Tour de France Thoughts

Surprisingly I haven’t watched ANY Wimbledon games so far, yet I’ve been following the Tour de France quite religiously.  Curious.  Some Tour thoughts:

-          Do I think Sagan deserved to get kicked out of the Tour following that crash with Cavendish?  Probably not – it looked like Cav was going full speed into a gap that wasn’t really there, but Sagan sticking that elbow out made the crash look even worse than it probably was.  And boy, was that a nasty looking crash – seeing Cav topple into the barriers then those 2 other cyclists go head over heels over Cav’s prone body.  Ouch.

-          Get the massive impression that everybody – the fans, the competitors, the organization – hates the Sky team and Chris Froome.  Too dominant, too controlling, too "clean" – could make the mountain stages underwhelming if you just have this train of Sky riders setting a big pace and letting all but the elite cyclists drop off the back of the peloton before Froome attacks.  I hope not, it would be good to have a competitive race for the yellow jersey.

-          I still see some images of those idiot supporters running alongside the leaders on those mountain stages.  I thought they were going to stop that after the debacle last year when they caused Chris Froome to crash and run up the course?  I hope they are able to better control the crowds on the big mountain stages – they are an absolute nightmare.  If someone threw some dirty water at me or started running alongside me in some ridiculous fancy dress, I don’t think I would be able to keep my cool.  More police, more barriers.

-          I like having my breakfast whilst watching the end of each stage, but for the love of god NBCSN (the broadcaster here) PLEASE do an abbreviated highlights show of each stage at the end of each day rather than this bloated 3 hour snoozeathon that I end up recording and fast forwarding through apart from the few moments of action (normally a crash or just the last 10 minutes of the race).

-          The US coverage uses the same commentators as the UK – Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.  I hate to say this, but Phil Liggett is starting to sound old and way past his prime – seems to be easily confused and prone to getting cyclists’ names wrong.  Reminds me of Murray Walker in the latter days of his F1 commentary.  

-          HBO are airing Tour de Pharmacy this weekend, a mockumentary of doping in the Tour de France.  It’s got a good cast (and oddly Lance Armstrong also appears), so although the topic is an easy and obvious one to spoof I will watch.  If you ever saw 7 Days in Hell, a similar mockumentary on Wimbledon from a few years ago, then I expect something similar.  That was incredibly stupid but mildly entertaining, so expect the same again.