I’d just like to remind everybody that I’m officially not watching the Tour de France.
Yeah, I know I bike thousands of miles a year and don’t drive much at all and am going to end up with a road bike one of these years.
But I just don’t care.
See, I am not an athlete. I’m just a guy who loves to bike. And I really don’t find it especially interesting to watch somebody, who is either a mutant with a unique metabolism or on various performance enhancement substances, ride.
In theory, the tour is supposed to be about superior skills and teamwork and not so much about gear and raw drug-aided cycling power. Pretty much the same idea as baseball. But, just like baseball, advances in medicine have made it possible to dope specifically for baseball and for biking. And, even outside of the persistant doping and the middle road the organizers need to follow, never able to make truly rigorous steps out of fear that the most popular riders will go on strike or that the race will stop being interesting… there are things that I somewhat object to in terms of the format of the event. I think there’s too much of a reliance upon the team car. I would like to see it built more upon the model of the randonee.
But, even then, I just don’t like watching. I like doing.
And too much attention to the Tour de France just leads you to looking like a total rich Fred, 300 lbs zipped into a yellow jersey on an all carbon fiber bike. And, personally, I blame the Tour for why I can’t buy most road bikes because I demand eyelets to mount gear and bike that doesn’t need to be inspected for failure after a low-speed crash.
So, no, just because I’m passionate about cycling it doesn’t mean I’m going to watch the tour… or any other bike racing event, for that matter.