The Tour - yet more cycling

The canicule (heatwave) continues although the early mornings and late evenings are pleasantly less hot.  We have moved our sleeping quarters downstairs.  Interestingly our hugely improved roof insulation has meant that the nights upstairs are much warmer because the heat from the roof slowly seeps out then. 

This month will be taken up for us watching the cycling.  Cyclists of course have to plough on through the hottest weather, and it has been settled over a lot of France these past few days.

These 2 are well in evidence even at this early stage of the race

The first edition of the Tour de France was in 1903.  Since then much has happened - our local paper  has published a nice leaflet to mark the links between the race and our region, involved in a third of all the stages this year.  Names and events to conjour with - Laurent Jalabert, a successful competitor now a constant presence in the tv commentary team, competitors like the Colombian Nairo Quintana, key places like the rose city of Toulouse which is the jumping-off point for the Pyrenees and our local city of Montpellier which will host a rest day  this year,

Cheating is back in the newspapers, though without much hard news I can see, just the suspicions that often go with a gloomy feeling in France that French riders are not doing too well.  Apart from the hard cases like Armstrong it all comes down to the gut feeling that being that good is improbable.  Apart from using illegal substances and 'doping' machines (essentially hidden motors), the permitted changes in machinery and nutrition are enough to make huge changes in performances, and watching the ssecond stage today got me thinking, not just about changes in equipment and nutrition but about the huge infrastructure of support people, cars following every team with spare bikes and young blokes rushing to replace faulty bikes.  At any given point it must have been difficult to decide shat sas legal, and who had an unfair advantage.

Bikes have changed from steel and aluminium to carbon fibre, with disc brakes, electronic gear changes and many more derailleur gears, controls all electronic and sometimes using bluetooth, tyres filled with self-sealing liquid and no inner tube.  Over the years there have been frequent rumours about mechanical doping, with little hard evidence of cheating, but the mechanical advantages of new equipment have made a huge difference  to  the lightness and potential speed of the bikes.  Nutrition has also changed, both the science and the materials - careful  calculation of energy needs, fluids and gels easily carried and absorbed, calculated not just for the trrain but adapted to the needs of individual riders, with timing of a what to eat and when.

Away from cycling, Language is changing and not, for me, for the better.  The words batter (in cricket - formerly a cooking ingredient for pancakes and yorkshire pudding) and train station (which we always used to call a railway station) are now accepted terms.  Not sure why batsman was no longer acceptable for a male cricketer, although the female of the species did and doesneed a separate term.  But things move on, and I do accept that since long before Shakespeare the English language was and is living.