Eyes on the prize

Tour de France trophy

Win the Tour de France and you get the porcelain bowl made in Sèvres by the state-owned  pottery company Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres. It’s a unique trophy and has no official title, except it is awarded “in the name of the Presidency of the French republic“. It’s elegant and you probably wouldn’t use it as a fruit bowl. But it’s not that valuable in crude money terms.

Instead, there are plenty of cash prizes up for grabs. The Euro might be in crisis thanks to worries in Greece and other countries but when the Tour de France starts, riders and teams stand to share a cash pot totalling €3,412,546. Over the three weeks there’s money up for grabs every day, from stage wins to team prizes, sprints to climbs but also prizes big and small for those who reach Paris.

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Germany, Europe’s largest consumer market

German riders are having a very good season. Andre Greipel’s a dependable winner and this year Tony Martin’s confirmed his abilities whilst neo-pros John Degenkolb and Marcel Kittel have been highly impressive. And if you want a tip, look out for a guy called Tino Thömel.

Germany isn’t quite Europe’s premier cycling country but it is certainly Europe’s biggest country. It’s got the largest population with 81 million inhabitants and the continent’s biggest GDP too. Put simply it’s big and it’s rich and for a sport that rhymes with commerce, where teams are named after companies and brands, it’s a key market. Germany is hard to ignore.

ARD
ARD to ignore

Only that’s exactly what the UCI is doing. It’s refusing to do interviews with German broadcasters ARD and ZDF. For context, switch on a German TV and “channel 1” is ARD. Hit the remote and next comes ZDF. These are broadcasting giants and the German equivalent of Britain’s BBC, CBS in the US or ABC in Australia.

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You know the Tour de France is coming when…

…special adverts appear to promote goods and services linked to the race.

Here are three adverts, the first is in French, the second doesn’t involve much speech and the third is in Dutch. But don’t worry, you don’t need to understand the language to get the message. Be sure to watch to the end.

French Eurosport has Virenque and the Devil:

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When did a ride become so complicated?

The other day I was listening to one of The Bike Show podcasts and broadcaster Jack Thurston mentioned something like “the age of innocence” with cycling, when a ride was simply about jumping on a bike and enjoying the feelings, whether the wind in your hair or a moment of escapism. I certainly remember the … Read more

The calm before the storm

halle-ingooigem

It might be mid-summer but there’s a real shortage of racing for the next two weeks. There’s Belgian one day race Halle-Ingooigem on Wednesday and the European nations have their national championships at the weekend. But that’s about it until Saturday 2 July when the Tour de France starts.

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Book review: Racing Through the Dark

Racing through the dark

“It became clear that I still had a fairly adolescent mentality, relied heavily on father figures and had created behavioural patterns that were destructive and self-perpetuating… …most of the decisions I’d made were unavoidable, considering the personality and upbringing I’d had”.

That’s the book in one reductive sentence. Soon after emerging from police custody, a washed-up David Millar meets Dr Steve Peters, a consultant psychiatrist for the British cycling team and they talk for hours. It becomes apparent that Millar’s upbringing and past experiences have led him to the edge of self-destruction. His is a career of high and lows, of sporting greatness and alcoholic benders. At times he discusses the split personality, the monastic pro contrasting with the “social butterfly”.

I’ll touch on the content of the book a bit below but a lot of his story is public knowledge so I won’t ruin things if you’re planning to read it. But for the sake of caution, don’t read on if you’re worried about me spoiling the read.

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Thanks to NeilPryde Bikes

Neil Pryde Alize

A note of thanks to NeilPryde bikes for backing the Inner Ring. The name has long been famous amongst windsurfers and they’re bringing their expertise in carbon fibre and aerodynamics to the world of cycling with a new pair of carbon fibre frames, the Alize and Diablo. Click on the advert on the right to read more about them.

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Sunday housekeeping

A quick hello to all the new readers. Word seems to be spreading and there are more and more of you these days. I’m not really into chasing hits for the blog, instead the best thing is all the comment and emails from readers. I read each and every comment and try to reply and chip into the debates as much as I can. Note that if you want to leave a comment, it asks for your name and email but you can just put “anon” or whatever you like in these fields, you don’t have to supply personal details to take part.

Feel free to email as well, I’ll always reply to your messages; if you haven’t got a reply it’s 99% probable that I never got the message, it got flicked by the anti-spam filter. I’ve got a “to do” list of topics to cover that’s getting very long already so if you’ve sent in a suggestion and I’d said “yes, that’d be good”, it’s probably on the list.

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French dropouts cost time

French puncture

A tiny detail for today but sometimes that’s what the Inner Ring is all about. French teams take longer to change wheels in the event of a front wheel puncture than other teams.

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Adieu Jean-Paul!

Jean Paul Brouchon

Chances are you don’t know of Jean-Paul Brouchon. Most readers here are English speaking and JPB was a French journalist who died today, aged 72. But his departure is a loss to cycling because he was a sort of the guardian for cycling’s history.

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