In a summer that's been obsessed by the football World Cup I finally get my little oasis of pleasure with the best sporting spectacle of the year - The Tour de France, the world's biggest bike race.
Sadly this year's tour was marred by the behaviour of some French fans who booed Team Sky at the team presentation and continued to show disrespect to Leader Chris Froome and the rest of the team throughout the Tour. Whatever your opinions, I think this kind of behaviour is unacceptable - cycling is supposed to be better than that. It doesn't happen in Italy or Spain so what's with the French fans? (I know it's not them all, hopefully just a vocal minority)
Week 1 was a mix of sprint finishes and crashes, stage 1 saw defending champion Chris Froome elbowed out, narrowly missing a pole, and somersaulting into a field. Peter Sagan won 2 stages and quickly took the Green points jersey. Greg Van Avermaet took in Yellow halfway through the week and took it through into week 2.
Pic: sportingnews.com |
Pic: Cycling Weekly |
Pic: Cycling Weekly |
Early into stage 14 there were some protestors (to what I don't know) that threw bales of hay across the road in an attempt to disrupt the race. Gendarmes used pepper spary in an attempt to control the protesters however the spray appeared to drift into the face of several cyclists as they rode past, forcing the stage to be paused briefly.
Pic: Cycling Weekly |
The week saw Froome support G in a galant way, almost a passing of the mantle. Stage 19 saw Chris Froome slip from the podium but his performance in the time trial on stage 20 saw him regain that position. G took 3rd and cemented his victory (barring the ceremonial stage tomorrow into Paris).
I'll update this post tomorrow with details of that final stage, the presentation and also my position in a little TdF fantasy team game I've been involved with at work.