Today, I took a break from my morning Tour viewing and went out into the real world. I drove my car into town, and for once, I didn’t say to one of the many cyclists I (safely) passed, “Why are you out riding your bike? The Tour is on.”
I left the house at about 100-and-blah-blah km to go, safe in the assumption that on a sweltering day, the break would not stay away, that Chris Froome would remain in the maillot jaune, and Marcel Kittel would win the bunch sprint. And what do you know?
For the second day in a row, it was a million degrees, the break didn’t stay away, Froome stayed in yellow, and Kittel won the sprint. In a photo finish with Edvald Boassen Hagen, who I would have dearly loved to have won, but, nevertheless. Doesn’t leave the viewer with much to contemplate, at the end of the stage.
It was a bit like Groundhog Day, in which you wake to the same events day after day. So then, in the Tour version of the movie, who plays Bill Murray? Whose dream (or nightmare) are we living in during this dull section of the Tour? Christian Prudhomme? Any GC contender but Chris Froome? And who is Ned Ryerson? Phil, or Paul? Every smart-ass with an opinion on the internet? Peter Sagan’s lawyers? That last chicane is a doozy, I tell you.
So if this Tour so far is a bit like the movie, if we have a chance to wake up tomorrow and start over with a little more insight gained from the same-old day before, then what would we change? Well, obviously, they head up into the mountains tomorrow, so some stuff will change (not the Froome bit, but they will be going uphill).
I read an interesting article today on Cycling Weekly, exploring the opinion that shortening these long, dragged-out stages that just end up in a bunch sprint anyway would diminish nothing about the race, but relieve some of the monotony, and would also encourage some animation among the riders, who would be more willing to split up the race, and go into breaks that might have more consequence.
But as someone quoted pointed out: it’s the “Tour” de France. A tour. You go around, you know, France, from one start town to the next, until you have covered, in some shape or pattern, nearly every part of the la Republique. You can’t cover that much ground over road if you don’t ride your bike from one point to the next. If speed for those with short attention spans is what you require, let’s make a big whoop over a Tour through some smaller place. Lichtenstein comes to mind. Or Staten Island. Just pray the echelons stay upwind of the dump.
It is the onus of the TV coverage, really, to make the Tour into a watchable television event, as the riders and organizers go about their business, and cover the ground they need to cover to make the Tour the Tour, visiting small towns and big cities, coast and countryside, as they have done for more than a century.
Today NBC Sports tried to do that with a little viewer poll, and asked what roadside spectacle people thought was most interesting. Was it the French cheerleaders waving pompoms around in a stilted way? Or the band playing some nineties tune? It was a good effort toward filling a dull stage, but it didn’t really bring to light anything really interesting about the Tour, that either happens on or off the road. I just ended up down another Wiki rabbit hole as I half-watched (do you know what an Ingvaeonic language is? Well, I do now!).
Instead, I would, during these stretches, love to learn more about what goes behind the scenes at the race, which you see some of, but never enough. Give Taylor Phinney a camera, and let him loose. It can’t cost that much. He told a hilarious story the other day about Alberto Contador blowing a pink whistle at people who got in his way while he was trying to get out of Dodge after the stage. That was awesome. More of that, please. Otherwise, in the long, dead center of a great traipse around Burgundy, just show Groundhog Day again. I’ll likely watch it. It seems sort of familiar, but somehow, always new.
Tour Devoted 