Tour De France

I was going to wait until the end of this year's tour to do a post, but after last night's stage the tour is virtually over anyways so why wait? Before I go into the tour itself, a little side note about my own personal virtual tour, which is also virtually over, thank god!
My mate Ivo has invited me for the last two years to take part in a virtual tour where you pick a team and score points for their actual results. Well, really it has been a disaster. The main problem is that everyone picks from the same pool of riders (I've argued for a drafting system, but that would be too hard to organise). Anyways, in any given tour that are sure fire guys that you need in your team and that everyone else will also have (e.g. Contador,Schleck (both),Cavandish,Husvold, Menchov and Cancellara). Unfortunately, I didn't have Cancellara in my team (actually I did at one stage but substituted him for Bradley Wiggins to try and get a point of difference from other players (Dumb!). Of course Cancellara won the first stage and carried the yellow jersey for a few days, killing my team in the first few days. Great! The two most bothersome things for me about this are: 1. I did an inordinate amount of smack-talking pre-tour about how I was going to destroy Ivo this year and 2. my team's chances were decimated by a guy named Fabian. That really hurt.
Now back to the real tour. I don't know why I like following the tour, it's a bit difficult to explain but I'll give it a go. I naturally started following it back in Holland where everyone is bike mad (not necessarily bike-racing mad but still).For myself, once I got into the tour I was a demon on the bike path. I'd be timing my sprints to get past unsuspecting riders so that I could beat them to the next telephone pole or sign post or whatever my finishing line was. If I couldn't quite make it there was always the next telephone pole or sign post or something( Hey! the guys in the real tour cheat,why shouldn't I?) I even pre-dated Lance with "The Look" as I would ride away from these pretenders.
It's great, for a few weeks in summer, you can come home from work, crack a beer, jump on the couch for an hour and a half and watch a 120 guys go out and kill themselves for virtually no reason. In the weekends, you even get to watch the whole stage which might last 5 or 6 hours. Now here is my key to being able to follow a tour that last 3 weeks and 3500 kms. The announcers. Stages normally follow a script. Start,breakaway,shuffling,peloton hauls in breakaway, sprint/climb. The great thing about this is that there is drama inter spaced between all of this and the announcer needs to be able to convey this. I would compare this to 5 day test cricket, which without a good commentator to spot the small things that happen ball to ball is about as exciting as calculating tax(boring AND painful). Mart Smeets (dutch announcer) was always a bit over the top in this regard (ie everything was dramatic) but he was genuinely happy to be their like a giddy school girl at a Justin Bieber concert. (OK maybe not that bad but that's exactly the type of hyperbole that he would use actually!). Watching for developments,telling stories of the olden days,explaining what's actually happening in the moment is all part of the package. Of course he's been doing it for years and I may have been it bit spoiled. I went to Florida to visit my mother one year during the years that Lance Armstrong was dominating. This was being covered on American television (only because Lance would win and I'm dead serious about that. I doubt that the tour will be covered in the states next year after Lance is finished). Anyways, listening to the announcers was excruciatingly painful because they didn't have the history, they dumbed everything down to their audience and the three most important things for them to talk about were 1. Lance 2. Lance 3. Lance. It was horrible and totally put me off. I don't even know who the announcers are that I watch here in New Zealand, but they are quite good (I think they are an Australian and an Englishman). The only problem is the time difference, as usual, with any world wide event that you try to follow in New Zealand. I can catch the first hour or so of a stage or my other option is to catch the replay of the last 2 hours the evening after, when I already know the result. Less than optimal, but at least I enjoy the way the announcers bring it. I can get into it again.
As far as this year's tour has gone, I think that it has pretty much gone to script. Contador had to be the favourite as long as something bad didn't happen to him. We got about 15 minutes of supreme tension the other day when Cantador,Schleck,Van den Broek,Menchov and Sanchez (the top 5) found themselves riding together all alone. When Schlek made his move, how inexplicable (just weird!) was it that his chain would let go at that exact moment. Don't get me wrong, it would have been exciting to see what would have happened but I truly feel that even if he had ridden away from that group the four of them would have pulled him back on the descent, just as much as they rode away from him when he was trying to play catch up by himself. The most exciting thing now is that it really bodes well for next year. Schleck will be a true contender to Contador especially if he has Frank with him. Andy will be more determined while Contador may be susceptible to a bit of complacency and most importantly the roles of Andy as the underdog and Contador as the villain will be set. It will be an epic match of testicular fortitude which of course is a perfect description for the Tour de France as a whole. Would you want to be a testicle after 3500 kms on a hard seat?