Once again I find myself the only person in North America who follows the Tour de France. I can't blame anyone. The coverage is abysmal. Half the time the camera feeds are focused away from whatever action is going on. Not that there is a whole lot of action. The event in its entirety is 20+ days of folks riding bicycles for 5+ hours a day. The teams are so good that for the most part once you have the lead, it is extraordinarily difficult for another team to overtake you. In this case there was one stage where the leader and favorite got overtaken significantly and it was spoken of as historic.
TdF stages are split into three types -- most between 100 and 120 miles.
There are mountain stages, which are utterly brutal and feature steep miles-long climbs through the Alps or the Pyrenees. Mountain stages are when riders often "crack"; that is to say, their bodies effectively give out and all the desire in the world can't keep them in the game. These stages are the ultimate test of endurance and will often make the difference among the race favorites.
There are time trial stages, which are exactly what they sound like: riders go off at set intervals and hammer through a shorter than normal course at a pretty much full-on pace the whole way. In these stages the cyclist is on his own, no team to help, no one to draft off of. The final day of racing is always a time trial so that effectively the leader is on his own to defend his lead against the last chance efforts of the contenders.
Thirdly, there are sprint stages. These are generally flat or rolling hills, not mountainous, designed especially for sprint specialists, guys with enormous thighs who can pedal at ridiculous speeds. These folks are almost never in contention for overall race victories so sprinting is kind of a race within a race. So after riding along for 4+ hours and 100+ miles, these guys put the hammer down for what often amounts to a photo finish.
The winner of the race will always be someone who climbs well and is good in time trials. Most importantly, he will have the best team surrounding him: teammates who sacrifice themselves to let him draft and lead him back to the front if there is a crash.
This year's winner was exactly to formula. He took the lead on a mountain stage when the existing leader -- last year's winner -- cracked. In subsequent stages when challengers tried to race out ahead of him, his teammates essentially drafted him back up to the front. It was a textbook victory.
There are a couple of things I really like about the Tour. One is the sportsmanship. There are traditions that have no documentation in the rules but are followed none-the-less. For example, the last day of the race is largely ceremonial. If you are leading going into the last day, even by just a few seconds, no one will challenge you. It's sort of an acknowledgement that after 20 days of biking 100 miles a day, you're just glad to have completed the Tour.
Another tradition that is perhaps slightly less often adhered to is to not take advantage of a competitor's, especially the race leader's, mechanical issue or crash. I've seen this a few times where there will be a crash in the peloton that involves a top contender and everyone just takes it easy until his team brings him a new bike and he's back in the thick of things. This year the leader actually slowed down to let his prime competitor back up after a crash. (Granted there may have been some strategy to that. The leader only has to keep pace with his competitor, not pass him, and it's easier to keep pace if you can draft off him.) The idea here is you win the race on biking skill, not because of mechanical failure or accidents.
Such traditions stand in sharp contrast to the behavior in most sports. They are both archaic and noble.
I think the thing that most attracts me about it is that everything the racers feel on these long rides, I have experienced. Sure I experience it after one day of riding 30-50 miles, not after three weeks of century-length efforts, but I know the feelings. In my own small way, I know what it's like to be exhausted and confronted with a steep grade or the relief of sliding into another rider's slipstream or simply going as fast as I can on a flat, smooth road.
I also know how to fast-forward skillfully enough that I can reduce a 5-hour stage replay to about 45 minutes. Yeah, that too.
