A Blast From the Past

I'm back after an incredibly long break, partially due to my being on vacation and having no internet, and partially due to lack of motivation. At any rate, I'm going to start back up here in the middle of July by talking about an event that covers the majority of July: The Tour de France.

Yes, yes, I know, you would rather watch some bad Kurt Russell movie on Tuesday afternoon TBS, but I'm telling you, the Tour is great. I got into it just before it was exposed for being just as bad as baseball, maybe worse, in the doping department. It has been absolutely heartbreaking to watch Tour after Tour get ruined by a serious contender testing positive for some banned substance, but like most sports fans, I and my family keep on coming back for more, because we want to see something special. When you know that you have seen a clean Tour from start to finish, it is really an awesome event.

That being said, the Tour committee is trying something old for a couple stages this year, and I think it is a mistake. In stages 10 (already happened) and 13 (tomorrow), there will be no radio communication from the team car to the riders. This means that the riders will not know how far behind the leaders they are, and makes it much more difficult to set an appropriate pace. I really don't know why they are doing this. You might think it will make things more exciting in a chaotic sort of way, but I am inclined to disagree. Think about forcing tennis players to use the old-style rackets for an entire tournament, or even just a match. Think about putting the old leather padding on football players instead of the protective equipment they wear now. In both cases, the results would be bad. That is the point behind all these advancements in sports, so that athletes have every opportunity to showcase their skills to the fullest.

Check out Stage 13 of the Tour and see what you think about it. Personally, I'm hoping the committee scraps it for next year as an unsuccessful experiment.