There is a movie about the Eurovision Song Contest (called “The Eurovision Song Contest”) that was released in 2020. It came about when Will Ferrell, who wrote it, saw the competition for the first time while staying with his wife’s family Sweden.
“What the hell is this?” he asked. “It’s Eurovision,” he was told. “It happens every year.”
“Every year? This lunacy happens every year?” he replied incredulously. And he made a movie about it, which has one excellent joke near the start, but otherwise isn’t as good as the actual competition.
Like most of us, I watch the Tour de France. And I can’t stop thinking about the, “Every year?” quote. I can’t believe we do this every July and behave as if it’s normal.
Multiple national road champion on the bike and award-winning author Michael Hutchinson writes for Cycling Weekly every week.
Every year I immerse myself in the Tour. And every year it knocks me off my feet and washes me upside down into the trees. It’s overwhelming. Because I like it, and because it’s my job, I try to keep on top of as much of it as I can. I’m always amazed by the detailed recollections many of my colleagues manage – who was in the early break on stage five in 2022 but punctured. Who almost hit a spectator’s handbag in 2005. Every year I begin July determined to achieve total recall.
But of course, by the time Ben Healy took the yellow jersey in the first week, I could only just remember the details of his stage win a few days earlier. There’s just too much. Every day a stage result. Every day a set of four classification leaders, which may or may not have anything to do with the stage result. The combativity prize. (A combativity prize at the Tour! It’s like having an award for “most aggressive protagonist” at a knife-fight.) The intermediate sprints.
Who crashed, where and how, and whose fault it was and what they’d have won if they’d stayed upright. Who was in the break. Whereabouts in France (or elsewhere) all of this happened, and (for your bonus question) what else might have happened on the same bit of road in the past.
And that’s just the stuff you would expect – you have to add the random events, like stray dogs, protesters, strikes and weather. The more you try to absorb the more there is. You can dig as deep a hole as you like, but you’ll never hit bedrock. It’s Tour de France all the way down.
What cycling has done with the Tour is effectively run a world championships 21 times in three weeks. Add in the other classifications, and all the various riders who are in the same race but with different objectives, and really it’s two or three world championship races per day.
No other sport would do this. Every other sport presented with a box of fireworks would let them off one at a time over the course of a season, or maybe several seasons. What cycling is doing with the Tour de France is throwing a carefree match into the box and letting the whole lot go off at once. Then next year we get another box and do it again. And every time we try to track the trajectory of every rocket and stagger into August with our eyebrows still on fire.
It’s a ridiculous splurge. It helps that the Tour (and the other Grand Tours) are cultural artefacts as well as sporting events. It helps that pro teams have enough riders to make it happen, and that the sponsors are prepared to pay for it all. But it’s mostly about the way cycling has never really held back. It’s a sport that has always asked for more from its athletes, and usually got it.
And we’ll be back to do the whole thing again next year. It’s insane.
How To… do field art
The principles are simple. Create a piece of art (or, more likely, “art”) that is designed to be viewed from a helicopter. The art will need to be big, and if it’s going to get you and your village on TV, it’s going to need to be eye-catching enough that the guy in the chopper can find it.
You must decide on a visual. This can be as simple as mowing the name of the village into a crop. Most often, though, it’s a bicycle. Ensure that as your chief designer you select someone who has never seen a bicycle in real life. This will guarantee that the frame angles will be wonky, and the wheels will be oval. If you can find one of the people who draws paint markings on UK bike lanes, they will be perfect.
To introduce eye-catching movement, round up some primary school children and persuade them that helping you get your field on television will be more fun than watching a bike race. Get them to march round in circles with streamers pretending to be wheels. Make sure one of them is too stupid to do this successfully and gets tangled in everyone else’s streamers.
If you want to increase the impact, discard the children and find some farmers prepared to drive their tractors around in circles instead. You will need to use alcohol as a bribe to secure their cooperation. Under no circumstances hand over the bribe up front. Farmers aren’t as stupid as children.
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