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What I find difficult to reconcile is that I’m beginning to realise this is actually
how it should be.

Call me cynical, but all that so-called passionate cycling of yesteryear was
a bit tainted. The TdF was never designed to be a bike race, but originally
conceived as a crazy adventure to promote a newspaper. The demands of
the event were too hard for mere mortals to endure, and so they got ‘help’,
and it was the help that injected [sorry] the passion into the racing. The
only way the event has endured is because the public chose to ignore all the
rumours that increasingly complex medical procedures were being used to
maintain the façade. I’m guilty of it myself – the ‘I’m the most tested rider
in the World’ bleating that Lance Armstrong used to do, had me fooled until
his reign was almost over. Not only were his Tour wins wiped out, but all his
runners-up except one (Joseba Beloki in 2002) were so tainted that they
weren’t awarded the win either.

I’m happy to believe Froome has won his four Tours cleanly. No evidence has
been given so far to the contrary, and his riding style hasn’t been so
outlandish as to seem ‘enhanced’. What is more, nor has anyone else’s. Please
don’t think I want the drugs back to make it more exciting! To my mind all
forms of cheating drain all sense of achievement away. But there need to be
some big changes to the race to bring the spark back and it may not be the
same event afterwards. I’d like to see every stage to be half the length. No
point in riding 200km every day if the bunch are only racing the last 30km.
No point doing 4 cols in a day if the first move isn’t made until 4 hours have
gone by.

There are some things you can’t change, but there are others that you can,
such as the fortunes of people in Haiti who don’t have enough drinking water.
Roy Savery is riding in support of this cause and looking for a record for an
81-year-old in the process. Apologies that I don’t have all the details of how
you can donate – no doubt it will be elsewhere in this mag.

Good luck to everyone who is riding the RideLondon 100 this weekend. Those
I know about are: Chris Chalet, James Lyon, John O’Brien, Richard Preece,
Debbie Valentine. Hope the rain stays off this time!
Best regards,
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