I saw the cop nail that guy trying to cross the finish line by only racing the last bit. And I saw the jackass who cycled onto the course and flattened the whole pelaton.

I think it's cool that they named the bike pack after that Covid stationary bike fad.

I kinda follow it like I follow the baseball season, day-by-day in the standings and occasionally looking in on interesting bits. The good thing about TdF is that it's in my time zone, so I can often check out the finish of a stage toward the end of my working day.

There was a great Bluesky thread on the strategy resulting from aerodynamic effects, which I assume was well known to followers of it but was good for lay me. Let me find it.

Here we go.

I watch it. I rarely watch the stage live, but I'll flick it on for the last 30 minutes or so of a stage, and I watch the highlights most days. It's an absurd sport in terms of the physical demands it places on the riders--hence the historic level of drug cheating.

I cycle (commuter cycling, not racing-bikes, all-body-condom, fanboi cycling) and love France, I ought to love watching the Tour. But it's so dull! It's heroically, amazingly dull: a pack of identikit scrawny blokes pedalling away for hours and hours. Sometimes I watch the day's highlights just to revel in the extraordinary boringness of it all. It's even duller than Grand Prix motor racing.

My (British) parents retired years back and bought a house in South France, near Uzes: lovely town, very handy for us their kids to take our families on holiday, we'd go every summer. Then they got too old to be living in the countryside on their own in a foreign country, sold up and moved back to the UK, so that they're now close to myself and my two sisters. We miss the France house. Anyway, day before yesterday, the 16th stage of the Tour, started in Montpellier, went past the Pont du Gard, directly through Uzes, down the east road that went right past the entrance to what was my parents' house, and finishing on the summit of Mont Ventoux. I gathered the family to watch the TV highlights coverage, thinking at least we'd get some scenic shots of an area we used to visit often. But the TV summary skipped all the interesting scenic stuff and went straight to the mountain climb final portion. Very annoying!

I watch a lot of cycling now that a lot of it is available on streaming services in the US and I don't have to be awake at odd hours to get full coverage. It's not always interesting racing, but to get the full benefit of the scenery you sort of have to watch the actual broadcasts. It's pretty common to intersperse long scenic shots (often from the helicopter) with moments when not much else is happening.

In the Ventoux stage, I can remember seeing:

- a chateau somewhere earlier in the race
- the Pont du Gard (including an extended drone shot)
- a shot of a set of bridges where you could see a TGV, cars on a highway, and the riders in the peloton all crossing the Rhone at the same time

Also, the very early part of the stage had the riders go through some interesting architecture in Montpelier.

For races where the broadcasts are the full race, which can be 4-5 hours, I generally just put it on in the background with the sound off until they get closer to the finish. Outside of the major races, most broadcasts are similar in length to other sports, maybe 2 hours or so.

Yeah, my takeaway from 5 is that to cover the staggering distance, an emergent strategy has been cooperation - biking together in the peloton to reduce air resistance - and while that's interesting conceptually, it doesn't seem interesting to watch.

Occasionally there are breakouts, which are low-percentage for success but the alternative is I guess staying in the pack and having no advantage at all. But often the major action is just at the very end.

I generally don't watch highlights because when a race is interesting, it develops over enough time that highlights often don't cover it that well. I'd rather take the broadcast and jump forward or background. But then again, I've watched a lot of cycling so I have my own sense of what to focus on.

Someone ran a twitter account called "HowFarOut" that just posted a recommendation of where to start watching a cycling broadcast. Depending on a race, that could be 50-70k to go or just 5k to go. Rarely more than 100k.

Milan-San Remo is famously about 30 minutes of pretty exciting racing after 6 and a half hours of almost nothing. Pretty scenic when they hit the coast though.

No on both.

I'm with apo in 12, but I love the Kraftwerk song very much. The first time I heard it, as a little kid, I was absolutely flattened; I thought it was the most beautiful series of sounds I had ever heard.

OK, I will have a go at saying why this sport is worth watching. (Although that said, I am not watching it this year because the TV subscription you need in the UK has tripled from last year.)

Obvs. it helps enormously if you actually ride a bike for sport yourself. In fact, the accessibility of the sport is part of its appeal; you can ride exactly the same bike that is used in a top level stage race (like the TdF); the regulating body is conservative about the equipment allowed in elite racing precisely for grass roots reasons. Some sports are more accessible, but plenty are less.

Anyway, the spectacle itself: fantastic landscape visuals, with every castle / cathedral / monument showcased by the TV production company and announced by the commentators. That's at least 50% of the appeal, really. It's all just very pretty, with the riders to generate a sense of progression. And some of the climbs are famous and distinctive: Mont Ventoux, for example. And the Giro introduced me to Bologna's Portico di San Luca (a stage went up it in 2024).

On the actual racing: sprint stages can be dull but the lead outs to the deciding sprint often have a lot going on with them. Climbing stages are usually the better option, and once you're oriented on what the contest of the day is (i.e. which rider is trying to get the better of which other rider) there's fun in seeing how that plays out on a long and tough gradient. Cooperation is part of the sport, but outside the bunch, there's plenty of art to that, getting your rival to go ahead of you and move the air for you, etc.

Also, some bike racing trivia: the TdF used to have an award for last place: the lanterne rouge. The art to that, obviously, was getting your nearest rival to go past you without realising. This was sometimes done by hiding in pubs and such. They got rid of the lanterne rouge, which is too bad.

