TdF Stage 21: endings
By Dave Land, posted 17 July 2017
It was a good tour, and it was still less than a minute after all of that climbing and descending.
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Well done Froomey! How much more impressive a palmares can you get, without public recognition? Jake Humphrey's received a great deal of abuse for suggesting Froomey is the greatest, unrecognised British sportsman. We are on Jake's side entirely here. And we don't see the for/against argument with Wiggo. It's not a zero sum game: Froomey can have knighthood, and Wiggo can keep his (and Cav could get one as well). It is a curious sport, this one of ours, that global domination has been barely recognised inside our own country, and even when it is, only to find ways to denigrate those who have worked ridiculously hard to become good at what they do.
Whilst we're here, we'd like to make a stand for a nice, big, idea of what British means. So, ... wait for it ... Froomey has a British passport... there you go.
Video from the penultimate stage: Time Trial in Marseille, from The Guardian, hosted on YouTube
It was certainly the closest TdF within the last few years, yet a deserved win. Sometimes we wonder if we're watching a different race. In previous years, when Team Sky sit on the front, and don't attack, they are accused of being boring. When Rigoberto Uran sits on everyone's wheel and never attacks, he's celebrated as a canny racer. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. And the booing? Do we see French teams booed when they come to the Tour of Britain, of Le Tour De Yorkshire? No, we certainly don't.
We think that the stage 1 time trial was a brilliant Sky effort. And the recovery of the wheel mechanical, not just Froomey, but the whole team (clearly Kwiatowski has a job as a mechanic if ever he hangs up the cleats), was so impressive, and possibly the race winning point. And we return, once again, to the strange situation of professional cycling, where the winner is one person, but that person could never win on their own.
It is with this contradictory thought bouncing around our heads that we take a breather, very briefly, before we wind it back up again for Spain!
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