For a couple of issues last year I burbled on and on about the Tour De France; it was hard not to, given that I was sitting up til 3am every single night for three weeks watching it. I was watching cycling, I was riding most days, I was reading about cycling, it was a magnificent obsession, and I ended up having to apologise again and promise not to bang on too much. I behaved myself for the rest of the year, and went back to bagging Demetriou and crying about St Kilda, and putting shit on Brendan Fevola. So, for what’s about to come, I apologise, and I promise that it will be just these few paragraphs, just this issue, then we will resume regular transmission.

When Melbourne stole the F1 Grand Prix from Adelaide all those years ago (and aren’t we so glad of that, oooh wait a sec, it’s January, they’re about to start blocking off vast tracts of Albert Park again, I can feel another yell coming on), Adelaide had to find some other international event.

They bought the Tour Down Under, and promoted it, desperately, all over the world. For the first few years, the handful of overseas teams who bothered coming only sent their second-tier riders, and the event was seen as not much more than a pleasant training camp with the chance to scoff at Australian wine.

Then, more teams got more interested, and it became a competitive training camp, and a chance for young Australian riders to mix it up with the Europeans. This year, however, was a whole different story. Lance came with his new team. Columbia HTC sent a strong team along with their second-best sprinter, Greipel. Cadel came with his new team, and the list goes on. So many names from last year’s TDF were here, it was bound to be a good race, and OMFG was it what.

The second-last stage, which features two ascents of Willunga, gave us a day of racing worthy of the best days in any European event. On the second ascent, Evans made a run for it, and eventually was joined by two Caisse D’Epaigne riders and a young Australian. At one stage they had 37 seconds on the peloton, which would have been enough, with time bonuses, for him or either of the CDE riders to take the lead from Columbia’s Greipel. With only a few kilometres to go, Columbia took control of the peloton, and their domestiques rode themselves almost to death to drag back enough of the time difference to keep Greipel in the Ochre leader’s jersey for the final stage.

As the vision switched from the lead group and back to the peloton, you saw what cycling is all about. The four in front were taking short turns in the lead, desperate to keep the pace up, their form deteriorating (bikes wobbling, shoulders heaving, standing up in the pedals more and more) as strength of will took over from strength of body. Back at the peloton, the workhorses of Columbia and the other big teams were grinding out the cadence, dragging eighty or so riders along with them, Greipel hanging on, being pulled along in their wake – all he had to do was stay with the main group, but sprinters, being about twenty kilos heavier than most other riders, aren’t built to keep up a pace of 40+ km/h for that long, but stick with them he did.

I haven’t seen the footage of the final stage yet, but with Greipel hanging on to a lead over half a dozen other riders of less than a minute, I’m sure it’s going to be great viewing.

And I won’t write about it, I promise. After all, the TDF starts in June, so you can start reading up now in order to understand my June July and August columns.

* *

The Australian Open is on at the moment. Big fat hairy deal. What do we get? Lots of dopey teenagers draped in Australian flags and full of tart fuel, and various other imbeciles trying to start race riots. It’s hysterical that these fuckwits were able to get flares into the complex, but hardly surprising; the focus of “security” at the tennis, as at most other sporting events these days, is to protect the commercial interests of the food and drink franchises so your six year old kid’s soft drink bottle will be confiscated, but the Balkan-or-whatever thugs standing next to you will get in with bloody great flags and sticks and, oh yeah, flares.

Which leads me to What The Fuck Has Happened To The Cricket? Who’s been to a test or a ODI lately? Is it fun anymore? What’s the point? In between overs you’re blasted with ads on the big screen, you can’t bounce a beach ball around (“safety reasons?” fuck the fuck off, what’s dangerous about a fucking beach ball?), and you have to queue for ten minutes for the pleasure of standing in ankle-deep piss when you need to take a slash.

The same thing applies with security at the cricket as at the tennis – pack yourself an esky full of snacks and cold drinks so you can avoid the daylight robbers at the take-away stands, and you’ll be searched for fifteen minutes and quite possibly refused entry when you ask why the fuck they have to confiscate your kid’s half-drunk bottle of water and your plastic cutlery, and is it really necessary to finger your sandwiches and BBQ chicken. Meanwhile, of course, a bunch of already-pissed bogans will waltz past, draped in Australian flags and screaming Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi, ready to spend their day competing for most uses of the term Black C_nt over the ensuing eight hours of sunburn and alcohol poisoning, and you wonder why the hell you’re here and not just out on the porch watching the kids splash in the pool and listening to the ABC coverage.

Going to any sporting event these days, unless you score a corporate package, is absolutely fucking miserable, no matter how you feel about whatever game it is you’re there to watch. The ten seconds of commercials you have to sit through before seeing a replay on the big screen. The constant, loud commercials over the PA. The morons in Security tabards who turf out the comedians in the crowd for being “disruptive”, when they’re too scared to take on the actual drunk, violent fuckheads who are there for no other reason than to piss on and offend people. The flat beer in plastic cups, the outrageous prices for inedible chips and pies.

But most of all, the sadness. The loss of what used to be a Crowd Community, the loss of a sense of fun, the constant scrutiny from rent-a-cops, the warnings, the ads, the nagging sense that we’re paying for a bunch of corporate parasites to turn our game, whichever game, into a commodity for consumers, not a game for fans.

* * *

On that happy note, I’ll bid you farewell for the month. A few quick thoughts on the year ahead, though. Very soon the Winter Olympics will be upon us, which may occasionally be fun if we get to see any of the downhill skiing, or the biathlon, or the Pairs Luge or any of the other myriad hysterical winter sports. However, we won’t; we’ll get endless repeats of bloody ice dancing, and hour upon hour of Channel 9’s vacuous twats waxing what they think is lyrical about the bloody ice dancing, and honking inane questions at unknown Australian athletes and well-known, completely nonplussed Europeans.

June, as well as giving us Le Tour, brings La World Cup Woohoo Go World-Game-A-Roos!! Starting next week I’m building up sleep credits so I can survive.

And, of course, we have another spangling snooter of an AFL season to look forward to. Next month I’ll work on my predictions for the season, til then, fans, stay angry, and buy a fucking bike.

+ 1

+ 1