This Tour de France is an Entertaining Disaster
I have woken up early every morning for nine straight days to watch the Tour de France, so since today is a rest day, I woke up early to write that this year’s Tour is a highly entertaining disaster. I love professional cycling like a child — but often it feels like I love a child who is an incompetent drug addict running the family business to the ground.
There surely will be a number of more measured pieces on this topic written or published today. The presumption of these stories will be that the cycling world has its fingers crossed that rest-day COVID testing — which for reasons that I think could best expressed as hopeless optimism, were not conducted during the first week of the Tour — don’t produce a PR disaster.
I would assert that the PR disaster has already occurred. As well as a public-health disaster.
When I watched the race wind its way up the Col de Peyresourde on Saturday, I saw hordes of fans crowding the racers like they were too stupid or drunk or disbelieving to understand that a global pandemic is underway. Many of these fans — who were close enough to touch their heroes — had no masks on, or had their masks pulled down as if they think viral droplets emerge from their chins.
If you have ever spent time on a big Tour de France climb as I have, it’s an all-day…
