Tour de France

What better to fill the void left behind by the World cup football, Paul the Octopus , Jabulani et.al than Tour de France ??

Surely one of the purest forms of human suffering that you can witness in sports. 3 weeks of sprints, crashes, lung bursting mountain stages and exhilarating descents. I have been a follower ever since I read Lance Armstrong’s books.

Armstrong, sadly had a disastrous tour this year. But the battle between Andy Shleck and Alberto Contador has been enthralling  so far. I just witnessed a brutal attack by Shleck up the Col du Troumalet that tore up every other cyclist except Contador. After nearly 3 weeks just 8 seconds seperate them. The time trial on Saturday will be interesting. Contador is the favorite on the time trial, but this has been a tour full of surprises.

One of the things that I find very different about cycling is this concept of fairness. If the leader of a race crashes, the rest of the pack would wait for him to catch up. The concept being that Le Tour should be won by the strongest rider, not the luckiest.

The other is the total commitment of the team towards their leader. I saw Shleck’s team mates sacrificing themselves one after the other to set up a brutal pace to propel their man to the front

Both these are quite unlike any other sport that I have known.

Makes for fascinating viewing all the same ….