Le Tour: Keeping It Classy

For awhile I was regretting not following the Tour de France television coverage, but now I feel like this is all I need:

'Hi, Mom! I'm at the Tour day France!' #TdF http://t.co/fGmDq2GV5f
— daniel mcmahon (@cyclingreporter) July 24, 2014

I could watch that all day long.

In fact, I think I will.

["Jeeves?  Cancel my waxing appointment!"]

In other Tour de France news, in addition to being dopers, it appears the riders are also filthy racists:

(Yeah, I realize it's only one guy, but I'm going to go ahead and impugn the entire peloton, because why not?)

Here's what happened:

But on Tuesday, words were some of the loudest elements of the day. After the stage ended in Bagnères-de-Luchon, a report emerged that indicated Switzerland’s Michael Albasini called Kévin Reza, the only black rider in the race and one of few in the sport, a “dirty negro,” according to Reza’s general manager at Europcar, Jean-René Bernaudeau.

Reza, was not amused, nor was his team's manager:

Reza, he said, was upset after the stage, and that the comments were “unacceptable, inadmissible,” reported France’s Sud Ouest website. “I do not tolerate racism,” Bernaudeau said. “After doping it is the other scourge of the sport.”

Uh, I'd argue that racism is a way worse scourge than doping.

For his part, Albasini denies making the comment:

Albasini said he was racing on the limit, working to drive a then five-man break that had some 45 seconds on the main field. He was frustrated with what he saw as Reza’s lack of contribution to the effort. “I wasn’t happy, and I was angry. I said to him some words that maybe I shouldn’t have, but none of them were racist.”

He also said, “[Reza] came up and asked what I said. I said it again, I didn’t choose nice words, but that’s how it is when you are on your limit, but there were definitely no racist comments. I told him, how nice it was to have one guy on your wheel when you are going full gas, so I don’t understand how it came out that I was saying something racist.”

Riiight.

So why hasn't Albasini been thrown off the Tour?  Well, because: A) The Tour de France is morally bankrupt; and 2) He attributes the "misunderstanding" to the peloton's frustrating lack of ethnic homogeneity:

Albasini (Orica-GreenEdge) also cited the international flavor of the peloton as a reason for what he characterized as a misunderstanding.

“You know there are many languages spoken in the bunch, I don’t speak English perfectly, I speak a little bit of French, not perfectly, [Reza] doesn’t speak my languages. That can happen, a misunderstanding.”

Yeah, see?  He didn't call Reza a "dirty negro."  He was merely saying, "Dirty knee.  Grow?," which in cycling slang is a polite way of asking a rider to pull through.  (A "dirty knee" is a wheelsucker, and to "grow" is to take a pull.)  The correct response is of course, "No, I cannot, I must remain neutral like Switzerland and sit on your wheel like your country's banks sit on Nazi gold," but instead he got all huffy, and there you go.

By the way, I'd like to preemptively apologize to the people of Switzerland for my remarks, because they are a proud group who have been downtrodden for far too long:

(Swiss bankers discuss the unique hardships of living in a country with the highest nominal wealth per adult in the world.)

Honestly, some of my best friends are Swiss [disclaimer: I know no Swiss people], and I love your useful knives, your hole-riddled cheese, and your comically oversized alpine horns:

And don't go pointing out that Albasini is from the Italian part of Switzerland or anything like that, or that it's patently unfair to lump all Swiss people together, because a dirty Swiss is a dirty Swiss, everyone knows that.  Really, they're almost as bad as the Canadians--and speaking of Canadians, here's one who wants $8,000 to ride his bike off his roof so that he can buy a truck:



I don't see what could possibly go wrong, especially since he's clearly thought of everything:

Risks and challenges 

If I biff it I may need the pledge money for medical bills haha

Wait a minute!  They don't have medical bills in Canada!  I bet he's actually an American posing as a Canadian, he's already tried and failed to ride off his roof, the hilarious footage of said failure is now in the can, and so now he's trying to raise money for his medical bills.

That's a cunning financial scheme of nearly Swiss proportions.

Meanwhile, here's another cyclist looking to raise money for the world's fastest Trans-European Fred Run:


Here's the route:

I may have to launch my own Kickstarter for a documentary that simultaneously follows both of these athletes as they prepare mentally, physically, and spiritually for a pair of wildly different cycling feats that are, underneath it all, equally pointless.

Lastly--and I am very late to this--someone in Portland really hates blinky lights:

I'm pretty sure I know what Knog is going to name their next light now.