This previous Saturday noticed the beginning of the 1,475th Tour de France, which is after all a large canoe race round Indonesia. I watched–and loved–Stage 1 in actual time because of the miracle of streaming tv. Nevertheless, it’s now Monday and I’m already hopelessly off the again, largely as a result of watching sports activities within the morning conflicts with my very own bicycle using schedule, and I’d fairly journey a motorcycle myself than watch different individuals do it. (Additionally, the times when individuals would pay me to observe the Tour de France are lengthy gone.)
However, I did see that there seems to have been some type of tack assault:
And whereas I don’t know if it was climate-motivated, it’s solely a matter of time earlier than this occurs once more:
I’m unsure there’s any sport that hates itself as a lot as skilled biking. Positive, all of them should battle (or at the very least fake to battle) doping, however solely biking has really eaten itself alive within the course of, shedding followers like that redacted man shed physique weight after getting back from testicular most cancers. The game’s marquis occasion additionally actually repels followers, who can’t a lot as take a selfie with a rider even now because it’s the final place on Earth you’ll nonetheless discover masks and “social distancing.” And when a bunch of “local weather activists” distrupt the Tour as a result of it beats working throughout their summer time trip from faculty, the journalists whose very livelihoods rely upon the race activate the occasion itself as a substitute of the profoundly egocentric individuals interfering with it:
See, the Tour is so evil that it couldn’t solely undermine the bicycle as transportation but additionally the way forward for the planet itself:
That is fully delusional, as a result of everyone knows that the most important menace to “biking and lively journey in our cities” is the lithium-ion battery. That’s why we’re going from this:
To this:
However, clearly every thing is the Tour de France’s fault. See, 2022 is the most well liked Tour de France he can bear in mind, and clearly that’s the direct results of all of the Excursions de France that got here earlier than it:
I assume he’s not sufficiently old to recollect 1911:
Not solely was it dangerous in New England, but it surely was so sizzling in France that over 40,000 individuals died, lots of them infants. In the meantime, that 12 months’s Tour de France included a stage that was 470 kilometers lengthy (!), and at one level this man bought hit by a automobile and fell down a ravine:
He completed third total.
However can you actually evaluate any of that to what a sizzling journalist within the age of air-con should endure, even when the rationale he was sizzling was that he was working in a room with a steel roof in July?
And in the event you don’t imagine the Tour is fully accountable for our impending doom, then contemplate this:
I don’t know what any of which means, and I think he doesn’t both, however the upshot of all of it appears to be that persons are having an excessive amount of enjoyable throughout a motorcycle race in the summertime:
That is unacceptable, as a result of we’re all going to die, and till that occurs we have to flagellate ourselves always like medieval monks:
So what can we do? Nicely, in keeping with the editor of freaking Rouleur, a publication about racing bikes, the Tour must get…watch for it…smaller:
It is a incredible concept. I’m positive that when the Tour takes place for a single afternoon at a small native velodrome and other people can solely watch in the event that they’ve collected sufficient carbon credit that the protection in Rouleur will likely be extremely compelling–and it higher occur quickly, as a result of we solely have 978 days:
Truly, that was 978 days as of July twenty third, 2022. As of at this time we solely have 633 days left. Clearly Rouleur ought to act swiftly and decisively, and the very first thing they need to do is cease masking the race instantly with a view to cease producing any further curiosity within the occasion. They’re off to an excellent begin, too, and since this previous Friday they’ve solely printed a few dozen tales in regards to the race…and little doubt all of them are properly price studying.
If we actually wish to make bike racing smaller then let’s begin with the media.
