It’s an oft-quoted fact that the Tour de France is the biggest sporting show on earth. TV Audience figures are hard to quantify but they vary from the modest 1.5 billion to a bullish 4 billion people watching at least a few minutes of the three week race.
And it’s from the TV compound at the finish area of each stage that the race is broadcast to 190 different countries. The logistical miracle of packing up, transporting this whole village and setting it all up again some 200 kilometres away on a daily basis is astounding.
Read MoreJens Voigt is one of those cycling warriors whose career had enormous longevity. Like Fabien Cancellara, Tom Boonen and Adam Hansen he was, until his retirement in 2014, one of the old guard of the peloton, a work horse with a massive engine, huge work rate and an indomitable will to survive. He rode in 17 editions of the Tour de France in a professional career that really began when he won the ‘Peace Race’ in 1994 in Germany. Although he wore the Yellow jersey twice, he was never a GC contender, more of a breakaway specialist who could win the occasional stage through aggression and toughness.
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