In England, the attention usually paid to Wimbledon is being directed toward Russia and the Three Lions.
In France, more heed is also being given to Les Bleus than to the world’s premier cycling event, the 2018 Tour de France.
No consequence in the case of the second instance, however, as the 2018 FIFA World Cup Finals will be done in a week’s time, but the Tour de France still has most of its time remaining.
The bicycle race might get some of England’s attention at that time, as British rider Chris Froome is attempting to etch his name in the record books alongside those of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain as the riders to win cycling’s equivalent of the World Cup on five occasions.
Froome had a scary moment in the first stage when he left the road and landed in a ditch. He narrowly missed colliding with a post in when he crashed while traveling along at nearly 50 kph.
He did manage to get back on and finish the stage, a 200 kilometre flat stage, a distance almost equal to the length of the names of the towns that served as the start and end points of the stage.
Froome did give away 51 seconds to Colombian rider Fernando Gaviria, but the immediate question, given the early stage of the proceedings, is how much physical damage Froome did than whether or not he can recover in the overall classification.
The crash came with just five kilometres remaining, as the large pack of teams jockeyed for position to get their sprinters poised for the finish.
“I saw a lot of crashed out there today,” Froome told reporters. It’s just one of those things. We always knew the first few days were going to be tricky and going to be sketchy.”
Tricky and sketchy seem roughly synonymous to us, but they may have key differences to the spandex pants wearing set.
“I’m just grateful I’m not injured in any way and there’s a lot of road to cover before Paris obviously,” Froome added.
