As I sit here looking into the Nice sunset, awash in the afterglow of a great day for the Australians at the Tour de France, I have started to work out what it is about this event which lures millions of people to the roadside to watch blokes ride fast on bikes.

 

Spectators from all corners of the world lined the route for stage four of the tour – a 25-kilometre team time trial around the streets of Nice – for fleeting glimpses of the speeding two-wheelers.

 

The build-up started days before the stage with the organisers’ caravan arriving to set-up promotional, merchandising and amusement stages around the city centre.

 

The size of the operation is staggering. It is like a giant circus rolling in to towns and cities along the route of the three-week tour.

 

The anticipation for this one day of the race had many spectators securing their prime viewing spots at the roadside barricades eight hours before the field even lined up for the starter’s signal.

 

From then on, tens of thousands of people spread to vantage points around the course looking for the best view, the best camera shot, or the position furthest away from anyone who was English.

 

And in the two hours leading up to the start, the masses were treated to ‘pre-match entertainment’ which lurched from kitsch to camp to soft porn.

 

Sponsors vehicles raced around the course, stereo systems throbbing with dance music as bikini-clad girls gyrated while hanging from harnesses in the open-air vans.

 

As they sped past, the sponsors’ warriors anointed the crowd with caps, t-shirts, water bottles, condoms, streamers and many other crap freebies you wouldn’t even contemplate as Xmas stocking fillers.

 

The procession went on for an hour, but it certainly had the desired effect on the crowd. The atmosphere was noisy, friendly and expectant.

 

Australians, Swedes, English, Americans, Dutch, Spaniards, Norwegians, many other nationalities swapped yarns.

 

The Poms were in particularly buoyant mood. The cocky bastards had an inkling that in a matter of weeks they might win this event, have a Wimbledon champion, beat-up the Wallabies on the Lions rugby tour, and then beat-up on us again in the Ashes cricket series.

 

But as we stood and counted the condoms from the pre-race free-for-all, the conversation inevitably drifted to a topic I had long-contemplated.

 

How much would we see standing on the roadside, as people jostled for an uninterrupted view?

 

And as each team raced by, what would it tell us about how they were faring?

 

Worse still, would the ringside view we had live up to the hype?

 

The fact we were all wondering about the spectator experience at the largest annual sporting event in the world led to some research about why people go to watch sport ‘live’.

 

A study by a team of academics in Victoria in 2009 looked at the motivators for attending major sporting events.

 

Most of them are obvious such as ‘emotional arousal’; in other words, the likelihood that we will find the event stirring and enthralling. This, of course, rules out every State-of-Origin match Queensland has ever won. The ‘arousal’ also explains why we were showered in condoms before the time trial began in Nice.

 

There is also the personal investment and attachment in an event, such as supporting your own team. Or whichever team is playing Collingwood.

 

But the other reason we like, and want, to go to sporting events is what the researchers described as the ‘back room’ factor.

 

The simple explanation is that we will go to a sporting event if the conditions are right, we can view an event in relative comfort, and it is well-organised with good amenity.

 

The strange thing is the Tour de France meets none of the latter criteria. Spectators – an estimated 12 to 15 million each year – will line the route, often regardless of the weather.

 

They are anything but comfortable as they watch the varicose veins grow on their legs from standing still for a couple of hours while waiting for the peloton to speed by.

 

And while the tour is a monumental achievement in logistics, the only organised form of spectating is the law of the jungle. It is every person for themselves, which is a far cry from the sheep-like way we file in and out of football stadiums.

 

Of course, cycling is huge sport in this part of the world. Cavendish, Wiggins, Contador and Evans are held up on a pedestal in their own countries.

 

Pro cycling teams cost tens of millions of dollars to assemble each year and are riding for large prizemoney on the various tours throughout Europe and the US.

 

All of this has sporned a niche market in the travel industry with hundreds of tour operators around the world selling Tour de France packages which follow the race for three weeks. Most of them offer clients the chance to even ride some of the course before or after the main event has hit the road.

 

Yet, all of this popularity is in spite of the hammering that cycling’s image has taken over the past decade courtesy of a series of drug scandals, capped off by biggest and most damning affair involving Lance Armstrong.

So, as I wondered about the special allure of this cycling race, some of the answers finally started to come mid-afternoon when the first team finally rolled off the starting podium in Nice.

 

They were greeted by a huge roar from the crowd as they came into view, their high-tech wheels humming as they sped past in single file.

 

The crowds were five-deep in places, craning their arms as they strained to snap a photo of the cyclists as they flashed by.

 

Four minutes later it was on again as the next team raced past, then time for more banter among the crowd as we compared photos while waiting for the clock to tick down to the next team.

 

But it literally was a case of: “Here they come, here they come…oh, there they go”.

 

The climax came and went quicker than a sunny Melbourne day. But as odd as it seems, the experience was about the spectacle, the atmosphere and the sense of being so close you could almost reach out and touch the cyclists.

 

And from such close quarters, you could see the speed each team took the bends and curves, the teamwork and trust of each cyclist riding just centimetres off the wheel of his teammate in front.

 

As race director Christian Prudhomme told Eurosport: “In cycling, the athletes go to the crowd. The people watching are so close to the action that they feel part of it all.”

 

A great day in Nice was capped off by a winning ride by the Australian-owned team, Orica Green Edge, which also put Simon Gerrans in the leader’s yellow jersey, just the sixth Australian in the 100-year history of the race to win such an honour.

 

But understanding the attraction of this event is best summed up by Laurent Carteret, a local real estate manager and 40-year resident of Nice.

 

“The French have a love affair with le Tour,” he says in a typically eccentric Gallic accent.

 

“The race goes to all parts of the country and even the smallest village can have, how do you say, their moment in the sun.

 

“This fills us with great pride when our town or village is (selected to be) on the Tour.

 

“We are waiting months for this moment to arrive so, of course, we must all be on the side of the road to cheer for the cyclists.”

 

Monsieur Carteret’s enthusiasm for the Tour could be compared to putting the Melbourne Cup on the road and running the ‘race which stops a nation’ in other Australian cities. The race is part of the national psyche which makes a statement about the country’s people and culture.

 

So, was it worth all the effort? Were the hours of standing and waiting by the side of the road in Nice well spent?

 

All of us in the crowd acknowledged what we always thought. The best way to see all the action in the Tour de France is in your lounge room.

 

The multitude of camera angles, watching the team tactics unfold as cyclists attempt breakaways from the peloton and, of course, the picture-postcard French countryside are some of the reasons why an estimated four billion people tune-in to more than 200 channels around the world to watch the race.

 

But out on the course, it is an event which generates atmosphere even when there is no action. Crowds are expectant and unlike many other sporting contests, support for team allegiances are not as strong.

 

Spectators will cheer on every cyclist because they know that the three-week tour is one of the greatest tests of endurance in sport.

 

Cycling’s governing body maintains it is cleaning up the sport but it wasn’t enough to stop some sponsors – tired of being associated with doping controversies –withdrawing their support.

 

But on the streets of Nice, and in lounge rooms and bars around the world, the romance and fascination with this 100-year-old event shows no signs of waning.