Champion Kenyan

Last year, the Tour de France was won by a Belgian claiming to be British. This year, it was won by a Kenyan claiming to be British.

Unlike last year, Chris Froome (this year’s winning rider) is very quick to tell people of his heritage. He lets people know very quickly that he was born in Kenya and went to school in South Africa. Apparently he took British citizenship to improve his chances of getting a ride with a winning team. He lives in Switzerland.

It’s a very odd thing that the Tour is seen in nationalistic terms, when the teams of riders can be made up of people from anywhere. The winning rider is chosen because he’s the strongest in the team. So, when the headlines scream out that a Brit has won the Tour de France, they should, more accurately, scream “Tour won by three Brits, one Australian, a Norwegian, two Belarussians, a Kenyan and a Spaniard!” Though that may just be a bit big for a headline.

The problem is, I reckon it denigrates the achievement of the winner. The Tour has to be one of the hardest sporting competitions in the world and anyone who can win it is pretty amazing (unless enhanced artificially, of course), regardless of where he was born, raised, went to school or where his long dead ancestors came from.

In other, more pressing news, Kate and Wills had a baby boy this afternoon. I’d love to think they were going to call him Popo Dingdong Ribbletop Windsor but it’ll probably be something dull like Charles, George, William or Trevor. A pity because I rather like the sound of King Popo.

And in even more pressing news, today was the hottest day in the UK for seven years! The mercury managed to climb to 33.5C at Heathrow. And, before anyone from Australia scoffs at this…it was unbearably hot all day. However, and I don’t actually remember this, it reached 36.5 on 19 July 2006 at Wisley (which is just down the road from us). Maybe we were away…I don’t know.

Anyway, the Met bureau has now warned of flash floods from the torrential rain and storms that will occur as a result of the shock of such hot weather. This, I’m certain, will cause the railway tracks to fail just outside Waterloo.

Which brings me nicely to this next piece:

Me and my friend are having an argument, she says that it rains in Australia but it can’t can it because obviously the rain falls to the top of the world but at the bottom of the world it wouldn’t fall to earth it would fall into space

Brilliant. This was on Yahoo ASK. Actually, if you go to Google and put the title of this post into the search bar, it will bring it up. I find this hilarious.