I don’t want to be a contrarian. Normally I go with the flow of mainstream opinion. This is principally because when I disagree with the commonly held view, I turn out to be wildly, spectacularly wrong.
An example of this came last year at the Tour de France, when asked for my opinion about the newly re-worked Montmartre climb for the Paris stage. I railed against it. I didn’t like the break with tradition, especially coming so soon after the damp squib that had been the 2024 Nice time trial, and felt that it was overly harsh on those sprinters who had battled their way through the mountains to get to the final stage. Of course, in the end, I was totally won over by the spectacle of seeing Wout van Aert drop Tadej Pogačar in the yellow jersey and ride solo to victory. I had simply got it wrong.
