Bradley Who?

Well done Bradley Wiggins for being the first Brit to win the Tour de France. Emma reminds me that this song - by Dermot Morgan, later famed as Father Ted - soundtracked Ireland's Stephen Roche when he won it in 1987 (alongside the World Championship and the Giro d'Italia).

A day to lose heroes

Tony Curtis is dead - he was good even in bad films.

Also, Alberto Contador has been suspended after positive drugs tests. Heartbreaking. I thought his victory in this year's Tour de France was a turning point for the sport - a clean race with a titanic struggle between the two very best cyclists on the circuit. But now it looks like another embarrassing fix. These days, in cycling, it's very much a matter of guilty until proven innocent. Sad, but the organisers, the sponsors, trainers, medics and cyclists have brought it upon themselves.

The competitors, actually, should be at the bottom of the list of guilty parties. Under the day-glo kit and muscle, they're the proletariat, slaving for a wage and forced to cheat because not to cheat means losing and failing to feed their families. The system conspires against them to make cheating (and risking early death or ill-health) the logical choice. It's not individuals pulling a fast one on their rivals (though they probably think it is, and scabs do deserve a beating), but an economic structure demanding superhuman effort at the cost of health - just like being a miner or steel-worker. Their bodies are their tools and the products - but the profit goes to the advertisers and organisers, and the blame accrues to the individual.

That's capitalism, folks.

Vive le Tour

I'm addicted to the Tour de France. I know that most of the riders are or have been on drugs, and that the route is several hundred miles shorter than it used to be, but there's no contest on earth like it.

Over the course of three weeks, a group of men - most of whom are there only to support their star rider - cover  over 2000 miles of France and neighbouring countries (1926 was 3570 miles), from cobblestones to the mountains which have killed several of their predecessors, including Tom Simpson who died on the insane Mont Ventoux in 1967, exhausted and suffering from the effects of amphetamine use, which was state of the art doping for the time and was the only way for a working-class cyclist to win enough to keep his family. His last words: 'Put me back on my bike'


The overall winner is only one of several bitter contests - time trials, points winners, King of the Mountains and even the Lanterne Rouge (last place) are cause for jockeying. They fight, cheat, try to break each other, yet there's also a strong code of honour (which the current Yellow Jersey, Alberto Contador, broke a few days ago when he took advantage of Andy Schleck's broken chain to steal a stage. In the early days, riders would cheat (sometimes taking the train or getting a lift), while fans would beat up their favourites' rivals.

Today's a Col de Tourmalet mountain stage. There are several mountain stages, all graded except for Tourmalet and a select few which are considered so extreme that they're unclassifiable (hors catégorie). Basically, a car struggles to get up them, yet 140 cyclists manage it. Tourmalet's so high that the ski station is only two thirds of the way up - and the Tour is visiting it twice this year.

Discovering an unmade road rendered impassable by snow, Steinès dismissed his driver and continued on foot. He got lost, fell down a ravine and had to be rescued, but the following morning, in a gendarmerie in the hamlet of Barèges on the way down from the 2,115m summit, he cabled his boss: "Tourmalet crossed stop very good road stop perfectly practicable stop Steines."

As Lapize crossed the summit of the next pass, the Col d'Aubisque, he hurled a famous imprecation at the commissaires. "You are all assassins," he shouted with what remained of his strength. "No human being should be put through an ordeal like this. That's enough for me." Nevertheless he carried on, thereby establishing a precedent for an ineluctable combination of cyclists, mountains and suffering. 

Some riders, a select few, have made light of the Tourmalet's challenge. The great Spanish climber Federico Bahamontes, forever known as the Eagle of Toledo, led over the summit on four occasions, and in 1954 he even stopped for an ice cream to let the others catch up and accompany him on the descent, a skill at which he was less adept. 

Sorry Jo…

A bit of sport, but not too much and not the usual suspects.

This years Tour de France inspired my to get my bike out again, with a lot of help from Neal. Unfortunately, neither I nor my umpteenth-hand racer bear much similarity to what I've been reading about, but what a fantastic race it's been - despite a number (let's not be too specific) of the competitors being on drugs, there have been epic battles, surprises and romance - the return to Mont Ventoux, the mountain which killed Tom Simpson and regularly ends races and careers, Wiggins's results and Cavendish's battle with Thor Hushovd have produced a stunning spectacle. I particularly liked Cavendish/Hushovd's end to their rivalry: yesterday they conspired to put on a 50 metre sprint at the end of a stage and ended it dead-level, grinning madly.

There's just something about the Tour which transcends the grubbiness of the money-and-drugs circus surrounding it. The hugely unreasonable demands on bodies, the fans' obsession, the personal battles and the huge respect felt for those who drag themselves thousands of kilometres without any hope of even a stage win, particularly the Lanterne Rouge (the man at the back).

In other sports news, my brother's made his final (official/professional) appearance in the newspapers, which I thought was worth recording:

STOKING OFF

Owners attempting to slip amusing or risque names past the censor, can breathe a sigh of relief. Owen [Vole], communications officer at the British Horseracing Authority, who has taken pride in stopping potentially embarrassing monikers from making their way onto racecards, is to leave next month in order to pursue a legal career. His first stop will be a year back in the classroom at Keele University.

The ever-affable [Vole] has often been the first port of call for many a racing journalist when pursuing a story, but his portfolio of tasks has also included dealing with angry punters who regularly ring to vent their spleen about apparent non-triers. "It's not always been easy. I remember someone on the Betfair forum once called me 'The Comical Ali of the BHA' after I defended the ride given by a particular jockey," he told Tattenham Corner.

"I started working under John Maxse at the Jockey Club in 2001 and quickly learnt what the job entailed with the Panorama and Kenyon Confronts investigations. The worst name that I ever managed to let through was a horse called Skanky Biscuit, although I later went back and checked the date it was approved and it was the first day of a skiing holiday, so I obviously had my mind elsewhere. "Now I am returning to Stoke, the city of my birth, and home of the greatest team in the Premier League."

Proper Caesar's Pet

I hate setting new devices up, and now regret being mean and not buying an iPhone because Macs just work.

Anyway, have a good day tomorrow: I won't be online - I'm taking a day off. They're hanging me the right way up. Cynical Ben, Radford Sallow, Neal and I are going bilberrying on Cannock Chase. Woo - and indeed - hoo! Someone text me exciting cricket scores and Tour de France news?