I've been a big TdF fan since watching the UK stage up the hill through the village of Wherwell, outside Andover, in 1994. I first watched the TV coverage on EuroSport in 2003, when a combination of injury and brand-new parenthood made it a preferable alternative to any other daytime TV on offer.
Coverage in Canada is on a very expensive paid subscription streaming service, so we've had to be a little creative with DNS masking services to stream the ITV4 coverage on catch-up. Of course, the commentary isn't the same since Liggett decamped to NBC and the sad death of Paul Sherwen late last year - but Boulting and Millar are growing on me, with David Millar especially seeming more at ease with his own fluency. We stream the 1-hour highlights show in the evenings here, so try hard not to look at online or social media reports in the afternoons!
This year's Tour is awesome. I can't quite work out why nobody rated Julian Alaphilippe as a serious contender at the outset - he's performed consistently well this season, is a known climber (king of the mountains at last year's Tour and this year's Critérium du Dauphiné). It'd be great to see Geraint Thomas defend his title, but it'd probably be better for cycling altogether if Ineos were seen to be beatable - and especially if it's a Frenchman who beats them!
