JULY 25 — This past week must have been the quietest in the annual sporting calendar by quite some distance.
With football, the NBA and the NFL in pre-season mode, a break between tennis and golf’s major championships, the cricket test series between England and Australia taking a breather, and the athletics World Championships and basketball European Championships not scheduled until later in the summer, there really has been very little going on.
This lack of action has provided a perfect opportunity, therefore, for other generally less-hyped sports to take a rare turn in the limelight.
Foremost among those has been cycling, with the most prestigious and best-known event on the annual calendar — the Tour de France — rapidly hurtling towards this weekend’s glamorous conclusion in Paris.
I readily admit that I have never followed cycling before but, in the absence of anything else to watch, this week I have really tried to open my mind and give the Tour de France a chance to enthrall me.
An additional reason to do so comes from the fact that the expected winner, Chris Froome, is a Briton, and it’s pretty rare these days for one of my countrymen to take the biggest prize in any major sporting event (even here we have to overlook that he was born in Kenya and raised in South Africa).
So I have tried, I really have: kids over at a friend’s house; wife at work; beer and pizza within leaning distance, phone off and TV on…the perfect conditions for any live sport to succeed in keeping me gripped.
But despite my very best efforts, I couldn’t help but find the whole thing a bit…well…boring.
I’m very sorry to any cycling aficionados who may be offended, there is very little to hold my attention in the sight of a large bunch of men cycling along a road — and that’s all that really happens.
Occasionally there might be some overtaking, and even more occasionally a dramatic crash (although none while I was watching), but on the whole the Tour is nothing more than a long procession of men, peddling away on bicycles, going along roads.
Now, I must immediately add that I do not mean in any way to disparage the efforts of those cyclists: they are formidably fit and mentally tough athletes who work extraordinarily hard and push themselves to the limits of human achievement in an attempt to finish as close to the top as possible. They deserve all the plaudits they receive, and more.
But from a visual point of view, from the perspective of an uninformed and neutral spectator who wants to be kept interested in what they are doing, the race is just too repetitive and mundane.
It couldn’t be any other way, of course — the very nature of cycle racing is that the contestants do nothing other than cycle and, in a three-week event like the Tour de France, we could hardly expect the whole thing to be one long sprint jam-packed with desperate attempts to overtake and a thrilling succession of lead changes.
In fact, rather than the actual cycling the aspect of the race I most enjoyed was seeing the gradual unfolding of the beautiful French landscape, which remains unrivalled for its splendour out of all the countries I have ever visited.
As suggested by the popularity of the Monaco Grand Prix above all other Formula One races, there is a definite appeal in staging a major sporting event in an outdoor civilian setting rather a tailor-made enclosed arena, and I did appreciate the panoramic views of the towns, villages and open countryside as the cyclists whizzed along.
For the actual action, if it can be called that, however, I found there was little to hold the attention of the average viewer — if the best thing about watching a sporting event are the background views, you know you’re struggling.
It is partly my fault for being so uninformed, of course — if I knew a little bit more about what was going on, I am sure that I would derive far greater enjoyment from the technical and strategic nuances of the race.
But to be worthy of a place on live television in front of a mass global audience rather than simply pleasing die-hard cycling geeks, surely something with a little more variety or raw excitement is required.
I’m not suggesting that the Tour de France should change its format and introduce showbiz innovations to provide greater mainstream appeal — in fact, these it’s nice to see an event that actually isn’t cynically made for television.
But life is short, time is precious and I quite simply don’t want to waste any more of mine watching men cycle along roads.
I admire Tour de France cyclists, I respect them, I fully accept that I could never do what they do and I hope that Chris Froome wins. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch them.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
