The Longshot: Tour looks like being a two-bike race this year

IT’S now 120 years since the Tour de France first took off on its insane journey around that country and over the Alps on just two wheels.

It all begins again next Saturday, although it will set off without young Banteer man Eddie Dunbar, who recently finished seventh in the Giro d’Italia.

The talented Corkman does plan to cycle in the event next year as a team leader for his Jayco Alula outfit, but will wait until the Vuelta in Spain later this summer to ride in major competition again as it is nearly impossible for riders to compete in all three big races in a single year in this era.

Dunbar spoke on the Second Captains podcast last week about the dangers inherent in the sport, regarding coming off the bike, mentioning his own long-term issues with concussion among other injuries.

He was speaking just a day before Swiss rider Gino Mäder died in the Tour of Switzerland after coming off the saddle on a dangerous descent.

The race for the yellow jersey begins in Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain this year, with two former champions vying for favouritism and leaving the rest in their slipstream.

Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard wasn’t even his team’s leader heading into last year’s Tour de France, but this year begins the race as the slight 11/10 favourite.

He’s spent much of the season at training camps with his teammates, but when he has raced, he’s done well, winning three of the four stage races he’s entered and finishing third in the one he didn’t.

His best performance came two weeks ago when he won two stages and the General Classification at the recent Criterium du Dauphin, usually an important pre-Tour stage race that often serves as a predictor of what will happen in July.

Last year’s runner-up Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar (13/10) won back-to-back covid Tours in 2020 and 2021, and dominated the early part of the 2023 season, winning the Ruta del Sol, Paris-Nice, the Tour of Flanders, the Amstel Gold Race, and La Fleche Wallonne. But the 23-year-old crashed and broke his wrist in April, an injury that forced him off the bike for an extended period.

He has the added mental advantage of having beaten Vingegaard the only time they raced against one another so far this season at the Paris-Nice in March.

Like Dunbar, Giro d’Italia winner Primoz Roglic (who was pipped in the final time trial by countryman Pogacar in 2020) won’t be taking part, while some outsiders for glory include 2022 Giro victor Aussies Jai Hindley (18/1) and Ben O’Connor (35/1), who finished fourth in 2021 and three-time Vuelta runner-up Enric Mas (28/1) of Spain.

France haven’t had a winner since ‘the Badger’ Bernard Hinault won his third tour back in 1985 and the most likely to recapture home glory are David Gaudu (40/1) and Romain Bardet (100/1). After a promising start to 2023 - including second at Paris-Nice - Gaudu has drifted a little in form, however, he has improved his Tour result every year, and has the capability to get a podium finish. Bardet finished second (2016) and third (2017) in Tours, and could be poised to challenge again after some time away from the top echelons.

Cork influence on Tour dates all the way back to 1911

THE Tour de France has been renowned in the modern era for cheating, specifically for the use of performance-enhancing medical innovation to get those pedals turning faster even up the steepest of hills.

However, I think my favourite method of bending the rules goes to Jean Robic, who won the first Tour de France held after World War II back in 1947.

Robic was small in stature compared to other competitors and standing just over five-feet tall in his socks and weighing only 130 pounds, he needed all the help he could get against more powerful rivals.

Whenever he would summit a peak during climbing days, a member of his crew would hand him a bottle of what appeared to be water.

What magic potion was in the bottle?

Would you believe there was no liquid in it at all and his crew were actually doing him a solid?

Robic would pretend to sip at the bottle for a bit, as the container was actually filled with mercury or lead, and he would then place the densely weighted bottle into a cup holder to give his bike a lot more weight to hit higher speeds on the descent.

He was able to pull ahead while pedalling his light frame up the mountains and continue to build a lead coasting down the other side.

A much safer if more morally dubious technique than that used by the similarly petite Marco Pantani (who won in 1998, the year the Tour came to Cork) who used to risk emasculation by plonking his crotch behind the saddle and as close as possible to the back wheel so he could get himself as aerodynamically efficient as possible when plummeting downhill.

Plunging your own blood back into your body, or any other more illicit substance has always seemed the most distasteful way to try to win by dubious methods, but cheating has been there since the beginning.

The first edition in 1903 included a first stage of over 300 miles so you could hardly blame some participants (including the winner Maurice Garin) for taking a train part of the way. Former chimney sweep Garin also smoked like a chimney and spent most of his time in the saddle with a performance-depleting fag hanging out of one side of his lip.

The following year the wonderfully named Hippolyte Aucouturier got more inventive when he held a piece of cork in his mouth, attached to a wire, attached to a car that towed him by the hidden tether.

He might have pulled off the stunt unnoticed had the vehicle pulling him been a bit slower but on that particular stage race officials who had made the trip via car as well got suspicious when he arrived at the finishing line just after they did.

The 1911 Tour de France saw a poisoning scandal when Francois Lafourcade left something dodgy in rival Paul Duboc’s drink after the latter had won two stages in a row. The poison left Duboc vomiting on the road the following day as Lafourcade rode by with the pack.

Lafourcade not only got away with this underhand behaviour, but he framed another cyclist, who was then forced to ride with bodyguards and don a disguise when the race later passed through Duboc’s hometown as the crowd were planning to pull him off his bike.

South Korean has big chance

OUR choice of Tommy Fleetwood for the Travelers Championship last week proved well wide of the mark as the Englishman failed to even make the cut.

This weekend sees a lot of the top players take a break but there is still a decent enough field for the Rocket Mortgage Classic, which replaced the Quicken Loans National on the PGA Tour schedule in 2019.

Reigning champ Tony Finau is 14/1 favourite alongside in-form Rickie Fowler (14/1), who shot a 60 last week.

Just 14 of the world’s top 50 golfers will make their way to Detroit this weekend to compete, including Justin Thomas (14/1), Max Homa and Collin Morikawa and last week’s winner Keegan Bradley (33/1).

However South Korean Byeong-Hun An enters the tournament at what looks like a too long 80/1 so we’ll stick our tenner there.

Rebels to get into the semis

CORK will meet Derry in the All-Ireland quarter-finals this Sunday and while reaching a semi-final in the same year that they were dumped out of the Munster championship by Clare might seem unlikely, that they are 11/4 to beat a side they drew with during their Division 2 clash seems too good to pass up.

The Rebels summoned up another remarkable comeback that day to end a Derry winning streak, with Ian Maguire’s 78th-minute goal snatching a draw after they had been eight points down. Cork are 33/1 to lift Sam, while Derry are just 9/1.

The Bet

IT’S not for nothing that we are called The Longshot so let’s go for three outsiders to win in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

I do think at least one will come up but the prices that are on offer are what is tempting.

A four-timer on Tyrone, Mayo, Cork and Armagh will net you just shy of 50/1.