My wife left me for a bike race. I’m a Tour de France widower

We have football widows. Golf widows. Racing car widows. Even video game widows. Yet now I humbly suggest we have a new category: Tour de France widowers.

And I should know. I am one of them.

Each year my wife travels to foreign lands via the television to spend time with elite athletes in colourful jerseys as they travel through fairyland locations for the Tour de France, the world’s most prestigious bicycle race. She puts on her special yellow (or should I say “jaune”? ) Tour de France socks and joins the “couch peloton”, blocking out three weeks to watch riders cycle through some of the most beautiful areas on Earth.

Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar in the mysterious ‘maillot jaune’ after the 20th stage of the Tour de France on Saturday. Credit: AP

It’s the only sport she truly adores and I fully support her enthusiasm. Indeed, I am in no way threatened by these dashing younger men with their perfect buns and seemingly endless stamina. “Just think of them as racehorses,” she says.

She knows exactly what is going on in the Tour de France: the stakes, the terrain, why grimpeurs (climbers) are the ones to watch during the mountainous stages. She loves the castles, the chateaux, the churches and the villages, the cheering and sometimes chaotic crowds, the incredible helicopter shots, the history and the rivalry between the riders.

Her love affair with “Le Tour” is decades long. She cheered when Australia’s Cadel Evans won the Tour – as well as the hearts of the nation – in 2011, becoming one of the few non-Europeans ever to do so. She was watching when Lance Armstrong won his too-good-to-be-true string of victories towards the end of his Tour career. She’s seen it all: the highs, the lows, the drug scandals, the big accidents, the fans with flares, the tacks on the road.

Indeed, for a sports-obsessed nation such as ours, it’s refreshing to celebrate a sport that doesn’t involve tries, wickets or goals. She’s almost at the point where she’ll set up an exercise bike in the apartment and race along with the competitors as she watches it on TV, a glass of champagne in hand, perhaps only pausing as I hand her a water bottle.

As for me, the only thing I know about bikes and bike riding comes from riding BMXs in the 1980s (shout-out to Nicole Kidman for her breakthrough role in BMX Bandits). I just let all the facts and figures of the Tour de France wash over me in a blur. I have no idea what the “maillot jaune” is or why the “polka-dot jersey” is also kind of a big deal in the Tour. I am puzzled as to why being named the “most combative rider” is a good thing.

As far as I know, a “bidon” is a president. Why does “The Devil” suddenly appear on the mountain stages, cheering and waving a pitchfork, if not to take cyclists to Lycra-clad hell? How exactly do they take a “nature break” while cycling? And what exactly is a musette and why do the British call it a “bonk bag”? All I can say is: Je ne comprends pas.

The best I can do is to concentrate on the things that I do understand, like the scenery. As one commentator observed, the Tour de France is like a postcard within a race. In the past, on the way to Paris, we’ve toured the likes of Florence, Turin, Dijon (where the mustard comes from!), Bologna (where the meat comes from!), Nice and Monaco, all from the comfort of the couch peloton.

Why does “The Devil” suddenly appear on the mountain stages, cheering and waving a pitchfork?

This year I said bon voyage to my wife for a Tour conducted entirely within France’s borders. It started in Lille, crossed four magnificent mountain ranges including the Alps and the Pyrenees and ended Monday morning, Australian time, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Oh, and I see that the “maillot jaune” is the coveted yellow jersey.

My wife was among the billions glued to their televisions this year, making it the second-most-watched sporting event in the world after the FIFA World Cup.

Now that it’s all over, I know she will return to me. She’s suggested I buy a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, “I was a Tour de France widower”. I think it would be better not as a T-shirt but as a jersey … a yellow one.

Charles Purcell is a freelance writer.

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