cookie’s Random Jottings
cookie’s Random Jottings
I’m writing this on the penultimate day of the 2012 Tour de France, and it’s looking like we may, in Bradley Wiggins, see the first ever British winner.
It’s one of the only sporting events I take an active interest in, and as the ‘most dramatic three-week soap opera on the planet’ draws to a close, I’m feeling that I may get some kind of normality return to my life. I don’t have a tv – haven’t done for years – so I have to wait until late evening each day for the highlights show to appear online. I never imagined how difficult it would be to avoid finding out the result of what I always took to be something of a minority sport. (That said, the Tour de France is the biggest spectator sport in the world). Absolutely no Twitter or internet news pages for most of the day, no listening to French radio while I’m washing up, looking the other way if I pass a tv tuned to Sky Sports, the list goes on... Don’t ask me about current affairs, I’ve seen or heard no news for nearly three weeks now.
Bradley Wiggins – heir apparent
That brings us neatly to Sky, the sponsor of the team that is delivering our first British Tour de France winner. They’ve obviously thrown a vast amount of money at the team, which contains the yellow jersey, the world champion, the Norwegian champion and an almost certain future Tour de France winner too. The tv coverage of the tour, remains though in the broadcasting fiefdom that is ITV4. I wonder how long before Rupert Murdoch’s empire muscles in? It’ll be a shame if and when they do as I’ve become quite attached to the current presenting/commentating team. I’d really miss Phil Liggett’s pronunciation of ‘hors catégorie’ as ‘whore’s category’.
ITV have decided to show the last two stages on ITV1 since there’s a likely British winner, a member of the British Sky team a likely second, and a third Brit – Mark Cavendish – likely to cross the line first on the Champs Elysées. I suppose you could see this as shameless bandwagon-jumping, but it really is something to get excited about. If you still don’t believe me, check out this short film of the climax of yesterday’s stage to see just how much faster Mark Cavendish is than any other cyclist on the planet. He makes his move at around 0’48’’.
Worth mentioning also that in what is probably the most corrupt sport there is doping-wise, the Sky team have a really strict ‘clean’ policy. There’s an interesting paradox in that, despite the sport’s reputation for doping, it has probably the strongest code of sportsmanship of any sport I know, (including cricket these days). When the race was in the Pyrenees a few days ago, there were carpet tacks thrown onto the road. Wiggins could have taken full advantage of the fact that his main rival had punctured. Instead he instigated the peloton slowing down until every rider in contention that had punctured had caught up. Reassuring in this day and age.
So, by the time you read this, we may have our first Tour de France winner. I’ll certainly be going to the end of my street to see the Olympic road race go by, and will take a keen interest in the track cycling at which we Brits have excelled for the last few years.
It’s occurred to me that I often talk in these jotting about defining moments. I’ve just remembered one. I was really quite young and, on a family holiday visiting relatives in Portsmouth, my parents took me to a track meeting. For a young boy it was all quite fascinating and then, at the end of the meeting, there was a ‘devil take the hindmost’ race whereby the last to cross the line each lap was eliminated. This of course resulted in a two-man sprint on the last lap, which was made all the more exciting by the fact that the protagonists were brothers. That was it – I was hooked, and have taken a passive interest ever since.
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Vive le Tour!
Saturday, 21 July 2012