2018 Tour de France preview

I’ve looked back at the time when I followed the Tour de France and I realized that this is the 30th year! Wow! Who would have thought that there I was at the defunct Gaisano Bookstore, just touching a US bicycling magazine called, Bicycle Guide, with the 1998 Tour de France winner, Pedro Delgado, on the cover. Since the mag was covered in plastic, I could only caress it. For more than 6 months, I always went back to the stand and see if somebody had ripped the plaster cover open so I can look at the inside. No luck!

This coming Saturday, July 7, is the 105th of the Grand Boucle. Started in 1903, as a means to drum up sales and salvage a sports newspaper, the Tour has gone a long way since then. Only the two World Wars temporarily halted the race since then.

These days, the Tour is one of the biggest sporting events in the world, in fact, it dwarfs all other bicycle races. It is so big and unique in that it is more influential than the Union Cycliste International, the world governing body of cycling.

This years Tour, which will run from July 7 to July 29, covers 3,329 km total. There are 21 stages which includes 8 flat stages for sprinters, six mountain stages, four intermediate stages, one team time trial and one individual time trial and two rest days.

One of the more interesting days is stage 9, which includes 22km of pavé, or ancient cobble stones that are seen only during Paris-Roubaix. It is interesting because the favorites are allergic to this type of terrain. While the Tour can’t be won on the  pavé, it can surely be lost there if you crash.

The Tour is a race that honors archaic tradition but there is a change in this years edition in which the organizers decided to try down the teams from 9 riders to eight. How this reduction in team riders will be interesting too watch as it will be difficult for the top teams to control the race with only 8 members. So from 22 teams and 198 riders, it is now down to 176 riders with still the same number of teams.

It has been said that no rider will ever make the Tour, instead, it is the Tour that will make the rider. No matter how difficult the race route is, if the riders decides to take it easy, it will be a boring race. But if it is an average route, and the riders fight for every second, it will be an exciting race.

However, there is the Sword of Damocles hanging over the Tour. Chris Froome, the 4-time winner and defending champion, is still legally fighting a positive test for a drug called Salbutamol, a drug that is illegal when used under a specified volume. In fact, a lot of folks, including 5-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault, and the last Frenchman to win the Tour back in 1985, has called for walkout if Froome races the Tour.

How this prickly issue will affect the Tour remains to be seen.In  In the meanwhile, you can watch the livestream here www.steephill.tv for tv listing, some cable TV (but none at SKY!), and the internet. (To be continued…