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It’s that time of the year again where men dressed in Lycra and foam hats appear haphazardly on our TV screen in between the beautiful panoramic shots of country France.
So what is it that makes thousands of people think that they can get off the couch, brave the cold Melbourne winter and emulate their July heroes?
The Tour de France is hard, really hard. Harder than the hardest thing you’ve probably even tried.
There are competitors who spend their lives training to complete the Tour and even they can’t finish it. Yet middle-aged Mike from accounts who gets slightly out of breath when he walks to the lunch room in the office thinks to himself “this looks easy” and goes out the next day to buy himself the very best bike.
Bicycle shop owners must love this time of the year. They can probably see these customers coming in from a mile away, bags under their eyes from staying up all night watching the race, armed with all the best knowledge Wikipedia has listed about bike racing and quoting Phil Ligget from the previous night’s stage.
These shop owners must rub their hands together in glee before directing the customer to the expensive shop corner before telling them it’s like Ollivander’s – the bike must choose you.
Maybe it’s the relative obscurity that cycling has in the vast swap known the Australian sporting scene where people often get bogged down only committing to one or two sports except on important occasions like the Australian Grand Prix, the Bathurst 1000 or the Melbourne Cup.
It’s possible that people think it might be easier to break into a professional sport where the numbers of people doing it is lower than AFL or rugby. Ignoring the fact that they still have to be incredibly good at their chosen sport to do it on a professional basis.
Maybe it’s the picturesque locations that the race takes the riders through. Australians love to travel, anyone who has been overseas knows this.
There seems to be more Australians travelling that those that have remained behind to run the country (which may be a reason for the recent election result).
Riding through France does seem like a nice way to spend a summer and if you avoid those various mountain stages and stop off at a few wineries then it could be a summer holiday well spent.
Maybe people are just trying to get fit so they can give the riding holiday a go when they eventually get time off work over the Christmas period. Riding between wineries in the snow might not have the same charm to it though.
Or maybe the tour just reminds people that it’s once again time to do something about their health.
It might be all about the bikini beach body or that death rattle cough you picked up but cycling 100km in the middle of the Melbourne winter – where you’re guaranteed to get sun, wind, rain and hail (sometimes all at once) – will fix it, I mean how many sick people do you see on the Tour?
Whatever the reason for the sudden spike in popularity of road cycling in July, it’s clear that don’t have a clue as to the real reason. I do know one thing though – and that is that I will probably see you out on the bike tracks this weekend.
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