsh football fan who would disagree.

You can listen to all three episodes of Iconic: The Summer that Changed Welsh Football on BBC Sounds.

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