I spent way too many hours watching replays of the 2024 Tour de France. I came away with only 3 thoughts (two more than my usual — momma always told me I’m not a smart man).

1. Best Fan Sign:

It was one of the later stages (17 or maybe 18, or 19, could have been 20…). The leaders were climbing one of the last mountains of the day. But Tadej Pogacar was already 5 minutes ahead and unless he fell and broke a hip, he was going to win the tour.

Of course this is an AI recreation of my faded memory. Note the flying bicycles above and the lack of fingers in the fan’s hand… AI still sucks.

I had to use AI for this image, because the video replays are only on Peacock. Unlike Direct TV which you can fast forward and scan through the images, Peacock doesn’t let you quickly scrub 36 hours of TV for the one second shot of what you really want. When you fast forward, all the images disappear, and you are left to helplessly guess at time markers. Shit.

Fucking TV tech just keeps getting worse.

Anyway, the “RIP Suspense” sign came at just the right time. Instead of a “race” with leaders fighting over seconds down to the last days of a 3-week event, this year the “tour was over” before the end of the first week.

United Arab Emirates and Tadej Pogacar were way too strong for the rest of the field.

2. Cash rules everything around me

And by strong, I mean rich. UAE’s budget is at least $50 million and only one other team comes close Jumbo Visma (or “Visma Lease a Bike” or whatever that team is called this year). Musical chairs with sponsors and team names makes it impossible to root for a team over more than a few years before they switch names again.

But Visma and UAE have had the largest budgets for the past 5 years, and they have split the tour wins for the last five years. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

Rooting for either UAE or Visma feels like rooting for the Yankees. It’s just wrong and you might just be an oligarch in disguise.

Visma had a lot of injuries and bad luck this year, and that left no one to really challenge the oiled-money machine that is UAE.

UAE ended up with 4 guys finishing in the top 10. They won the team competition. In a sport run by sponsors and dependent on ad revenue, prize money is almost a socialist scheme — designed to dole out as much “prize” money as possible to each team with a collection of what in any other sport we would call “participation trophies” (stage wins, green jersey, polka dot jersey, sprint points, climbing points). But UAE gobbled up the lion’s share of cash. Out of the 2.2 million euros in prize money, UAE won 806,000 euros — a new record.

3. Carbs and carbon monoxide might be the new doping

With UAE so dominate, this year had the smell of Lance Armstrong hanging in the air. I couldn’t help but think about doping, and apparently, I’m not the only one.

So much so, even Armstrong (who now runs a podcast commenting on cycling) said: “I would advise him to lay low a bit more. Sometimes you have to think about perception and image.”

This is why people still hate Lance. Not enough to be a cheater, he has to constantly lie and scheme and destroy people’s lives to keep the cheat going…

The stupiest possible “cheat” listed in 2024: carbon monoxide. Apparently, it is used to test an athlete’s endurance. The theory goes if you train enough with CO1, it will increase your performance when there is actually O2 available. Please keep your lips away from the car tailpipe cyclists… you’re better off staying on the steroids and EPO.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with “doping.” Banning every kind of possible enhancement doesn’t really make the sport better or healthier — it just makes money and gives power to the “banners.” So if UAE and Pogacar are doping, more power to them. Just don’t destroy other people’s careers over it. If you get caught, “take your medicine” and own up to the truth.

If you ask the experts why are cyclists so dominate and so much faster lately? Carbs.

They have found ways to pour 5-10 times the amount of carbs down a rider’s gullet without making them sick. At the same time, the riders have starved themselves when they are not racing and gotten skinnier and skinnier while maintaining high levels of power.

The richer teams are leading the race in technology, carb loading and buying the contracts of the best riders.

So once again, it may not be carbs, or doping or even carbon monoxide that dominates the sport — it’s just good old CASH. 2024 Tour de France — the new aristocracy wins again.