And Now for Your Viewing Pleasure, the Tour de France
Not into Wimbledon? Watching the world's greatest bike race is a pretty terrific option
by Jen See
[view the original article here]
Sunday’s Tour de France Stage 8 was broadcast on live television around the world at the same time as the last day of Wimbledon. Some said that more people in Britain watched the final match between local boy Andy Murray and Swiss star Roger Federer than watched the Tour stage featuring British race leader Bradley Wiggins pedaling his first day in yellow.
Asked after the stage what he thought about that, Wiggins was reported as saying, “Tennis is nothing; it only lasts one and a half hours.” Well, tennis may not be nothing, but Tour stages do last a lot longer than one and a half hours.
Watching cycling is a little different from watching most other sports, largely because fans thrive on anticipation. What’s going to happen when the race gets to the day’s final climb? Who’s going to win the field sprint? Wait five hours and find out. There’s time for lunch and coffee, and more coffee, and maybe a bottle of wine. Cycling is for savoring.
Some say bike racing is boring to watch, but of course the question we should ask is, why is cycling so much fun to watch? The races are long, and in the case of the Tour de France, it demands a three-week commitment. Cycling’s appeal comes in part from the landscapes it crosses, the weird and wonderful roadside attractions, the monkey wrench of unpredictability that weather and road conditions can throw at riders, and of course there's the humbling physical difficulty.
On the scenery front, cycling stands above other televised sports such as tennis and arena games like football. Watch a baseball game, and look forward to seeing the same green expanse of turf and an outlined diamond. The backdrop of a bicycle race is constantly moving. Riders pass by farmlands, medieval towns, even strip malls. They pedal up and over high mountains and through gorgeous valleys.
Then there are the spectators on the roadside, lots of them. Sometimes hundreds of thousands. And they often create things for the Tour, quite grand things. The French go all out, and although the flat stages of a race like the Tour may not yield scintillating racing, the farm art is highly recommended. Wheat fields play host to a dozen tractors driving around in the shape of a bicycle wheel, fans dance in cycling-themed shapes, and there are spray-painted cows. Who doesn’t appreciate a spray-painted cow?
Fans and their costumes are amusing and embarrassing, but mostly happily embarrassing. Some will do just about anything to get on TV. Who will run into the camera’s view next? Could be a sumo warrior, Borat look-alikes in fluorescent mankinis, or a six-foot fuzzy bunny (I do admit I’d like to un-see some of those dudes in thongs running up mountain passes). But this is part of the spectacle, colorful and unexpected.
As we see all too often, match-ups between unequal teams in the NBA result in blow-outs, and so too bike racing sometimes fails to deliver in the suspense department. One reason is that some riders are so perfectly suited to a particular race that their victory can feel predetermined. Think Fabian Cancellara in a time trial. World champion Mark Cavendish in a field sprint.
But in bicycle racing the monkey wrench is always at play. Even a moderate crosswind can unravel a team’s best-laid plans. Flat tires can throw favorites out of contention instantly. Crashes create chaos and carnage. On Wednesday, a crash took Cavendish out of the sprint and André Greipel snagged the victory. That’s bike racing.
In a baseball game, the runs add up one after the other. A team gets a lead, and it’s clear just what the opposing team needs to do to catch up. Though cycling must follow a set route, the racing’s anything but linear. Cycling has no scoreboard. There’s no running up the score and leaving the other team behind. And races can change fast. A breakaway rider goes up the road and hours later the lone soul looks like he’s going to win the day—that is, until he’s swept up meters from the line by a pack of 190 riders. Yes, just like that, a different rider pops out of the field to steal the win. The would-be victor goes from nearly first to last place in seconds.
Those tiny time gaps make for riveting viewing, and there are hardly greater moments in sport than cycling’s man-against-men run-in to the finish. On Sunday, the youngest rider in the Tour de France, Thibaut Pinot of the Français des Jeux team, held off a desperate chase from the world’s best cyclists, including yellow jersey Bradley Wiggins and defending champion Cadel Evans. The stage ended with a drag race into Porrentrury with seconds, not minutes, separating the surprise winner and his pursuers. Pinot, riding his first Tour, was visibly overwhelmed. His proud team manager, Marc Madiot, flailed his arm and shouted wildly from the team car following behind.
The suffering required for an effort like Pinot’s, followed by the joyous victory, well, that’s cycling, too. The cameras often capture all these emotions, each twist of the road, and all the odd distractions. Through the lens of a TV camera, cycling offers fans a feast of landscape and human emotion. We don’t ask for a better way to spend three weeks in July.
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Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) egged on by team manager Marc Madiot
Finally, a Frenchman has won a stage in this year's Tour de France. The 22-year old Thibaut Pinot won in the hilly 8th stage after a successful breakaway in the last kilometers, with top cyclists Cadel Evans (BMC) and Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) at his heels.
Watch the highlights of stage 8 via The Guardian and the video below.
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