Comment ça va!
The run up to the end in Cambrai of stage 4 of this year's Tour de France delivered a telling moment, my favourite moment in the race, so far. Froome hands off water bottle (Eurosport, steephill.tv) It was there that race leader Chris Froome was captured on video dropping, gently, a water bottle in front of a fan standing on the road side. Of course, the usual move would have been for a cyclist to jettison the water bottle with no small degree of force, launching it in an arc that brought it down in a field or in stand of crops or trees, the goal being to lose ballast quickly, rather than to deliver a souvenir kindly. It was an image television viewers witnessed go by at the speed of it all, but a moment that was then masterfully and thankfully rescued from the flow. "Chris Froome, what a gent," Carlton Kirby, the Eurosport commentator, immediately told viewers. "He takes a big toot on a bidon, thinks about putting it in the cage, 'cause there's ...