Teargas, boos and World Cup hangovers: Why the Tour de France is suffering
What happens to the Tour de France when France wins the World Cup? The bike race suffers.
It has only happened twice, and yet on both occasions interest in the race dropped in the same year as Les Bleus lifted FIFA's famous golden trophy.
We can't really blame football for the indifference of TV spectators but it is serendipitous that the stories from both the 1998 and 2018 Tours have been more about antics outside the race than the action itself.
Does this mean cycling is dying in one of the sport's original heartlands? Not exactly, but it is certainly not prospering like it has done for over a hundred years.
Meanwhile, Kylian Mbappe's star looks like it will never fade. The 19-year-old Paris Saint-Germain phenomenon is capable of commanding far more attention than the entire Tour peloton combined no matter what he does. He's likely to continue doing so for another 20 years too.
Want to unite a nation? Score goals, be gracious, live up to expectations and beat the best. The result is dancing in the street and unbridled joy for almost everyone in the land.
When it comes to cycling, there's nothing close to Mbappe — never has been, and never will be.
There are big personalities in the Tour's peloton; there's even a Frenchman capable of animating the action, riding with panache, climbing mountains with style, descending at speed that would strike fear into even some of the best cyclists on the planet.
As we ride towards the final of the four weekends of the 105th Tour de France, it seems likely that Julian Alaphilippe will indeed stand on the podium in Paris on Sunday as King of the Mountains in 2018.
With a musketeer aesthetic and a rock-star attitude, Alaphilippe has cultivated a healthy following and has earned his share of TV time.
He has won two stages — one in the Alps, one in the Pyrenees — and he's collected 140 points in the climbing classification, almost double that of second place, last year's winner KOM, Warren Barguil.
Alaphilippe wears the polka-dot jersey and holds what is an almost unbeatable lead in this prize category that, in the past, has meant a great deal to French fans.
But what does that mean for the bigger picture of French cycling? Not terribly much.
The news hasn't been great on 2018's Le Tour
The fans are more frustrated than excited and day after day there is more discontent on display. If it's not water or piss or spit being directed at the riders as they race by, then it's spectators reaching out and trying to grab the arm of the Welsh race leader, Geraint Thomas.
It has been ugly and it has earned headlines around the world.
Those headlines have been about flares being set off in the crowd in the midst of a carnival atmosphere on the celebrated climb of Alpe d'Huez — and subsequently being banned for future stages. They're about pepper spray being used to disperse protesting farmers, and subsequently being blown into the faces of riders trying to race towards the Pyrenees.
And on the front pages of newspapers around the land, if it's not images of Mbappe or his cohort, then it's scenes of frustrated roadside hooligans at the Tour trying to disrupt another procession by the dominant British outfit, Team Sky.
Froome is part of the problem
One silver lining in a Tour affected by dark clouds of negativity is that the leader after 17 stages is Geraint Thomas and not Chris Froome.
Although the more senior of the Sky pair has four Tour titles to his credit — as well as being the current champion of both the Vuelta a Espana and the Giro d'Italia — he continues to be derided.
As has often been reported, Froome had an issue with the asthma medication, salbutamol, last September. Instead of the matter being managed the way regulations dictate it ought to have been, the news was leaked in December and the UCI, cycling's governing body, did little to hasten a resolution.
Similarly, WADA dawdled along during the legal process and insisted there was no timeframe in which it had to be make a ruling.
Eventually the organisers of the Tour, the Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) did what it could to accelerate the issue; it announced that Froome was essentially persona non grata … unless, of course, the relevant authorities could clear the defending Tour champion and allow him to race knowing that, should he win, the title would stand the test of time.
Retrospective winners aren't new to the Tour. In 2006 and 2010 both the original winners — Floyd Landis and Alberto Contator, respectively — were stripped of their titles because of testosterone and clenbuterol. In other words, doping has robbed the Tour of its champions in the past and there was the risk of it happening again.
As we know, Froome got cleared, he got to start, and he continued to be booed.
The public never seemed to like him much in the past, largely because of the domination of his rich, Murdoch-backed team which has recruited some of the best riders in the world to serve as domestiques — workers — for their Kenyan-born Brit who has won the Tours of 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
He is impressive on the bike and polite off it, but people just don't warm to Froome. Some blame his gangly, unorthodox style on the bike — "it's just ugly," some say — but there's more to it.
If he were French, it's likely that TV ratings would soar and crowds on the roadside would double. They wouldn't quite sing in unison like Les Bleus could make France do, but it would have an impact, it would bolster interest in the Tour.
It would make cycling great again. But he's British. And that's the main problem.
Le Tour is in need of a French winner
Adding to the toxic reaction that racers have received is the reality that the last French win was in 1985, 33 years ago.
Romain Bardet is perennially poised to amend that, but second place (2016) and third place (2017) just doesn't look nearly as good as first.
Bardet is a genuine star — albeit enjoying nowhere near the popularity of even the reserves on the football bench — and he too is approachable, interesting, charismatic, intelligent and utterly likeable. He is also daring on the bike and, in contrast to Froome, his style is elegant — not quite as pretty as that of Alaphilippe — but at least he doesn't look like a praying mantis wrestling carbon-fibre. That aesthetic is exclusive to Froome.
There's a lot of kind things that can be written about many of the riders in the peloton. Thomas is a class act who has matured into someone likely to win the title, and he isn't despised (but his team seems to be, certainly in France).
Alaphilippe has the makings of a rider the French will come to adore, but in the afterglow of the World Cup their reaction in 2018 is more like kind applause.
Bardet may one day win The Big Loop but it would take a miracle for him to make the podium this year.
Froome, meanwhile, is still being jeered and insulted and even tackled to the ground by the gendarmerie.
This is a quick overview of what happens at the Tour when France wins the World Cup. It's not football's fault. It's not cycling's fault. It's not the fault of all spectators. It's not the fault of the peloton … but all things combined add up to the Tour losing some of its gloss and people zoning out, turning off, and going out to enjoy the fantastic weather in France this July.
If pushed to find a positive comparison between 1998 and 2018, I'll conclude with an optimistic observation: there are more people riding bikes here than I've ever seen before. And, surely, that's a good thing for cycling.
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