KEY POINTS:
Around this time last year I wrote a column comparing the illicit intakes of Hollywood bad girls like Lindsay Lohan and the drugged-up riders in the Tour de France. I was a dedicated watcher of the great cycle race in the early hours of the morning but when race leader Michael Rasmussen was banished for doping, I opted out.
Come this year's event, and similar to supporting the All Blacks, I'm back for more and loving it. This year's tour has been cleaner, although a few idiots still flout the law and have been booted off. Good job.
People ask me why I bother watching it since, over the last few years especially, it has turned into a farce.
One of the main reasons I went on my OE back in the mid-90s was to catch a bit of Le Tour. I get excited watching sport, especially rugby and league. During the last All Blacks test against the South Africans I was down on my knees in front of the TV, raking the floor boards like a victim in some demented horror movie, and swearing at Dan Da Man to not drop a goal but score a try instead. Argh.
But watching Le Tour is different. It's educational, engrossing, and, most of all, bloody relaxing.
A work colleague noted that it's remarkable how at midnight you can be blobbed on the couch with your heart rate a paltry 40 beats per minute while watching these fitness freaks, streaking along at upwards of 75km/h, with heart rates peaking at 170bpm. That's some pretty fast techno music you're making there fella.
And the educational element comes from commentators Paul Sherwen, a former British professional cyclist, and long-time Le Tour broadcaster Phil Liggett, who explain everything, from the importance of teamwork to the gears the riders are using, with clarity and drama.
I'm sure they have a list of facts in front of them about the landscape the riders are passing through. But the way Liggett and Sherwen enthuse about everything from the cobbled streets of medieval-renaissance town Besse and Sait-Anastaise, to the "destruction at the back of the peloton" on the formidable climb of Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, you can't help but think these two deserve a few best of Bordeaux vinos at the end of the day. It's riveting stuff.
This year you can also feel proud of our chap Julian Dean who in the last week has muscled his way across the line inside the top 10 on three occasions alongside some of the world's fastest blokes on two wheels.
Okay, so he can't ride up mountains all that well, and he crashed on Sunday's stage but the two commentators rate him, never missing a chance to say, "And there's the Kiwi national champion, Julian Dean, he's right up there, right on the wheel of Thor Hushovd."
Thor is a big brawny animal of a bloke from Norway who can't ride up hills either, but on the flat, boy, he can go.
Watching the cycling in France is an excellent warm up for the Olympics, which with the time difference of only four hours will be at a far more sociable time of day than Le Tour.
Let's hope the New Zealand commentary team have been taking a few lessons from Liggett and Sherwen. Good old Keith Quinn's famous "Lomu, oh, oh, oh" line was dramatic, but hardly educational.
