Death of Le Tour? Article By: Dan Nicholl Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:36 18 holes at Zimbali yesterday ? hopefully while most of you were in your respective offices, keeping the economy stumbling along in my absence ? with Adrian Garvey, brought home a couple of truths. Prop forwards and golf are not natural companions. Homeowners don?t always take kindly to errant drives rattling their tiles. And outside of a handful of hardened spectators, Phil Liggett, and a peleton largely made of people no one?s ever heard of, planet earth is completely disinterested in the Tour de France. Playing golf with former sportsmen usually involves talk of sport, and so in between dazzling me with tales of his Springbok career (the older Garvz gets, the better he used to be), the Open Championship (and Padraig?s magical five-wood), Rafael Nadal, a woeful Sharks, Brian Mujati and the Springboks, a ten-wicket win at Headingly, and Pirates-United at the Shark Tank, all came up in conversation. Something big just didn?t pop up, though, and took me until this morning to work out what it was: Le Tour. I?ve watched all of 20 minutes of this year?s race, along with collected snatches from news bulletins and highlights packages. There was a flicker of interest given Robbie Hunter?s leadership of a team that almost passed as South African, but Barloworld?s withdrawal of their sponsorship after the latest drug scandal to hit cycling, I simply don?t have any desire to follow the race. There were a few headlines in the early stages, but only because a Formula 1 star appeared to have made the transition from four wheels to two; turned out it was a different Schumacher, and it?s been downhill from there. For an event that transfixed the planet just a few years ago, the fall from grace has been spectacular. Every second person had a yellow wristband firmly in place; those that didn?t spent a few meditative moments reading passages from ?It?s Not About The Bike? every morning, Lance Armstrong?s tome suddenly the new King James. Cycling was as cool as it got, and the Tour de France was compelling stuff. Mike Haysman used to switch of his phone, cancel his Jerry Springer body-double work and lock himself in his house in front of the television for two weeks ? and the rest of the world followed suit. Armstrong?s eventual abdication was supposed to open up the field to a slew of new champions, young riders eager to charge along the trail the defining figure of the Tour had blazed. With cycling converts desperate to see what was going to happen next, the sport awash with money, and the opportunity for superstardom (and a high-profile relationship with an Olsen twin) up for grabs, cycling, and the Tour, were primed for another memorable chapter. Instead, we?ve had the most spectacular disintegration of a major sporting event I can remember. Cricket had it?s trials with match-fixing, the baseball strike did its best to scupper the Major League. Formula 1 took a ringing blow with last year?s US Grand Prix ? but nothing has matched the scale or duration of the Tour de France?s plummet. The peleton has a handful of recognisable riders at best, every stage win comes with an inevitable cloud of suspicion from a cynical, sceptical public, and coverage of the event doesn?t touch the Armstrong days. German television opted out of covering the Tour after the Floyd Landis debacle, an unthinkable decision a few years ago. The cycling fans, the true disciples who dress up in lycra just to watch the Tour, still hang on devoutly ? Petal le Grange, my Mighty Dodos team-mate, is in France this week to watch. And he?ll have a great time, soaking up the atmosphere, and watch riders who?re still phenomenal athletes, take on a challenge that remains one of the most demanding in sport. Given the opportunity, I?d watch myself ? but not with the keenness I?d have had when Armstrong was leading the way. Part of the decline can be ascribed to the departure of a man who pretty much was the Tour de France for so long. But the race has enough history and prestige to overcome that. What?s pulled it down is the unmitigated succession of scandal ? magnified, perhaps, by the McCarthyism of the French press in their doping witch hunts, but which have nonetheless exposed a sport that appears fundamentally rotten. 2008 was a year to clear the air, to desperately call out to a departing public that faith had been restored; so much for that. The volume of top quality sport that?s besieged us there last few weeks hasn?t helped the Tour?s cause, certainly, but it should command our attention even amongst so much competition. That it hasn?t is more than worrying; we aren?t quite at the death knell, but professional cycling is mightily unhealthy. The Tour de France is too big, too established to be a fringe event, and it deserves prominent status. Or at least, it used to. There?s a repair job needed, and urgently, for it keeps sinking, we?re in danger of losing one of sport?s iconic events ? and that, in the light of the joy that the Tour has brought us over the years, would be a terrible shame. Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za http://sport.iafrica.com/pics/print.gif http://sport.iafrica.com/pics/send.gif < = ="/pls/cms/article_comments.list_comments_iac2?p__id=1042520&p_dopop=Y"> http://sport.iafrica.com/pics/addcomment.gif
