One doesn’t appreciate how many touring companies there are in Paris until you do a search for “Paris-Tours”. Refine the search to “Cycling Paris-Tours” and the results are not noticeably reduced. I imagine that adding the year to the search will do little to improve the situation.

The fact is, as popular as Cycling is, it remains a fringe sport, at least as far as Paris and Tours is concerned.

My internal clock is all fucked up. And so is the 2016 VSP calendar, because we don’t have the Men’s World Road Race Championships on there at the moment (we will put that little nugget on there, worry not). But when it comes to Paris-Tours, we should not be talking last major trade team road race of the season for the blokes. But we are, because up is down and down is up. Just wait for the green flash.

Paris-Tours is supposed to be a sprinters classic, but it is remarkably lumpy towards the end and you never know what might happen. Richard Virenque won the thing once; for fucks sake, anything can happen if Tricky Dickie can win the “flattest” classic of the season.

In any case, the season is winding down, but we have some serious racing to come. With the Worlds being a Sprinters’ course, this could be a final warm-up; either that or all the sprinters head off to the Middle East last-minute to acclimate to the heat to leave a load of twiggy climbers to fight it out, dismally.

Time to put your chips down, and stop fooling around. If you’re going to make a play for these VSP prizes, you’re going to have to show up with some game. Good luck!

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