In fact, the accessibility of the sport is part of its appeal; you can ride exactly the same bike that is used in a top level stage race

Assuming you have €10-15,000 lying around?

I mixed up the lanterne rouge with the Maglia Nera (from the Giro). The first of those never had official recognition. The black jersey really was a thing, though.

16: otoh lots of people buy an entire car. Or several of them. It's not an America's Cup yacht, put it that way.

A car has a few more use cases. Or, indeed, a non-racing bike.

I don't watch it or care about it any more than I watch or care about any other sport (meaning, occasionally someone else I care about is watching it or wants to talk about it and I will generally muster up some interest for the short term)

BUT I have recently been involved in several conversations about it, because a colleague just named their child "Tadej"*. The only thing I took away from any of these conversations is the name though.

*a famous bike person is named this.

But did they name their car "Poga"?

Elite race bikes are extremely expensive but they're like ordinary bikes in the overall structure. Whereas the watercraft the America's Cup uses don't look like sailboats anymore.

I think the Tour de France has rules about only using the electric assist on really big hills.

My wife is a cyclist, even used to race a little at a local, low level. I like having the Tour on TV, and it is beautiful. I wouldn't turn it on if it were just me, probably but I still like it. I talk about going to France one summer and staying somewhere on the route to spend a day watching the tour go by. Haven't done it though.

Speaking of things with lots of drug, apparently you get ketamine when you get your wisdom teeth out.

That must be new, I got fentanyl when I got mine taken out about 25 years ago

Maybe the tariffs took it away?

re: 14.1

It's free to view on ITVX, and there's a daily highlights show.

re: 14.1

Because I thought the same thing (I do have a subscription to the other thing because of football), but then a friend who watches the Tour reminded me that ITV has it.

In terms of bike prices, an awful lot more people can afford something akin to a real TdF level bike than can afford the gear for lots of other sports. £10,000 is a lot, but it's way less than a lot of people spend on cars (as per Charlie above) but also a lot less than people spend on gear for lots of sports.

I like cycling and at the moment I'm doing a couple of 2 hour rides a week, but I don't have the fitness or flexibility to come anywhere near justifying a £10K bike, but I could be very happy with a £4K* bike which isn't that far off what a pro ride. Bikes that costs half that are pretty close to what the pros are riding, but don't have power meters on them, or weigh 0.1kg more.

* my actual bike is a £1k bike with better wheels on it.

30: there was a piece about this on R4 the other day, in particular about swimming (the difference those full body suits made in the 2010s) and I started thinking along two lines:
first, what's the sport in which good kit would make the least difference? Cycling has a huge difference between the £1k and the £15k bike. Do sprinters spend huge amounts on shoes? I think the answer might be something like javelin or discus or hammer, but any ideas?

Second, making a huge deal about "this sport is accessible because the kit is affordable" is a bit of a red herring when what really costs the money is not buying the bike, but quitting your job and training full-time under the supervision of coaches, biomechanics experts, nutritionists etc!

Boxing.

Diving (not the scuba kind).

re: 31

I think even the really top end running shoes are only a couple of hundred quid.

With the bikes, I think once you are looking at electronic shifting, carbon frames, and sub 8kg, which you can do for under 4K, the differences are all the tiny marginal gains stuff that matters at the very top of the world tour sort of level, but makes no difference to anyone else, even people racing at a high level. But yeah, 4K is still a lot compared to a pair of shoes.

I think with the last, that's the same for more or less any sport once you get to a certain level. I know 12 year olds who have most of that.

I just want to keep my cardiovascular fitness at a reasonable level as I get older, and enjoy being out of the house for a bit.

"In 2018 Lawson Craddock became the first rider in the history of the Tour de France to have the distinction of lanterne rouge for all stages of the entire tour. He crashed in the 1st stage resulting in facial lacerations and a fractured scapula. Despite his left eye being smashed and the pain of fractured scapula, he continued to race and finished the stage which led to a picture of his bloodied and grimacing face going viral. Later that day he posted an announcement on social media that he was donating $100 for every stage he finished to the Greater Houston Cycling Association to help rebuild the Alkek Velodrome that had been damaged by Hurricane Harvey. A GoFundMe page was also setup for donations to go directly to the velodrome. Craddock continued to ride all the remaining stages which garnered much publicity for the fundraising efforts and eventually over US$250,000 being raised for the cause."

I have to buy stupidly padded shoes and replace them often if I want to run even a little. Feet are assholes and ankles worse.

I'm the asshole?! Do you know much you weigh?!

I haven't been on a scale in a while.

You know who has? Me! In your mineralized shower!

37: If you persist in your fat-shaming, we're going to have to ban you. Unfogged is a judgment-free zone where all body types and body parts should feel welcome.

Fat, muscle, bone, I don't judge! It's all mass!! That you put on me!!!

Yeah. I'm probably better off swimming more.

But swimming gets me out of breath without a high enough pulse rate. Running, jogging really, let's me get and keep a pulse above 150. Swimming, I'm gasping for air and my pulse is 140.

40 I propose the bastinado instead

With cycling there's definitely a sweet spot where having nicer gear helps, but rapidly diminishing returns above that. Mountain biking is even worse for the gear-headedness, I think, just because of purported advances in tech (not to mention ebikes.). I don't think it's unique among gear-oriented sports that part of the appeal is that one can buy what the pros have: running, golfing, most snow sports have the same marketing.

43: as someone who learned to swim as an adult, it just takes to time to figure out how to relax and breathe in a rhythm.

People have been telling me about how to breathe since like 1983. It's never sunk in.