Another day, another missed Hoddle. Well, you\u2019ve come to expect it from me by now, haven\u2019t you? Why do you think I hire someone to write this column? Because there\u2019s no way I can be trusted with it myself.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been overshadowed by the World Cup, but there\u2019s another major sporting event that\u2019s starting this week. The Tour de France starts this Friday, July 4, in Barcelona but will will wind its way through the mountains and valleys of France for three weeks. It\u2019s the most important and most prestigious bicycle race in the world<\/p>\n
I\u2019m hardly an expert on the Tour, but I do feel like I have a history with it. When our children were babies, my partner and I would take turns, bleary-eyed, holding our sleeping newborns and watching the Tour, occasionally falling asleep on the couch. The Tour — back then it was (eek) Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis — served as the backdrop for early parenthood, and for that reason it\u2019s earned a spot on my watch list ever since. I won\u2019t watch every stage, or even religiously, but I do tend to tune in when I can, and watch the stage highlights.<\/p>\n
These days the Tour is dominated by Tadej Pogacar, a prolific Slovenian who has won four of the past six Tours and is expected to win again this year. That\u2019s okay. If nothing else, the Tour will provide a nice change of pace from the relentless soccer of the World Cup. I\u2019m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
Song of the Day: \u201cTour de France\u201d (Kraftwerk)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another day, another missed Hoddle. Well, you\u2019ve come to expect it from me by now, haven\u2019t you? Why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,222622,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-664360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-tottenham-hotspur-daily-links-the-hoddle-of-coffee","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}