I was really looking forward to the Tour this year. I thought, with Lance Armstrong out, it’d really open up.
Well there’s no denying that it’s opened up – especially with all the pre-Tour favourites like Ullrich and Basso being thrown out just before the start – but there’s such a thing as opening up too much. Somehow the magic’s gone. It’s not even as if I was a great Armstrong fan, but without a focus – a dominant personality – the whole thing’s beginning to seem like a pointless exercise in extreme suffering. One day it’s 250 kilometres in scorching heat across the centre of France, then it’s up the Pyrenees, then more long gruelling stages, then yesterday up the Alpe D’Huez, now today up – how many? four? – mountains. Not just any mountains: these are big mountains. Tomorrow more mountains. And the main excitement of today’s stage was seeing the yellow jersey and favourite, mild-mannered charisma-free Mennonite Floyd Landis, crack on the last climb. “Landis looks like a broken man there Phil…”, and the thought inevitably occurs – well, the other guys are being a bit smarter with their drugs than poor old Floyd. I mean, how else is anyone meant to get through all that shit? If they insist on making it so tough that you’re doing serious damage to your body (didn’t I read somewhere that Tour cyclists tend to die younger than average?), then of course they’ll take drugs if they can get away with it.
Still, I’d been looking forward to another US winner, just to annoy the French. After Lance, Floyd: good all-American names. It doesn’t seem likely now though. Levi Leipheimer’s the highest-placed American in ninth. And what happened to the strange-looking George Hincapie? I’ve been waiting all Tour for someone to say, “Hey George, why the long face?”
Good news for us Brits though: Bradley Wiggins is still in there in his first Tour, even if he is somewhere round 150th. Did Chris Boardman ever make it so far? All he needs to do next year is shorten his name: Brad Wiggins sounds like a serious contender.
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