July is a notoriously quiet sports month.
No football.
No NFL.
No NBA.
No college football or basketball.
No tennis Grand Slam.
But there’s one thing – and it’s a big thing – which I’ve begun to follow faithfully every July.
The Tour de France.
For me, Julys every year are now synonymous with the Tour.
It’s a sporting event like no other, spanning about 3 weeks, over 3,000++ kilometres of impossibly scenic French landscape.
And the beauty of it is that I can sit in front of the telly at around 10pm every night, and watch the last one hour of action for that day’s stage, and go to sleep after that.
The timing is just perfect for me.
It usually starts at 8pm every night but I’d much rather just watch the last hour or so of racing.
It’s just the most relaxing thing.
There’s this sense of serenity about the whole race, even though the riders are literally killing themselves with every pedal of the bike.
I think it helps that we get to see so much of the beautiful French scenery.
The sight of the peloton ferociously hunting down the front-runners is quite a sight to behold.
But the mountain stages is where things can get really dramatic.
Tomorrow’s stage will probably be a cracker, as it goes through Tourmalet.
Definitely won’t be missing that one!
