Let’s put some spice in the oatmeal!
July 6, 2016 § 23 Comments
Le Turdy France has become a big, steaming pot of tasteless oatmeal. Average Joe thinks it’s boring and stupid. Hobby bicycle people think it’s boring and stupid. Profamateur Cat 4 underwear models think it’s boring and stupid. And now, in a new twist, even the riders think it’s boring and stupid.
This is like David Lee Roth admitting that he can’t sing. Everyone knows it’s true, but why’d ya have to come out and SAY it?
Various reasons have been put forth to explain the mind-numbing boredom that sets in after just a few minutes of watching terribly underfed chickens, bones poking through their underwear, slam into motorcycles that have no business on the course. Here are the biggies that have oatmealized Le Tour:
- Robots. No one enjoys watching robots.
- Chris Froome. If you’re going to dope up a robot, make him handsome, like Eddy or Lance or Fabian.
- Radios. If you don’t think radios remove all excitement and fun, look at the average 8-year-old from a rich helicopter-parent family that controls his every move.
- Gore. Pro underwear racing is dangerous beyond belief. There aren’t enough sick people who enjoy bloodshed, closed head injuries, and Hoogerland meat-shredding in the general population (NASCAR excepted) to get pleasure out of this choreographed slaughterhouse.
- Power data. Use a power meter for three weeks and tell me how much it has increased the joy and spontaneity in your cycling.
- Freak show. We know they’re volcano doping because they’re riding faster now than they did in the EPO Era. Yawwwwwn.
- Dentist chair syndrome. What is already miserable is worse because it’s so long. It takes three weeks to find out which doper climbs one mountain faster than his podium rivals by two minutes? Really?
- France. We can’t stand another castle viewed from a chopper. We just can’t.
- Yellow. Check your comic books, especially anything with the Two-Gun Kid. Yellow is the color for chickens and cowards. “Why, you yaller-bellied varmint, I’ma gonna fill you plumb full of lead.”
- Names. Most Euro names are too hard to pronounce. No red-blooded American will watch a sport with names that don’t sound like “Ruth” or “Aaron.” “Gretzky” gets a pass because he was, you know, not bad.
So after reviewing these terrible problems, I’ve taken the old admonition to heart that “You shouldn’t raise problems if you don’t have solutions.” Here they are:
- Humans. Make the Tour open to actual humans. Hairy legged, pot-bellied, flatulent couch potatoes welcome! It will be awesome to watch your Uncle Fred out on his bike for the first time since 1973 struggle up the ONLY STAGE IN THE TOUR, L’Alpe d’Huez.
- Give Chris Froome his own race. He’ll be the only participant and he will win every year. We’ll call it the Tour de Froome. That way he can eat a few thousand cheeseburgers, stop volcano doping, and look human again.
- Coach ride-behinds. Don’t ban radios, but make the schlumpy DS’s follow along on their bicycles instead of in a follow car. If they still have the lungs to shout instructions from 30 miles back while climbing L’Alpe, more power to them. If half of them keel over, no worries. Your average DS can be replaced with a 3rd-Grade dropout drug addict dope dealer.
- Moto licensing. Require anyone who wants to follow or mix with Le Tour on a motorcycle to pass a certification test that involves wrestling hungry tigers. Survivors will be required to pass a crash dummy test where they are slammed into the back of a truck going downhill at 50. Successful applicants can safely follow the peloton from 100 miles back.
- Strava. Require all riders who use power in the race to post up better numbers than Thorfinn-Sassquatch. Those who fail will have their power meters confiscated.
- Bike motors. Since we’re letting Uncle Fred race Le Tour, which now only has one stage, everyone who’s not a doper or professional underwear model gets a bike motor. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching Nairo Quintana getting dropped by a fellow whose shorts stop halfway up the San Andreas Fault buttcrack?
- Cut Le Tour. One stage. 35 miles. Winner takes all. In alternate years it will be held around Chris Lotts’s parking lot crit course in Compton.
- Expand the meaning of “France.” The world has lots of cool places to see. In non-Compton years, stick Le Tour in guaranteed bike-friendly places like Palos Verdes Estates, San Bernardino, or Houston.
- Black and red. Those are some winning colors. Black for “aggression,” red for “blood.”
- Americanize. Remember how in your Spanish class in junior high Mrs. Simon gave everyone a Spanish name (mine was “Francisco,” and I loved it). Give all the riders American names. Peter Sagan is Pete Smith. Roman Kreuziger is Robbie Johnson. Fabian Cancellara is John Davis. Nairo Quintan is Bill Jones. Chris Froome is Suzy Small. You get the idea.
And yes, you’re welcome.
END
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Cycling in the South Bay 
Whatever man…I’m going tomorrow and taking some selfies.
Enjoy!
Wait, what? The TdF is on? And I cut the cable. Sigh…
Fabian. Not the same without him.
Have a blast, Dan! Share the selfies!
Correction: won’t be the same without Spartacus. And I do miss Jens.
Well, he’s still there last I checked. Last year, farewell tour and such.
Am I strange I still enjoy it…
Yes, you’re strange, but not because of that. The viewership continues to plunge, however.
Thanks, coming from you that’s a compliment. I think part of the problem is that during the rest of the year TV coverage of the greatest sport in the world is vastly reduced, image if the only football game was the super bowl and it didn’t feature good adverts.
What is a football game and what is a super bowl and what is a good advert?
Superbowl: a TV show designed explicitly, so that various corporations can spunk away there TV advertising budget in 30 second intervals.
Advert: short play extolling the virtues of one product over seemingly identical products. Advert (good) entertaining short play, using famous talent as actors and/or entertaining plot featuring animated animals.
Football: breaks up adverts at Super Bowl (see above). Apart from that, no fucking clue mate.
Copyright that description.
Besides radios and power meters…one more ‘removal’ is in order: index electronic shifting and all of its permutations….spare wheels /bikes are all good…save ’em. but the two things i want to see are some scarecrow trying to find the right gear by reaching for it and getting it trimmed out…and… I also want to see is the DS you talked about leaning out the window shouting into a megaphone, “Venga, Venga!” (While chomping on a cigar…)
… and swilling battery acid wine from a tumbler.
“Give all the riders American names.”
Take it a step further … call them ALL John
John Parker, John Yaya, John Parrot, John Bigbooty, John Small Berries
You get the idea
No one gets John Smallberries but ME.
Me thinks “Le Tour de Leaky Prostates” would make for better viewing.
Lots of ick to sop up, though.
“Depends” make for a good chamois (er, so I’ve heard).
From “them.”
I prefer to watch the Giro Rosa
More obvious doping. Agreed.
Stopped watching entirely. Doping.
And it’s one of those spectator sports. If I’m not doing it – I’m damn well nothing to sit there watching other do it.
Done with TdF. Or any other “race” I’m not in.
Not to mention the ones I AM in.