We know enough — let cycling move on
So. A couch, a Mr Kipling restock, the odd flick to the tennis, or maybe a numbers game on Countdown if the eyes droop during a peloton truce.
Gruelling.
And the first key tactical decision for those confined to barracks; ITV4 or Eurosport.
Alas, Eurosport’s glory days have passed, when David Duffield was at the mic and you could break the back of an archaeology degree and qualify as a gourmet chef just by listening for a month to his commentary, which occasionally conceded a mention of the race.
But Kelly still swung it for them. The peerless insight aside, there will always remain something compelling about hearing that man pronounce French words.
Early highlights: In a week of spillages, the sight of one of those eejits who run beside the bikes being landed on his own backside via a clothesline straight arm from a fellow cyclist on the ditch.
The cousins, of course. A talented bloodline that gives us a rare dual interest in what Kelly will always call General Classement.
And the odd recovery chase by the wounded — such as Cavendish bunny-hopping a roundabout on the way into Montpellier as he eyed another stage win; like a rogue, hooligan peddler in one of Mike Murphy’s old road safety ads. Hey, after him! There was the always enjoyable spectacle of the domestiques fetching and carrying, including impressive footage of one water carrier transferring nine bottles from a car window down his top in half a minute or so. Impressive anyway until Eurosport’s Carlton Kirby told us the record for a stuffed shirt during a race was 28 bottles.
Stephen Roche insisted, during the week, that we live in the present and quit rummaging through the past with a bag of asterisks and a suspicious eye on all the great champions. Forget what went on or might have gone on and consider the slate, and everything else, clean.
So, line drawn, as of now the greatest shame the sport has endured was visited by home hero Sylvain Chavanel, fined 100 Swiss francs on Wednesday for “eating in a way that damages the image of cycling.”
Whatever he did, was this a first genuine case of The Savage Hunger? We will hear much about The Savage Hunger tonight in Nowlan Park, but much of what we see on our sports fields has to be reclassified as mild peckishness compared to the appetite that drives broken men up slopes.
Only The Savage Hunger could keep Geraint Thomas going, not able to stand on the pedals, wincing back on the road after a Sky man completed ‘a mechanical’ by donating a heavy shove that did nothing for his fractured pelvis.
It required The Savage Hunger to get Christian Vande Velde back in the saddle, in his final Tour, after the metalwork in his collarbone met the road head on and adjusted itself so as to prod and poke into the business of his surrounding muscles.
And only the Savage Hunger would have made Ted King plough on alone after being sacrificed coldly during the team time-trial, dragging himself to within seven seconds of survival only to be told his first tilt at the big one was over.
This is a world where we wondered why they couldn’t just give Kinger a break, rather than ask ourselves what business a man with a separated shoulder had wanting to soldier on into the Pyrenees.
No one yet has accused any of these fellows of going down too easily. So is Roche right to want these warriors freed of the sins of their forebears? Of course a man who is still being paid by the past will naturally find it in his interests to encase old deeds in glass and marvel rather than poke at the exhibition.
But maybe we have reached a point where we know enough. What dividend would stripping Pantani bring now, other than heartache? A clean slate in its administration would certainly benefit a sport with a mountain to climb in public perception. But perhaps it’s time to let today’s heroes get on with climbing theirs.
From the four corners of our lands. We’re united, hand in hand.
Together we’re stronger. We join and proud we stand.
Now the day has come, we are one. Standing tall for our Lions’ call.
We’re stronger. Together. We are the power of four.
Feck it anyway. What a waste of time.
Having finally concluded that we can only grow by embracing the things we do not understand, I had just finished learning the Lions’ call to arms, so thoughtfully commissioned by Sir Clive in 2005, and widely regarded as the third most inspirational anthem in sporting history behind Ireland’s Call and Del Amitri’s plea to Scotland’s 1998 World Cup squad; Don’t Come Home Too Soon.
Then word filtered out that Drico was gone and all of a sudden, hands had been untangled and the emotional investment in our HSBC four-hand reel had evaporated into a furious solo jig of pique.
Rugby men who had been looking forward to this day for so long, who had entrusted the hopes and dreams of the zero meridian of the northern hemisphere to the proud custodians in red, were now ready to conclude that, yeah, it’s all over-hyped and they’ll be shouting for Australia.
It should, at least, afford Drico some consolation that, in the end, the whole thing seems to have meant little or nothing to so many.
For me, there ends any hope of ever understanding the ways of these people. Perhaps all we can do now is hope that the bizarre modern fad for The Ugly Game will dissolve overnight just as easily.
Sorry to my countymen. Bad feeling about it. Maybe it was the poster on the border with nails being rattled into a black and amber coffin. Perhaps it’s the prevailing idea that it’s the right place at the right time.
But great champions rarely invite you to their burial.
They usually fall when you least expect — cock-a-hoop, chin out, in the middle of the ring rather than coiled hurting on the ropes.
You can’t help feel Kilkenny are destined to win one this way; just to embellish the legend. Having polished so many titles with their brilliance; they wouldn’t mind scuffing another with blood and tears.
Sure, they don’t seem themselves. I’ve never been as eager as some to query their physicality — it’s good practice to test law. But lately they seem a touch perplexed by the recent reintroduction of the rule book to hurling. It’s a long time since so many Kilkenny men were openly quizzical of a referee’s decisions as we saw last Saturday.
But great champions adapt to any terms then set their own.
Something tells me these guys aren’t quite dead only to wash them.
The Kilkenny rumour mill: Always entertaining in weeks like this. Can we just put one final flier to bed; they have decided against starting DJ.
Mario Gotze: Modern football’s version of Naomi Klein? Wearing a Nike t-shirt to the launch of Bayern’s new adidas kit was surely the first step in a one-man war on globalisation through brand confusion.
Nicolas Anelka, above: “I think this is the right club for me.” A gas man.
Garry Richardson: Turning Wimbledon interviews into a masterclass of cringe that even Geoff Shreeves has given up all hope of emulating.
