More thoughts on Le Tour

I’ve got a very strong feeling that my six-month old son will grow up to take second place in Le Tour de France, twice. The basis for this belief lies in the fact that he has been whinging and whining solidly for the last three weeks. Indeed, put him in some lycra and stick him in front of a TV camera and you’d struggle to pick him from our Cadel. At least until the six-month old spoke – his voice is a bit deeper than Cadel’s. Then again, so are most people’s voices. No, that’s not quite right. I’m forgetting Pat Rafter.

Our Cadel has been a high-pitched monotone of late. “I can’t say anything about how awful everyone’s been because that’d be unprofessional…”, he bleats.

It makes for more interesting reality TV than Bert Contador’s lines, however. “Otra pregunta, otra pregunta…” has been all that he’s really said. He seems to be getting sick of sports journalists asking him tricky questions. But if he keeps replying with Otra pregunta (next question) then I can’t see how this pregunta loop is going to be broken.

The find in terms of telly talent, however, is a German bloke called Jens Voigt. He had a bad stack coming down the mountain on Stage 16, and was knocked unconscious; but they seem to have plenty of Jens on his pre-recorded sizzle reel to keep his growing number of fans happy. Jens does German slapstick to camera effortlessly; and his silly German voice is hysterical. He’s popular with Australian audiences, of course, because he is Australian. Yes, he spent about 3 and a ½ hours here back in 1999, visiting the Australian Institute of Sport, so he’s more Australian than Heinrich Haussler.

One disappointment has been the performance of the non-identical Von Schleck sisters, Venus and Serena. A lot of cycling fans were hoping to see these Luxembourgers power through the two halves of the draw before meeting in the Women’s Final, but as it’s panned out, all they’ll probably take away from Le Tour is the Double’s title. One other annoying outcome has been Mark Cavendish. That SBS should overlook the need to have subtitles accompanying everything the man from the Isle of Man says is somewhat ironic.