Some time late last week France awoke with a jackhammer in its head, green fur on its tongue and the stale smell of the previous night's fun everywhere. France found the remote control in the cracked bowl where the goldfish used to live. France decided to look for the goldfish. France had second thoughts. France sat down with the jackhammer pounding. France flicked on the TV.

Zut alors said France. They're having the Tour de France. They've started it without us.

That moment was as good as it got, that fleeting instant on the grouted join between the perfect World Cup and the perfect anticipation of the world's greatest race. Then the world of sport and the shimmering illusion it presents began to flake and peel away.

On Saturday in Paris in a teeming tavern which was as dark as a confessional save for the bright flickering of the television set, I watched a group of French people as they watched the scenes from Correze where Richard Virenque's blond head bobbed about in front of a tidal wave of TV cameras.

Virenque, one of a benighted generation of cyclists conscripted to the ranks of The Great French Hopes, was kitted out for a bicycle race, but his painful vulnerability suggested nakedness. Full frontal nudity in front of the world's media. He wouldn't be riding his bike today.

Virenque is directly accused of nothing, of course, but the events of the past 10 or 11 days have stripped him and his Festina team of their finery. Drug scandals make hideously naked outcasts of them all.

I watched Virenque buzzing about on the screen and watched the small disdain on the faces of his Parisian audience, the recognition that the posse of microphones and cameras in front of the cyclist were no longer affording Virenque the token respect once due to his celebrity, but were jostling him as they would a defendant.

The public esteem for Richard Virenque was escaping like air from a tyre. I looked at Richard Virenque and I thought of Paul Kimmage.

See, Paul Kimmage is a bitter little man.

Once or twice a year somebody proudly tosses this opinion down in front of me like a shiny new coin which they have just minted. Kimmage is a bitter, twisted little mongrel. So, I turned away from the television back to the book I was reading. A Rough Ride by Paul Kimmage. One man letting the air out of his own tyres.

Maybe Paul Kimmage once had what Richard Virenque has, the talent that seems to defy adjectives. I don't know enough about cycling to judge. People who do know tell me that Kimmage was a great and unlucky amateur.

Later in the professional game, promise turned to a struggle for survival. Kimmage achieved a lot for an Irishman, a small amount for an Irishman living through the era of Kelly and Roche. He did it, though. He lived the life, made the break, dared to eat the peach.

For me the salient point on his CV has always been that he finished a Tour de France, found a bottom to his potential, mined himself until there was virtually nothing left. Few of us are granted that. Fewer still understand it.

I've never heard Paul Kimmage express bitterness, but when badgered I've heard him quietly wonder if there was anything left, any more excavation of his talent that he could have done. Peep show stuff. Look through the slot here at the most private musings of a man who painfully left behind something he loved.

Paul Kimmage talking about cycling always reminds of a sentimental little gem of a film I saw maybe 20 years ago.

Breaking Away was the gossamer yarn of a small town working class kid who breathed dreams of cycling. He was the French. He was the Italians. He wedged the blade of a racing saddle between his buttocks, said arrivaderci mama and he was free. Hollywood left us with that thought.

Paul Kimmage rode up the hill in Howth, dreaming of breaking away. He rode a Tour de France. He was free. Completed the whole odyssey. Gone Hollywood.

He could have retired and taken his place on the big roundabout, becoming a gaudy painted horse who comes round once a year, nailed into position to tell us what a great thing the Tour is and, by subtle implication, what a great fellow he was.

Instead, he spat in his own soup. Punctured his own myth. He scraped the varnish off his own back and laid the chippings down beside the shimmering dream. He inspected both piles with brutal honesty. Allowed us to do the same. A Rough Ride is a brutally honest book, acid truth burning your fingers on every page.

He stood aside and said `look, here's what I became, here's what the sport is'. Shouting into the great wind tunnel of media illusion. The world said: Get off the bloody roundabout, bitter little man. Posted a sign: No Bitter Little Men.

I re-read A Rough Ride this weekend, interspersing it with struggles through the shuddering columns of the French sports daily L'Equipe.

Kimmage diagnosed it years ago, but there is a resurgent pain in the heart of the nation which gave us Le Tour. That great sprawling lyric song of the sporting spirit has been replaced by something counterfeit.

L'Equipe was full of despair. From Le Tour came only honeyed PR. Everything is alright. We caught some rogues. We got there just in time. We have performed 50 blood tests and everything is peachy. Go back into your homes, there is nothing to see. Look there's some sunflowers over there.

Ten years ago the Canadians looked into their souls like Paul Kimmage. Read the Dubin report, the monumental result of the inquiry into the Ben Johnson business. It lifts the rock on the scuttling underworld of sport. Read A Rough Ride, it does the same.

Les boucs emissaires said Festina directeur sportif Michael Gros on Friday. The scapegoats. Team Scapegoat.

"This is a vast hypocrisy," said Gros. "The whole world knows that doping exists in the whole peloton. We are the scapegoats."

No. The world can't afford to know. Nobody wants to inspect the soiled bed linen of any sport up close. The morality of sport is cowed before the roaring imperatives of commerce. Virenque and the boys were unscrewed and lifted off the roundabout. All is well again. Thank God. Pay your money at the booth folks.

This is what cycling has become, what sport has become. We know but can't afford to know. The roundabout will keep turning, churning out the pretty music. The media wind tunnel will cool the faces of those astride the pretty horses.

My friend Paul Kimmage isn't a bitter little man. He should be, though. We all should be bitter. Once again our heroes have trodden carelessly all over our dreams.