So the Tour de France is over for another year. The dust has settled, the champagne has been drunk and the hangovers are gone. It was a tour where the winner Chris Froome has had to defend multiple accusations of doping, Team Sky continued not to make friends, somehow a Texan continues to get publicity and Peter Sagan continued his merging into the incredible Hulk (in colour at least), some things just never change!!

But wait!! One thing has changed, The Roly Rouleur was finally victorious!! I actually managed to beat Mrs Rouleur in our annual fantasy Tour de France competition……. She blames Quintana.

For those of you following this blog you will have seen my previous post about this contest and how I almost always lose thanks to the aforementioned Peter Sagan. Well as always my wife chose him for her first pick but this year I was ready.

Nairo Quintana, Romain Bardet and Team Movistar were my secret weapons in domination. But it was a lot closer than I would have liked! At the end of stage 4 to Cambrai I was already trailing by 10 points and it wasn’t until Stage 10 thanks to Messrs Quintana, Valverde and Thomas that I finally found myself in the lead reversing the 10 point deficit!!

Thinks were getting very competitive in the Rouleur household and the banter levels were rising. I clung to an ever narrowing lead until Stage 17 where the combination of the French wonderkid Thibaut Pinot, the thorn in my side Peter Sagan and a double points haul stage from Jakob Fulgsang (my wifes team selection was Astana, she seems to have more faith than even the UCI) meant I was trailing by 2!!

My wifes lead was still 2 points as the peloton headed for a procession through Paris and Mrs Rouleur was more nervous than Andy Schleck (or me come to think of it) on a mountain descent……..And then up stepped Mr Cavendish and Mr Kristoff accumulating enough points to give me the overall stage victories by 7 points.

7 points, very close indeed, in fact even closer than LeMond vs Fignon in ’89…… Oh wait….. I forgot to add the points for podium places for each of the jersey holders. Did I mention my secret weapons???? Despite having the green jersey winner Mrs Rouleur finally suffered a defeat by what turned out to be a fairly substantial margin, I will spare her blushes (and anger) by not mentioning the final figure though.

Overall we somehow managed to make what was an exciting, engaging and interesting Tour that much more fun to watch. Until next year……

As for the prize, Starter – Moules Frites, Main- Moules Frites, Dessert – Hmmmm Moules Frites.