One of them from the can of Tourduiders that is opened every summer: “Cycling is like a marathon with a sprint at the end.” The same goes for makers of programs about the Tour de France: The prologue, The Evening Stage, Radio Tour de France, the live report. A marathon airtime must be filled, with a sprint at the end.
I suspect the editors of regular programs also want to go on holiday and that is why the gaps at the NPO will be filled with French cycling. What came first, interest in the Tour or space in programming, then becomes a chicken-and-egg question. In any case, the result is that, after a week of pledging airtime with Tour-related content, those cycling editors no longer know where to look.
On Sunday the Tour went up the volcano Puy de Dôme. It was last active sometime around 5,000 BC. Nevertheless, a geologist came to interpret lava. On Wednesday they had taken a skater off the ice, who was allowed to compare skating with cycling. I pictured editors brainstorming about what else cycling could be compared to. Maybe with cooking, or with sex. Whether anyone knew a cook or sexologist who had something to do with cycling. No. One that can fix a tire then. Also not.
Then let the reporter on the spot describe the order in which the riders are toiling uphill. That segment is stretched with details such as: “And when Van der Poel came by, he put his lips together like: Gosh, this is so heavy.”
Sometimes they pull a former cyclist from his deathbed, who then has to tell again how it felt when he crossed the finish line in ninth place in the last century, well before the internet. First sketch the situation. When every detail of that has been milked out, they’re going to ask each other in the studios who everyone thinks will win today. Or a song is sung that is reminiscent of the Tour. When the sun has long gone down, a rebus comes into view with a cyclist as the solution – nothing important is happening in the world anyway.
On Friday they lured those two little brother pianists from behind their piano because they had once said after a concert that they liked to watch cycling. One of them tried to compare the career peaks of pianists and cyclists. He started with the disclaimer that musicians could continue until they were eighty, after which the whole equation went downhill.
On the night the cabinet fell, the presenter switched to it NOS News to the reporter in The Hague with the words: “And now we are going to talk until they come out.” I have not yet heard them say that on Tour programs: “And now we are going to talk until they cross the finish line”.
You can also compare programmers with each other. Those in the cycling world have to talk about entire marathons. In politics they only have to talk sprints because the rounds in the Rutte era always end well before the finish on the cobblestones.
Caroline Trujillo is a writer.
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