Natasha Whittam wrote: observer wrote:Remember, Nat is always right... but:
3.5 billion people watch the tour on television
188 countries carry the coverage
2,000 journalists are accredited to cover the event
12 million spectators watch the tour from some point along the route
30% of the spectators are women
So to answer your question... How could anyone get excited... ask one of the 12 million along the route. It may not be your cup of tea, but it is certainly a formidable sport to many. I expect to see you by the M6 later this week with your lunch.
The people who watch it are the people who live there. If the Red Arrows started flying around my penthouse I'd watch from my window - but if they were flying 2 miles down the road I wouldn't bother.
And let's be honest, most of those spectators are just folk walking to work or the shops.
If the Tour went to North Korea for a year how many of those French folk would travel to watch it? None.
Perhaps you should consider that 2,000,000 of your countrymen turned out to see the Tour de France the last time it visited England... obviously you not being one of them in 2007. Your observation that most of the spectators are just folks walking to work or shops in absolutely wrong... they travel an average of 80 miles and line the streets... it is actually an event when the tour goes through towns. Most people take the day off and make it a holiday when the tour comes. So your arguments hold little credence to reality... and I'm not a big cycling aficianado... just one who has been there more than once and has actually seen the event over the course of a month. It's quite remarkable and while the Tour will not go to Korea, it has gone to neighboring countries and produced equally large crowds.
Since the cities pay a fee to host the start of the Tour, you should believe they expect a benefit from hosting it. The following have hosted the start or will host it in coming years...
1954: Amsterdam, Netherlands
1958: Brussels, Belgium
1965: Cologne, West Germany
1973: Scheveningen, Netherlands
1975: Charleroi, Belgium
1978: Leiden, Netherlands
1980: Frankfurt, West Germany
1982: Basel, Switzerland
1987: West Berlin, West Germany
1989: Luxembourg, Luxembourg
1992: San Sebastián, Spain
1996: Den Bosch, Netherlands
1998: Dublin, Ireland
2002: Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2004: Liège, Belgium
2007: London, United Kingdom
2009: Monte Carlo, Monaco
2010: Rotterdam, Netherlands
2012: Liège, Belgium
2014: Leeds, United Kingdom
2015: Utrecht, Netherlands
2017: Düsseldorf, Germany
2019: Brussels, Belgium
Add the neighboring countries that the Tour has visited, even for a few minutes, and you should readily see there is a worldwide demand for the event. You rail against others who do not attend football games, and here you rail against a sport you have not seen in person. It truly is a spectacle... and I might have said the things you are saying before I went to my first Tour... but remarkably it changed my opinion. Even with the drug scandals, riding up the Alpe d'Huez is a gruesome and harrowing experience. You should try it in a car one day and you might have some respect for the difficulty involved. Seeing it on race day would further enlighten you to the passions of those who follow the sport.