The Race Formerly Known as the Tour de France

Imagine an elegant, older gentleman, always dressed in bespoke Brioni suits and Hermes ties, complete with J.M. Weston shoes, who one day shows up in pointy John Varvatos boots, tight Japanese jeans, and a flowered Comme des Garçons jacket. The reaction would be one of muffled embarrassment mixed with a touch of pity: “He’s trying much too hard. Maybe there’s a young girlfriend on the side...”

That is exactly how I feel about this new race design, Le Tour de Southern France.

The Tour, the real one, has a character that’s been developed over the past 116 years. It is a northern European race, based out of Paris, one that visits the south and its mountains. The northerners, the Bretons, Normans, Belgians and Dutch, the men of big gears able to power through strong wind at high speeds for hours at a time, were what gave the race its unique character. The pounding that these men inflicted on the smaller climbers in the beginning days destroyed their weaker, lighter legs before the mountains were reached, and in doing so balanced out the competition. The menace of big men in the time trials forced the climbers to attack, often and early, creating some of the great racing stories we’ve witnessed over the years. 

American Chris Horner once explained to me the main difference between the Tour de France and the Vuelta (Tour of Spain that he won in 2013). “In the Tour, your spend hours and hours barely holding on in the beginning, the big men pounding all day in 53 x 11-14, and it just kills you. When you finally get to the mountains, the little guys, like me, can only climb so fast after all of that beating. In the Vuelta, the climbs come early and the big guys lose two to three kilometers an hour of pacing speed on the flats after getting killed on the early climbs.”

If a rider weighs much more than 135 pounds, there’s little to gain by starting this Tour, sprinters included. The race seems to consist of just about every tough uphill stretch that the organizers could find in the lower third of the country, with only four stages that could be considered for the sprinters. The one time trial, a mere 36-kilometers, finishes up the La Planche des belles filles, a six-kilometer climb with sections of 13% to 20%. The panicked bike changes at the bottom of the climb, from super-areo machines to the light climbing bicycles, will provide all sorts of comedic entertainment. And then, there’s the heat to consider. If a heatwave hits, “la canicule” of French fame can be oppressive, flirting with the dangerous. Climate change didn’t come into the calculations of A.S.O. and there’s no escaping to the cooler north if la canicule hits. Maybe they thought that this Tour would better prepare the peloton for the intense heat awaiting them in Japan at the Olympics. A service of sorts for the racers. 

I’m all for innovation, for exciting racecourse design in the same way that producers create interesting takes on Macbeth or other great dramas of the past. But no matter how Macbeth is presented, whether in a modern prison setting or in any of the many ways it’s been done over the years, it is still Macbeth. This is not the Tour. It is unbalanced, close to abusive for the racers and possibly damaging to their physical wellbeing. 

There are so, so many ways that the Tour can bring up the excitement levels, although, in fact, it is impossible to have three-weeks and 83-hours of edge-of-the-seat television. A.S.O is afraid of the aging of their audience, thus this almost desperate attempt to bring in a younger viewership. Making a peace accord with Velon, the “renegade” promotional group trying to modernize cycling through the use of technology would be a good start.

Take for example the incredible work done on the front of the peloton on “boring” flat stages by such tempo men as Tony Martin. I watch him with open-mouthed admiration, finding what he and the others like him do completely fascinating. Teach the public why an old dog as myself feels that way through technology, with new means of measuring efforts, quick interviews with team directors on how long they think he can stay on the front, etc., etc. The broadcast/technology possibilities for cycling are almost limitless if imaginations are allowed to run free.

Our new exciting stars, such as Mathieu der Poel, Wout van Aert and Mads Pederson, will have little to do in this Tour and that is a shame. It is also sad for me that the distinct characteristics that defined each of the Grand Tours, Italy, France and Spain, are now being blended together in the same way that all automobiles and racing bicycle designs are almost undistinguishable from one brand to the other. 

I say it over and over again: stop apologizing for the sport. Yes, it’s old and that is a large part of why it is so attractive: it has survived world wars, scandals and poor leadership, yet is always there, always entertaining, a great part of the French national identity and its modern history. It is the Tour de France, an event with very deep, strong roots. People will always be drawn back to its beauty, excitement and drama. Stop trying to change it into something unrecognizable.