stagflation

noun: a portmanteau describing the condition of slow economic growth and relatively high unemployment – a time of “stagnation” – accompanied by a rise in prices, or “inflation”.

Effectively, a time when it’s harder to get a job but everything costs you more. All round bad for the worker joes.

Which might not seem like it has anything to do with the Tour de France, and it doesn’t really, but for some reason the i-Phone predictive text keeps inserting it each time I start to type “stage”. And I’m wondering if there isn’t a curious prescience for the situation currently facing Lance Armstrong.

For, after the first stage in the hills, we are looking at a young, energetic Andy Schleck supported by a great team taking out an exciting victory for the stage and retaining the white jersey for the best young rider.

(photocredit: Bettini)

The doggged and “time’s a-coming” World Champion Cadel Evans wrapping his fingers around the yellow jersey and for all I could think of pithy, alliterative nicknames for Contador, he’s sitting comfortably at third overall in the GC and doesn’t give two hoots what I think of him.

(photocredit: Bettini)

Lance won’t exactly be looking at the latest listings on Seek.com but he is finding it a little tougher in the market than one might previously have expected.

I’m sleep deprived and feeling sick and fuzzy during the days, but I’ve made it through one week of the Tour and it’s more cycling that I’ve personally absorbed in my whole lifetime. I feel my psychological lyrca torn and sweaty but I think I’ve got the legs for at least another week. Whether I make the time cut once I go back to work is another matter.

For Armstrong, however, costs are rising. As if the preceeding stages were not bad enough, the big man crashed no less than three times last night. Armstrong now finds himself 13mins and 26 secs off the pace, some 11 minutes of which was lost before finally coming home at Morzine. At the final of his three incidents yesterday, this one caused by careless handling of a food bag by members of the Euskaltel team, he looked so disgusted, so filled with irritation and rancour I wondered why Egoi Martinez and Ivan Velasco didn’t burst into flames by way of apology. That’s what I would have done.

(photocredit: Bettini)

As Armstrong says, his “tour is finished” and while staying in the race to enjoy it, take a stage or two and to support the team is certainly the mature thing to do, I feel an odd regret that the seven-time Tour de France winner was not able to make his last journey more memorable.

Having an opinion on Lance Armstrong is almost a pre-requisite to being a neophyte cycling fan. Despite the para-social nature of our relationship (I get to know EVERYTHING about Lance, both what he bores/tells me and what the media leach out of him; and Lance knows NOTHING about me; not that I haven’t put the olive branch out there for him), I thought he deserved a more ceremonious conclusion to his final ride in a race upon which he has stamped so much of himself. Redefining “possible” is no small feat. For you, I forgive the lack of helmet.