Le Tour de France: hypocrisy for cycling

I love bike racing. I love the big tours. They hold a special romance for me, even today. Anquetil. Coppi. Mercx. Those legends were tough, and represent true good old days of cycling to me.

But even those legends were choking on diesel exhaust. This was before we knew about greenhouse gases and climate change, and the cars were still a problem.

Now we know better. By the new millennium, modern additions of the grand tours offer us thousands of vehicles supporting the peloton. According to the official web site of le Tour, the complete caravan will utilize 2400 vehicles to support 189 riders. That’s 12.7 vehicles per rider. I thought the bicycle was supposed to save the planet? C’est quoi ca, Monsieur Prudhomme?

Perhaps ASO isn’t aware that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s body of hundreds of leading scientists (visit www.ipcc.ch) has determined that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are helping heat up the planet, and we need to nip the CO2 emission problem in the bud. You know, drive a little less and ride a little more, among other things.

You’ve got Clif Bar’s 2 Mile Challenge (www.2milechallenge.com) getting the folks out of the car and on the bike on one side of the equation and the ninnies at ASO stuffing extra folks into cars to look at bike riders on the other.

Today Pedro’s announces a dramatic step to bring the sport of cycling more in line with the bicycle’s intrinsic value an instrument of good. Pedro’s Carbon Neutral Support will bring neutral mechanical race service to events while at the same time, eliminating the entire caravan’s emissions footprint.

Working with the Tour de Beauce, Canada’s largest stage race, Pedro’s will provide neutral technical service and remove the greenhouse gas emissions of the caravan from the sky through the distribution of compact fluorescent light bulbs commonly known as CFL’s. The CFL’s will actively demand approximately 70% less energy from the grid and 70% less of the resulting emissions.

ASO hosts the absurd example, but there are many, many events every week with 100 plus vehicles erasing any good cycling brings. We’ll set the example of one way to fix that. We now issue a most important challenge to Mr. Prudhomme and the ASO boys: Clean it up because you’re killing the planet.

Check this space again soon for the details as we move forward cleaning up the caravan all the while keeping the racers racing.