crapper than I was at the age of forty-one, I have a propensity to fall asleep. When it’s 30 degrees in the shade, and there’s cycling on the telly, I don’t just
tend
to fall asleep, I
always
fall asleep. Dozing off after a full-fat French lunch is as inevitable as a Michael Rasmussen time trial crash. I’m not the only one to succumb, I hasten to add. Chris Boardman, a year my senior, has been known to drift off, his chin heading south with his masterful head supported by the palm of his left hand. But, being a freak of nature, he is capable of maintaining full 360 degrees sensory perception even while he’s dreaming of scuba diving in the Mersey, setting new hour records, selling more bikes, or whatever it is that he dreams of nowadays. That means it’s very difficult to get a clandestine snap of him snoring. Just as you’re framing up your camera phone, one eye will snap open. ‘Oi!’
On most days, on most Tours, I fashion for myself a restorative ten-minute window in which to nod off. The morning’s scripts have been written, the voiceover sent back to London, and all that remains for the working day is to watch the race and mop up the interviews afterwards. Normally the peloton is something like seventy-three kilometres out from the finish line, holding the breakaway at 4’26’. Or they are still rumbling along the valley floor, thirty-two kilometres from the foot of the final climb of the day. This is just the perfect time for a power nap, drifting off while Paul talks about Huguenot castles and Phil chunters along with lines like ‘Leopard Trek then, tapping out a rhythm. There’s Big Jens Voigt…’
I mention this by way of admitting that not everything about the Tour de France is always thrilling. Except 2011. Last summer, I remember falling asleep only once. In Montpellier. For about five minutes.
The race was that good.
How do you calibrate Tours? How, empirically, do you separate the good from the great? The humdrum from the heroic? By what measure can we determine the place each annual chapter will occupy in the century-long heritage of the Tour de France?
The statistics alone will only tell you a fraction of the story. Average speeds on the 2011 Tour, in this increasingly clean era, were nothing to write home about. The lead changed hands an unremarkable number of times. The overall winner himself, Cadel Evans, failed either to win a mountain stage or a time trial. He defended his way to the win. Brilliantly, arguably, but demonstrably short of panache.
So why are we all left with the memory of an immense race?
Here are a few reasons: Jérémy Roy, Thomas Voeckler, Thor Hushovd, Geraint Thomas, Pierre Rolland, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Mark Cavendish, Philippe Gilbert, Juan Antonio Flecha, Johnny Hoogerland. Stick a pin in the list of names and draw out a hero.
* * *
Even my convoluted journey to the start line in the Vendée felt epic. It wasn’t, of course, but to me these days, any car journey of over 200 miles feels epic. Again, I suspect this may have something to do with being forty-two. A journey feels especially awe-inspiring if it involves driving onto a boat.
My trip would start by driving from my home in London down to Plymouth, where I would catch the overnight ferry to Roscoff. Then I would pass by my friend Judi’s campsite near Morlaix, in Brittany, where I would disconnect the battery and leave the car to go gradually rusty under a beech tree in the corner of a field (I planned to return a month later to start a camping holiday with my family). Having dropped off the motor, I then needed to catch a series of progressively smaller and sillier district trains, till Woody and Liam would pick me up from a railway station at a location near somewhere I’d never heard of in the west of France. That was the plan, at least.
What a pilgrimage! I packed a book to read.
I didn’t have to wait long, either, for my first sniff of Tour de Franceness. Amid the humming engines and
tend
to fall asleep, I
always
fall asleep. Dozing off after a full-fat French lunch is as inevitable as a Michael Rasmussen time trial crash. I’m not the only one to succumb, I hasten to add. Chris Boardman, a year my senior, has been known to drift off, his chin heading south with his masterful head supported by the palm of his left hand. But, being a freak of nature, he is capable of maintaining full 360 degrees sensory perception even while he’s dreaming of scuba diving in the Mersey, setting new hour records, selling more bikes, or whatever it is that he dreams of nowadays. That means it’s very difficult to get a clandestine snap of him snoring. Just as you’re framing up your camera phone, one eye will snap open. ‘Oi!’
On most days, on most Tours, I fashion for myself a restorative ten-minute window in which to nod off. The morning’s scripts have been written, the voiceover sent back to London, and all that remains for the working day is to watch the race and mop up the interviews afterwards. Normally the peloton is something like seventy-three kilometres out from the finish line, holding the breakaway at 4’26’. Or they are still rumbling along the valley floor, thirty-two kilometres from the foot of the final climb of the day. This is just the perfect time for a power nap, drifting off while Paul talks about Huguenot castles and Phil chunters along with lines like ‘Leopard Trek then, tapping out a rhythm. There’s Big Jens Voigt…’
I mention this by way of admitting that not everything about the Tour de France is always thrilling. Except 2011. Last summer, I remember falling asleep only once. In Montpellier. For about five minutes.
The race was that good.
How do you calibrate Tours? How, empirically, do you separate the good from the great? The humdrum from the heroic? By what measure can we determine the place each annual chapter will occupy in the century-long heritage of the Tour de France?
The statistics alone will only tell you a fraction of the story. Average speeds on the 2011 Tour, in this increasingly clean era, were nothing to write home about. The lead changed hands an unremarkable number of times. The overall winner himself, Cadel Evans, failed either to win a mountain stage or a time trial. He defended his way to the win. Brilliantly, arguably, but demonstrably short of panache.
So why are we all left with the memory of an immense race?
Here are a few reasons: Jérémy Roy, Thomas Voeckler, Thor Hushovd, Geraint Thomas, Pierre Rolland, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Mark Cavendish, Philippe Gilbert, Juan Antonio Flecha, Johnny Hoogerland. Stick a pin in the list of names and draw out a hero.
* * *
Even my convoluted journey to the start line in the Vendée felt epic. It wasn’t, of course, but to me these days, any car journey of over 200 miles feels epic. Again, I suspect this may have something to do with being forty-two. A journey feels especially awe-inspiring if it involves driving onto a boat.
My trip would start by driving from my home in London down to Plymouth, where I would catch the overnight ferry to Roscoff. Then I would pass by my friend Judi’s campsite near Morlaix, in Brittany, where I would disconnect the battery and leave the car to go gradually rusty under a beech tree in the corner of a field (I planned to return a month later to start a camping holiday with my family). Having dropped off the motor, I then needed to catch a series of progressively smaller and sillier district trains, till Woody and Liam would pick me up from a railway station at a location near somewhere I’d never heard of in the west of France. That was the plan, at least.
What a pilgrimage! I packed a book to read.
I didn’t have to wait long, either, for my first sniff of Tour de Franceness. Amid the humming engines and
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