The Tour de France

Our mornings in July go like this:

I get up, get the tea on, feed the cats, get online, go to the BBC’s cycling page where there is live text commentary (no choice if you’re on dialup) on the current stage (if you’re not following it, today is moving from the Rhone delta into the alpine foothills and punishing mountains that follow). Numenius gets up anywhere between one and three hours later and is usually still in time to catch the finish.

I started following cycling when Miguel Indurain was in his heyday. He was probably the finest athlete Spain’s ever produced. Now that Lance Armstrong is no longer the king of the peloton and the interest of Americans in bike racing has sort of returned to where it was before, it’s back to following the fortunes of the unlikely, the opportunists, the ones whose last chances are this year having been unfortunate enough to have come of age when Lance did.

It’s great there’s no obvious favorite. Sentimentally, I’d like Evans to win. But mostly I just love to follow this fantastic event over the three weeks it takes, watching the emergence of the likes of Mark Cavendish (Manx sprinter) and the breakaway hopefuls. Allez allez!