Tour de France 2010

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Tour de France 2010

Recently, I wrote a post – tips to improve cycling fitness – but, really I should add another one – disable Eurosport so you don’t spend all summer watching the Tour in the vain hope this will teach you all the pro tactics necessary to effectively ride a 25 mile time trial up a British dual carriageway.

Yes, It’s that time of the year when we can enjoy stunning scenery, legendary commentating, and hours and hours of the top pro cyclists winding their way through the street furniture of France and northern Europe. You just never know what the tour will throw up – will it be EPO, will it be testosterone, will it be blood boasting hormones – or will it just be an honest, clean race, with the best man winning in the mountains?

It’s a strange spectator sport the Tour de France. It’s rarely on the edge of your seat stuff, though at the same time oddly addictive. You can’t help but feel a little guilty when the most exciting event of the day is a big bunch crash because some dog strayed into the massed ranks of the peloton.

It all looks pretty impressive, especially the size of the crowds in Belgium; though I am most impressed by the way the cyclists just get up after a crash and nurse their broken collar bone through several Alpine passes. I know if it was me, at the first sign of any blood, I would be laying in the gutter feinting and waiting for the passing Ambulance van. I certainly wouldn’t be riding the next day after a heavy crash – let alone racing. One thing you can’t doubt is how much the Tour de France means to the riders. I’ve seen more grown men cry in the Tour de France (winning a stage, retiring through injury, failing a dope test e.t.c) than anywhere else.

If sportsman were paid on commitment, sacrifice and hardship, procyclists would be getting 100 times more than the most famous premiership strikers – players who are ‘too tired after playing 2 games of 90 minutes every week’. A 90 minute kick around – that’s what the tour riders do on their off day! (And the modern pro cyclist has it easy compared to the really hard tours of the pre-war era, In those black and white / pre deraileur gear days it was-  let’s see who is last man standing after stages of 500km with only a bottle of champagne and a case of barbiturates to keep you going.

Talking of sacrifice, I was reading an interview with Bradley Wiggins pre-tour. He was explaining how he was getting ready to dip to his optimal race weight of 73 kilos – that fine line between losing weight and making his body anorexically light and open to infection. Bradley was explaining 2 kilos was worth 2 to 3 minutes on a mountain day. – At least, now I know why Jan Ullrich was known to have wasted his talent for turning up to the Tour 10 kilos overweight because he’d been stuffing his face with hamburgers and pies. But, just imagine if Wayne Rooney or the Brazilian Ronaldo needed to get his weight within 1 kilo of the optimal power to weight ratio?

For most of the day, the most exciting thing is watching the time gap to the break – will they stay away won’t they? You’d like to think that there is always a good chance, but, you know ex-pro Sean Kelly will soon snuff out any hopeful optimism with his dose of almost depressingly unflappable professional realism.

Anyway, if you get bored of the racing you can always just enjoy  the commentary. In the good old days, David Duffield would lax lyrical about the best champagne, verses from the bible, competing in 24 hour time trials – just about anything apart from what was happening (which was mostly nothing anyway). The racing seemed to be incidental, but it was entertaining in a strange kind of way. These days, there is a worrying trend to interview director sportifs with their interminable platitudes about ‘needing to try and stay out of trouble, it’s a new era for cycling, it’s a hard race the Tour de France.’ The only thing that surprises me is when something unusual happens, like someone attacks, the commentary may be so focused on the local history of an old church that the action goes unnoticed. And why don’t they show us highlights of the breaks forming at the start of the race?

‘It’s a hard race the tour de France’ – well that’s one thing that certainly can’t be denied.

Prediction for Winner 2011

Bradley Wiggins – why not – he’s British and is we know the British never settle for second place…

Related

• Tour de France funny
• List of Tour de France winners
• Tour de France 2010 – official site