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JULY 27 WEEKENDER: Second Opinion – Tour de France the world's greatest test of endurance

There is nothing quite like the Tour de France. What a show of stamina and strength.
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Grand Forks Gazette Weekender columnist Jim Holtz

There is nothing quite like the Tour de France.

What a show of individual stamina and strength the daily early morning coverage provides! What a display of mind and spirit! My legs ache for days as the riders race up through the Pyrenees and then, worse, the Alps – I can barely get up off the couch to get another cup of coffee.

When they fall on the pavement at 50 kilometres per hour, bruises appear on my arms and I get sympathetic rashes on my extremities.

What an opportunity the Tour provides to consider the physical capacity and limits of the human body, and then compare that capacity with oneself. I look at the TV images of the riders: thin arms and shoulders coupled with massive legs, and then regard myself in the mirror. I am just the opposite: puny little legs and flab-laden upper body. Their conditioning is extraordinary; mine, non-existent.

Not that I didn’t aspire at one time to be a fabulous bike rider, just as I aspired to be a fabulous baseball player,  football player, and wrestler. Alas, my bike was a Schwinn Roadmaster with fat tires and a built in horn, I couldn’t hit to save my life, I was too small and slow for football, and didn’t enjoy the hours in the weight room that strength training for wrestling demanded.

All the more reason to sit glued to the 5:30 to 8:00 a.m. live coverage of the Tour. There I can cheer on the dedicated masochists with their enlarged hearts and lungs, men who ignore fatigue, oxygen deprivation, lactic acid build-up in their muscles and excruciating pain in their pelvic floor.

I have ridden bicycles for as long as four hours. My nether regions were so sore that I pedaled the last half hour standing up. Of course, I don’t weigh 140 pounds or own a pair of padded shorts.

Of all the individual sports, there can be no doubt that racing in the Tour is the most gruelling test: three weeks of racing, sometimes for eight hours, riding at 20 K uphill and 80 K downhill, maintaining speeds of 50 K for hours, and all within inches of 120 other riders.

Fans of other sports will protest my opinion, of course. Extreme distance runners, cross-country skiers, martial arts competitors, to name a few, will all talk about the conditioning, physical punishment and mental strength that their favourite sports require, but sorry, they will never convince me.

If I am going to watch human beings punish themselves in a test of individual skill and stamina and strength, my first choice will always be the Tour. Only the Tour provides the vicarious pleasure of watching world class athletes suffer and celebrate with a backdrop of mountains, vineyards, castles and chateaux, all with professional narration that combines sports coverage with a travelogue and history lesson. What a show! It makes me want to dust off the bicycle. Maybe tomorrow.

– Jim Holtz is Weekender columnist and former reporter for the Grand Forks Gazette