Toulouse

I’ve been driving a bit over the past days, catching up with the Tour when possible, a mixture of NBC Sports, their live web feed – in fact the Australian SBS feed – with famed sprinter Robbie McKwen and host Matthew Keenen, and The Move podcasts during the hours spent in the car.

While I do listen to The Move, I generally make it a point of pride to only listen after posting to see how I’ve done. Thing is, we all see the same things in the race - comes from having been in the European peloton - but I’d missed the stage yesterday and, desperate to hear what happened, put it on. Didn’t learn much about the sprint, have to say, lots about George’s hang-gliding experiences, their continued and clear hatred of Jonathon Vaughters, and of course much product hustling. That said, they were the number-one iTunes sports podcast last week, something like 54th overall of the many thousands offered, and so are clearly onto something very good for both them and cycling. Which is why NBC is slowly but steadily bringing Lance back into the fold: they want those millions of podcast listeners to tune in and increase their ratings. Lance is returning the favor by constantly plugging the NBC shows and his friends Bob and Christian – Horner is blatantly ignored - letting us know that he watches the commercial breaks too. 

Arriving home late yesterday afternoon, just in time to turn on the TV for the final 10-kilometers, I was outraged when with about 4-k to go, NBC cut to a long set of commercials. Look, the logic of pitching to an audience trapped in front of the tube while waiting for the finish is one way of looking at it, but it turns people off – one feels used. Cut to commercial with 10k to go, that’s fine, but to lose the thread of how the intricacies of the sprint are unfolding is just jarring. Which is why I’m now spending more time watching SBS. I’m happy to have paid for it and can really follow the race, see the movements of the peloton and the all the logic behind them. Plus, the Aussies are excellent.

Tony Martin, Kasper Asgreen and Maxime Monfort have just been stunning in their collective hours-long efforts on the front of the bunch since the beginning of this Tour, in essence racing a team time trial against every breakaway that’s escaped the clutches of the peloton. Martin, the four-time World Time Trial Champion, has transferred his aging high-end power into volume, becoming the best tempo (long, sustained hard pacing) man in the world. Once a champion, always a champion. His move to the Jumbo-Visma team with their winning mentality has revived the German. Yesterday, after having spent the entire day on the front, Martin finished the job by accelerating, full gas, with 13-k to go, launching his team for the finale, keeping them all in front on the small, country roads, before all but collapsing on the side of the road. 

Nario Quintana crashed soon after, quickly jumping up and chasing back on, completely alone at first which struck me as odd, especially compared to the way that the Ineos, like a team of perfectly disciplined Navy Seals, had come together to rescue Geraint Thomas from his crash some days ago. Chris Horner made the astute observation of noting how the Colombian’s teammates, who’d crashed too, were only concerned with their own machines, ignoring him. Compare that to how Kwiakowski reacted to Thomas’s crash. Maybe there’s trouble in paradise as Quintana has announced that he’s leaving Movistar for the small French Arkea-Samsic team, guaranteeing the Pro Continental team coveted rides in the Grand Tours to come. Whatever it is, Quintana, now 8th overall, has been excellent all season. He was right up with Alaphilippe in forcing the echelons towards Albi, and will be superb in the mountains to come.

Jumbo-Visma are feeling strong as a collective. Poor George Bennet, the Kiwi who was caught out in the sidewind battles to Albi, loaded down with 10-pounds of bottles, unsure of his role in life and losing his 4th place overall in the process, started the lead-out train for the Dutch team before Norwegian Champion Amund Jansen and Wout van Aert took over the warp-speed pacing at the front. Van Aert took one of his now-signature, impossibly hard, long pulls, dropping off his sprinters, Mike Teunissen and Dylan Groenewegen with one-kilometer to go. Deceuninck-Quickstep took over for a bit, before Teunissen, Groenewegen, Viviani and, wonderfully, considering that he’d been stopped, avoiding a crash with 10-k to go, Caleb Ewen, in that order, hit the final 500-meters. Teunissen sprinted for 250-meters before Groenewegen jumped around and exploded into his long sprint, opening up a large gap on the rest with his jump. It seemed to be over until Ewen switched off of Viviani and started what we call “taking a run” – which means you accelerate from a couple of bike lengths back into the slipstream of the rider in front, your speed increasing as you get closer to his back wheel into the ever-more protective draft before slingshotting around for, happily in his case, the win. 

Ewen is an endearing character, his post-race emotions lovely to see. The Lotto-Soudal team with their comparatively tiny budget, have won two stages, are holding the Mountains Jersey and have always taken their responsibilities in the race (see Maxime Monfort). Great to see the Belgians in the game, that their national expertise in all things cycling is rewarded

There seemed to be some concern yesterday when I explained my EPSN piece and how I’d done the opening standup (alone with a microphone) in a place that was not exactly as described in the content. The standup, at that time anyway, was of crucial importance to the show and the producers would spend their mornings looking for a properly picturesque spot to shoot the talent. The standup is the “hook” that keeps channel surfers interested and it needs to have both content and beauty. Had I gone back to the editing truck with a tape of me in front of an ugly industrial building, I would have never been on camera again. I was in fact “here” because it was the Belgian-French border. A bit of artistic license is allowed in the entertainment business. And if that’s not a satisfying answer, I leave you with these words from the father of gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson:

“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. There's also a negative side."