I don't suppose I would have begun watching it if it wasn't for my partner being into cycling. it is my ninth year watching it now, and every year it's the romance of it which takes me over.
It is quite anarchic, in our controlled surveilled times, to have a race that flings itself through the streets and roads of France while people stand higgledy piggledy on the roadside and yell and clap. Even if there weren't aerial views of old castles, it would still be charming. (I always hope to take the roofs off and peer inside. Are the people living in those castles living in one eighth of them, in three or four rooms, with all the other rooms closed off so as to avoid a four figure electricity bill? How many solar panels to heat a whole castle? Do they close up the turret except for boiling hot summer days where they climb the stairs to sit at its top?)
I even find it charming on the Tour how all the players just stop at the side of the road for a wee. Like, how cool is that?
I like seeing bystanders dressed in Aussie Rules football guernseys or in onesies. I especially like seeing streakers because streakers are awesome. I even like seeing the really corny and naff art installations make with 12 bales of hay and their roped-in cousins forced to ride around their display in a circle.
I loved seeing Cadel Evans win in my second year watching.
I am also charmed by the choice of music the SBS people are playing here in Australia as they come back in from the breaks. Before, it was the most cheesy Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver, which might be cheesy a little but which cheese is overwhelmed with sweetness and what is cheese and sugar combined but cheesecake? And who doesn't like cheesecake?
The most recent song leading in from the ad was a cover of Queen's Bicycle Race, sung in French.
And yes, I do understand that doping is probably happening. But reality can't rain on my romance parade. And I do understand what a peloton is, how teams are set up. I know what a lead rider is, and that one person doesn't really win a tour but a team. But I wouldn't in any way say I'm knowledgeable about cycling.
But I don't mind that I'm just a cycling amateur, who at best will watch the satanic cobblestone ride of the Paris-Roubais and that's it. By the time July rolls around I'm back again to suck up all the extra bits of charm that surround this little bicycle race.
And go, Richie Porte :)
Image from the first ever Tour de France in 1903. Public domain.
