Cycling fame!

Geraint Thomas is winning, indeed by the time I get around to posting this, will already have won, the Tour de France. Short of falling off his bike, there is really no way these days that whoever wears the yellow jersey at the end of the penultimate stage will not win the Tour. Very occasionally there has been a close call and an actual race on the cobbles of Paris but as a rule tradition has it that the Tour winner has already been decided and is not challenged on the final Sunday.

And besides, Geraint Thomas has an almost two minute lead over the next contender.

And so he becomes the third Briton to win the Tour de France. I almost wrote “the third Englishman” but he is a Welshman and that is different, despite the fact that to most Europeans the English, Scots and Welsh are all regarded as English. We are all inhabitants of the bigger of the British Isles. Maybe that’s what does it. Irishmen are a different matter, at least in Spain, but maybe that has something to do with the long friendly relationship that seems to exist between the two countries. It probably goes back to when England and Spain were sworn enemies.

Anyway, the Tour de France comes to an end today and I have not seen any of it. There has been rather a lot of resentment and nastiness. However, the news reports tell me this:

 “Yet Thomas is widely liked by all the peloton – and by most fans too. They admire the way he rode during the 2013 Tour de France with a fractured pelvis, which required him to be lifted into his saddle. He described it as “the worst pain I’ve ever experienced on a bike” – yet never took anything stronger than ibuprofen for the pain.

Eight years earlier he also needed an operation to remove his spleen, after a piece of metal flicked up from the road into the spokes of his front wheel, in Australia. Yet on Saturday evening all the struggles and strife were suddenly worth it.”

Now, that is what I call dedication! He must really enjoy his cycling to put up with all that stuff. He appears to be quite modest about his success too. “I know people won’t believe it, but it was only on Friday night that I started to think about it,” he said. “That last mountain stage was just a fight and I knew I had to just follow Tom like poo on a shoe. On Saturday I won’t celebrate too much because if you switch off the Champs Élysées is hard. I’m going to have a burger and certainly a beer or two but I will save the real celebrations for Paris on Sunday night.”

He just had to follow Tom Dumoulin “like poo on a shoe”. That must be the poetic Welshman speaking! A very well thought of Welshman, as indicated by the final line of yesterday’s news report: “He has ridden with maturity and class throughout this Tour. And he emerges as the most worthy of winners.”

Isn’t that nice? I wonder if his mum has a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings.