PARIS—The withdrawal symptoms have graciously abated. It’s been twelve days since I went cold turkey on international football. I’ve been following the advice of my doctor, taking each day as it comes, and keeping in mind that—however strong I might feel in the weeks and months and years to come—it would take me just a careless channel-flick past an ESPN Classic broadcast of the 1970 West Germany-Italy match to fall off the wagon.
Like a smoker who succeeds in quitting, only to find himself addicted to a replacement crutch, Diet Coke or chewing gum or coffee, I’ve found a new fix: the Tour de France. I’ve never been much of a cycling fan, but then again I’ve never lived in France until this year. When I mentioned the other day to an old friend that I was excited for this year’s Tour and he replied, “Oh, yeah, you always loved watching that back in the day” (not true), I realized that my sports obsessions are fertile ground for all kinds of dangerous revisionist history.
For the record, I’ve never:
1. Bet an unborn child of mine on the result of a Kansas City Royals spring training baseball game.
2. Won the New York marathon by cleverly riding the entire race in a yellow taxi cab to within twenty metres of the finish line (as if I’d have the kind of money to pay for a scheme like that—twenty-six miles is a hell of a fare!).
3. Set fire to the Hungarian restaurant in my hometown after the Hungarians beat Canada in the 1986 World Cup, no matter what the eight-week RCMP investigation determined to the contrary.
So I’m really getting into this whole “let’s watch tall skinny guys with huge thighs ride their bicycles all the way around France” thing, to the point that this week I re-watched two great French movies that reference the race (Les triplettes de Belleville and Amélie).
I’m also organizing my days so I’m home from work by 16h30 to watch the last forty-five minutes or so of each day’s race. The seventh stage of the Tour just finished, with a Spaniard named Sanchez (of course) taking the stage and Luxembourgeois rider Kim Kirchen retaining the yellow jersey. I like Kirchen, who employs that wonderfully dry Beneluxian humour in interviews, and there are a couple other riders on this year’s Tour that have grown on me. The two favourites, Australian Cadel Evans and Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, don’t do much for me. And the only Canadian rider in the field, Victoria’s Ryder Hesjedal, was rolling well until today’s tough stage in the Massif Central put him more than half an hour out in the classement général.
So there you have it. There will be more substantial Sportstrotter coverage of the Tour in the next couple of weeks, rest assured. In the meantime, I leave you with incontrovertible photographic evidence of this column paying up its lost wager over the Italy-France Euro 08 match to Walrus web editor Pat Tanzola. A bottle of Bordeaux, a happy editor in Paris, and my slate is wiped clean. Who else wants a piece of the worst sports prognosticator this side of the Atlantic? Anyone?
For the record, my Tour de France money is on Russian rider Denis Menchov. I’m so sorry, Denis. Good luck in the mountains.
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