The 2022 men's Tour de France is history.

Have been tough weeks.

Even if you just followed by car, you felt ready for a massage in the evening.

But that was not foreseen in the expense plan.

So I turned on the TV in the hotel.

what did i see

Women's European Football Championship.

Quarterfinals France – Netherlands.

Extension, and what can I say: in love with shock.

What beautiful football the French played.

Fast, brilliant, imaginative.

Win against Holland.

Then lose against Germany, I can see that at home.

Read and understand that this European Championship is the breakthrough for women's football, which was long ridiculed, then tolerated, then respected, now admired.

A size too big for some

It was women's week.

Not just in football.

After the men's Tour de France came the women's Tour.

Eight stages starting at the Eiffel Tower.

A real Tour de France.

Full throttle cycling.

I also watched it on TV, of course.

The second stage, I won't forget it.

Not in love with shock, just: shock.

What a terrible fall!

At 65 km/h on the country road, a crash in the middle of the field.

Drivers went down, you know such situations.

But this time things got much worse.

Four seconds after the fall, the Australian Nicole Frain raced unchecked into the pile of rubble, hit the Italian world-class driver Marta Cavalli, who was lying on the ground.

A horror.

Why hadn't Frain braked?

How could she try to pick her way through the wheels and bodies?

You didn't see it, the commentators cried.

What nonsense!

A good racing driver sees that, she hears that.

Four seconds time - and does not brake.

There is only one explanation for this.

For Nicole Frain, one of 144 participants, such a tour is too big.

A look at the statistics shows that in the four years that she has been racing professionally, she has clocked up 3,839 kilometers in mostly smaller races.

That is not enough.

Marta Cavalli, who knows how to race, has racked up 22,588 mostly difficult racing kilometers in her pro career.

In soccer, if you don't hit the ball when you're overwhelmed, that's not a problem.

In cycling, however, it is life-threatening.

Marta Cavalli was lucky, her injuries will probably heal.

But she could also have been dead.

At the Tour, said the Swiss Marlen Reusser after her victory in the fourth stage, there are riders at the start who make you wonder why they are there.

In the case of Nicole Frain, I also wonder why she is still there.

Learning by doing?

She's completely wrong about the Tour de France.