Certainment, It est triste. J’aime Le Tour. OK, seven years of French, that’s all I got. But I really do look forward to Le Tour, (Tour de France, in case you don’t know) It is the premier cycling race in the world. It really is transfixing, getting a tour of France, England (this year) a little bit of Spain, Belgium, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and to see some superb athletics. I was doing a lot of flipping between Le Tour and the Red Sox. It struck me, how a lot of professional team sports are starting to get a little tedious. My biggest beef is the move to video replay. For almost a century and a half we enjoyed watching baseball, pretty much like we did it in the neighborhood sandlot. Today, we have to listen to a long lecture on the rules and wait to find out if we’re going to further delay with a video review. The NFL is so ridiculously over the top with the technology and rules that it has really taken any fun out of the game.
Le Tour works like this, for about three weeks you get on a bike and cycle for about 120 miles a day. You go up incredible heights, you deal with rain, heat, other geographic features. Your bike might develop a mechanical problem, get a flat tire. Do you get a review, or get to whine about it to anyone? No. You may bump the guy in front of you, beside you, you’ve got 195 guys bunched together, stuff happens. Just like in other sports, but in bicycling there’s no opportunity to whine and fuss, you keep going until you get to the end. Whoever gets to the end first, wins. Real easy.
Le Tour is a true test of strength, endurance, technique, tactics and not whining and replays. Triathlon, another individual sport, other sports that are not so prissy and just interested in getting out and doing it. Please, take out all the nonsense in sports. Sure drugs have been an issue in cycling, but that’s being cleaned up. Certainly the team sports have had their own issues with drug abuse, behavior issues, which is also taking the fun out of it.
Let’s get back to having true contests, enjoy the skill, intelligence and challenge of sports and cut out the rest of the nonsense. But to be sure, sports is certainly a reflection of our current culture.