What’s that? You’ve noticed I’ve not been blogging? Well, what did you expect? It’s July.
When I was eighteen I wrote that summer was the time for doing things and that winter was the time for writing about it. I still believe that. Plus, as I mentioned, it’s July which means that when I’m not in school (and with OfSTED in this past week and a never ending stream of open evenings, proms and concerts it feels I’ve seldom been away from the place) I am usually sat on my arse on the sofa watching le Tour.
As with any sport there are complex subtleties providing an enormous range of depths for geeks like me. Yet for the idle observer there is also so much to savour. Even if you ignore the unfortunate scandals of ‘le dopage’ and stories of Spanish beef, le Tour is inevitably a month long travelling soap opera on wheels. Sadly, one story arc that many idle British observers may have been following ended abruptly yesterday with the exit of Bradley Wiggins in a crash that left him with a broken collarbone. Now I have never had any particular affinity with Wiggins, and goodness knows I have never had any interest in supporting ‘the Brits’ for the sake of nationalism, but still I confess I feel more than a twang of sadness that he should exit le Tour in this way.
But such is the way of stage racing, and of le Tour in particular. The lengthy and enormously rich history of the race has innumerable such tales of ill fortune, each of them adding an extra layer to the legend. In any case, let us not forget the excellent year Wiggins has already had. Third in Paris-Nice, national championship victories in both road race and time trial as well as overall victory in the Dauphine. Those may mean little to the punter in the street who sees nothing beyond the Olympics and le Tour but to anyone with more than a passing interest in the sport those are achievements to be celebrated. And anyway, there’s always next year, right?
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