Whisper it, but the most exciting thing about July 14 in France for some this year might not be the Tour de France , or even the Fête Nationale , but an event happening hundreds of kilometres away in Germany.
That's right, even in the glorified air of the Tour, in the Pyrenees, on a key mountain stage, minds might be elsewhere, dreaming of ending those 58 years of hurt. Well, for a few people, anyway.
There are discussions around the buses, in the team cars, in the press room of the Tour of quite how the final of Euro 2024, England vs Spain, will be viewed. It will be tricky, with stage 15 being a mountain top finish on the Plateau de Beille, deep in the Pyrenees. It's not a place known for a surfeit of sports bars willing to put the big game on for desperate English or Spanish people. The England shirts are very much on in the press room, though, much to the amusement of those from other nations.
For the teams, it seems like a reasonably simple decision - they watch it on the bus. The transfer from the Plateau de Beille post-6pm might be long for some, especially as the next day is the rest day. The official rest day town of Gruissan is 235km from the climb. However, this does not sound like the most fun way of experiencing history, but the Tour is the Tour. There was talk, from one unnamed Dutch team who ride in predominantly white, that all their riders will be forced to support England.
For the press, meanwhile, it's a bit of a stick-or-twist decision - go up the climb and risk getting caught in traffic, or stay at the buses at the bottom and risk getting caught in traffic. You would be surprised at how much this is occupying the minds of the world's foremost cycling writers right now.
It is hard, however, to ascertain how much Euros fever there is in the peloton. There might be quite a lot around the edges - especially if you know where to look - but the best bike riders in the world seem less fussed. It's almost as if the Tour de France is on, and that these are athletes focused on the task at hand.
Chasing after football-obsessed English riders becomes quite the arduous task, with some riders not interested at all - Ineos Grenadiers' Tom Pidcock , for example - and others only mildly diverted by the biggest footballing event ever - Jake Stewart (Israel-Premier Tech) and Simon Yates (Jayco AlUla) aren't the biggest fans, for example. Meanwhile, Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious), surely a man who is into the beautiful game, sadly departed midweek .
However, Cycling Weekly hit the jackpot with Ben Turner, who is seemingly a rare thing in the bunch: a proper football fan. He watched the whole England vs Netherlands semi-final on Wednesday night, down to the last minute, which might have had a detrimental effect on his Thursday.
"We tried to get it on the kitchen truck, on the TV in there, but we couldn't get signal so we ended up watching it on G's phone, and then I watched the last 20 minutes in bed," Turner explained. Fortunately, he wasn't sharing a room, so he could scream as loud as he liked when Ollie Watkins' last-minute winner went in.
"I was getting a bit too excited so I went to bed, it made it a bit harder to sleep," he continued.
As for the final: "There's other things before that, but we will try and watch it on the kitchen truck, that's quite nice, we did that the other day.
"We've had a sweepstake going, I had Portugal, I thought I was going to do well. Tom has England. He doesn't care."
The Tour might be reaching fever pitch on stage 15, but for some, there is an even higher pitch still to come. Don't try and contact me post 9pm tonight.
At time of publication, Cycling Weekly had yet to pluck up enough courage to approach any Spanish riders for fear of the backlash if England fail to win.
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