As a regular reader I’ve noticed the real dedication to cycling that the leaders at Owl Towers demonstrate, both in terms of track work and the longer road races. Until this summer I was a total sceptic when it came to road cycling, but having previously gone hopelessly crazy for velodrome experiences I knew I wasn’t immune to the appeal of wheels. The ongoing exploits of Victoria Pendleton (and now a large roster of pretty ladycyclists) can’t have undermined the popular appeal of the keirin and the omnium, either, to some parts of the crowd.
However, things like the Tour de France didn’t do much for me. It all just seemed like a lot of skinny men in coloured clothes riding a breathtakingly long way on a bike. But that was before I became trapped in the theatre, tactics and teamwork that characterises this kind of racing. Who were the domestiques? Why did the person who won the most stages not necessarily win the race? Why are there donkeys wearing polka dot jerseys in that field in Provence?
This year, by dint of nothing else being on television one Sunday when it was raining, I tuned into the Tour. I knew vaguely that some British cyclists were doing quite well, but given it was Stage 5 or something I assumed there would be time for someone Belgian to sneak up on the inside and nick it from our boys long before the end. Well, from that point on it was constantly on my mind. I learned that friends are everything in a cycle race, because they’re prepared to completely sacrifice their own races for your sake (voici les domestiques). I learned that looking like you’re winning doesn’t mean that you’re actually winning (tête de la course; poursuivants; groupe maillot jaune). I learned that tactics can change in the blink of an eye. And I learned that good conduct is generally rewarded, and that cheats rarely prosper. This was like test match cricket, Formula One and chess all moulded into one.
As the weeks of the Tour ticked by, my wife and I would genuinely rush home from work to watch the stage highlights. If we’d got wind of something, via Twitter or the BBC, that Vincenzo Nibali or Cadel Evans had experienced some sort of a problem, we rushed home even quicker to see how this affected the overall standings. We were wowed by Peter Sagan’s unlikely skills on the hills (sprint points and King of the Mountains points) and yelled for the Slovenian if it became clear that Mark Cavendish was too far back on a stage. I learned all about the personal history of American-but-Dutch-sounding Tejay van Garderen and was genuinely amazed by the emotion of Pierre Rolland and his team when Rolland won for France on Bastille Day. Suddenly, yet progressively, I finally understood why this daft spectacle was so brilliant. The colours, the cars, the fans, the enthusiasm, the speed, and all the time these scrawny chaps, legs pumping, eating energy gel and drinking isotonic pineapple juice, forcing themselves up yet another mountain, through yet another town. It was fantastic.
And then Bradley Wiggins won, drew the raffle numbers on the Champs-Elysées and it was all over. Until the Olympics, when I watched the men’s road race on someone else’s jerky iPhone footage inside the City of Coventry stadium and screamed Lizzie Armitstead home in the rain sat in my in-laws front room, all of us gathered to watch these incredible athletes. Surely this was it, until the Tour came round again next year?
No – another Sunday, and another poor TV night settles us in front of the team time trial at the Vuelta a Espana. A race I’d never heard of. And here we are once more, thrilling to some of the same chaps all over again and finding new pantomime villains to boo (I’m looking at you, Alberto Contador, and your ludicrously named Saxobank-Tinkoff Bank team). It gets under your skin, road racing, and even though there is no way on Earth I’m getting on a bicycle to follow in their tracks, I will fight to watch Froome, Roche, even Contador as they thrash their way through Spain. See you in the Pyrenees – I’m the one in the Lotto-Belisol shirt next to the small woman cheering Omega-Pharma-Quickstep for no clear reason.
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