Sports stuff.

We sat in a bar last night, sipping a beer and catching up with our internet business. On the television in the bar was motor racing grand prix. I confess to knowing little about motor racing but I have to say that it does not, in my opinion, make for great television spectator sport. I totally fail to see the point in watching the same cars whizz round the circuit again and again. But, as I say, I know nothing about it and am not the best person to judge it.

Cycle races are a different matter as I am familiar with the names and performance of certain cyclists. There was a time when we watched the highlights of the Tour de France regularly, religiously even, throughout the three weeks of the cycle race. It was conveniently on one of the TV channels at about 7.30 that I could get in from work, we could have something to eat and then catch up with the day’s excitement. It was always delightfully commentated up and interesting bits of French scenery were pointed out. A sort of mini-holiday at the end of a working day. And because it came at the end of the summer term it was part of the wind-down to summer holidays.

 Then as the final day was always a Sunday we would watch the end of the race live. In recent years the final day has been something of an anticlimax as it is already known who will win, or rather who has already won, and the winner’s team do a kind of victory approach to Paris, quaffing champagne as they go. Any excitement is about who will come second and who will win the sprints or perhaps who will win certain of the jerseys.

One year we went off on a family camping holiday just before the end of the Tour. The leader - maybe it was Induráin - already had so strong a lead that whenever we stopped anywhere that had tv coverage in a cafe, not the certainty that it is now, we would ask, not who was in first place but, more interesting to us, who was coming second.

A few years ago I sat on a hillside outside Holmfirth in Yorkshire, not far from where we live, with my son, his wife and their tiny, just sitting up daughter, and watched stage three of the Tour belt through the Yorkshire hillside. That’s the closest I have ever come to following the race live, something my son and I used to fantasise about long ago.. I did once meet however, someone who had actually done the ride up the Alpe d’Huez, just to see what it was like: a very hard ride up and a scary ride down!

This year I haven’t seen a single stage and by the sounds of it I have been missing a very odd Tour. Because of all the controversy about whether Froome would be allowed to participate, and because some people still think he should have been banned from taking part, there has been a lot of ill-feeling towards him and towards the Sky team. Booing and hissing and spitting have been involved. Chris Froome was slapped by one fan. The Tour director had to publicly appeal to fans to remain calm and to let the race continue without further aggression.

Meanwhile Britain’s Geraint Thomas has been doing very well, up there in the lead, wearing the yellow jersey. But he is in the Sky team and has had to put up with all the nastiness and can’t enjoy his success to the full. “It’s not a nice situation because this is a highlight of my career,” Thomas said of the continuing hostility towards him. “It’s a massive honour and a privilege to be wearing the jersey and it’s been an incredible race so far. There’s obviously been a bit of negativity which isn’t nice, but you have to stay strong in your head and crack on.”

Just so, Geraint!

And then yesterday one of the Sky team riders was kicked out of the Tour and sent home after raising his fist to threaten another rider. He has form and admitted to racially abusing another rider in 2017. He was also investigated for allegedly pushing another rider off his bike in a race last autumn. On top of that he was disqualified from the World Championship road race for holding onto the team car. 

This is not what we expect of professional cyclists.

They’ll be throwing themselves off their own bikes and rolling around in agony like footballers before we know it.