Swarm brings welcome buzz

Serenity on the Tour. We sat on the grass and watched the giant screen at the Cork finish, the last stage in Ireland. Like a swarm of colourful insects, the peloton alighted on Wexford, Waterford and now Cork, pollinating minds, consuming enthusiasm as it moved along in a frantic buzz.

Two bold riders had bolted but in the peloton the individual is worthless if the colony thinks differently. The two were hunted back and swallowed by 185 nervous riders.

Stage two of the Tour de France was one for the sprinters. The teams gathered and jockeyed. They circled around their best hope, "cotton wool-ing" him against the elements, pushing and nudging and marking territories between the hedges.

The final 1000 metres was going to decide this one after 205 kilometres of racing. Sit back and let it happen.

"Boardman is down. He's down. He's staying down. The yellow jersey is down," screamed the commentator.

It began as the English rider was spat out to the side when his wheel touched another. The circle of destruction grew wider until the road was littered with bloodied limbs and broken machines.

Chris Boardman lay still on the ground, his body inches from a dry stone wall.

At such times you hesitate to pass comment. You look at the wall and ask, did he hit it? You wonder how fast he was going. Was it 20 mph or was it 30 mph?

You question why he's not moving and why all the commotion. The urgency of the medics, the sense of danger. A sore head and a fractured wrist. Boardman was lucky or Boardman was jinxed?

In 1994, when the Liverpudlian made his Tour debut, he won the prologue and held the yellow jersey for three days. In 1995 he crashed out of the prologue, smashing his ankle in the process.

In 1996 he suffered through the Tour, finishing 39th overall, and last year he started upbeat but was forced out with injury after 13 stages.

This year his memento is a plaster cast around his left wrist and the possibilities of what might have been. Sympathy is sparse on the ground. Tour director Jean-Marie Le Blanc said: "I don't like it when the yellow jersey falls. There was no trouble with the road. He fell down with Moncassin. I don't know exactly why. He's not injured too bad but his Tour is finished."

It started with a cannon blast in Enniscorthy. Vinegar Hill and the men of '98. Down the main street and the motorcycles were already offering information on their blackboards - France 3 Bresil 0. Yes, we know. Another French Revolution.

It was fresh and different and the people rowed in. Enniscorthy, Clonroche, Dungar van and Cork.

Cork was thick. Thick with people. Thicker than Dublin. We overtook a mini-tractor with a space shuttle on its roof and a giant revolving globe.

We went though Carrick-on-Suir, Sean Kelly's place, thicker even than Cork, and Monsieur Leblanc genuflected to the great man with a pint of Guinness in the main street.

"I was happy to drink Guinness in front of Sean Kelly," he said, modest enough not to mention that it took him less than four minutes.

The peloton squeezed though the narrow channels of Kelly's country with little trouble.

To Youghal and Boardman alights, sending the finely measured race into something of a lottery. Still, long enough left to regroup. Long enough for the sprinters to line themselves up.

Erik Zabel, Tom Steels, Fred Moncassin, Abraham Olano, Laurent Jalabert, Christophe Moreau, Jan Ullrich. Of course they are still there.

Marco Pantini is almost a minute behind. But give him a mountain with snow. Not a motorway.

"It is very different for us," Zabel said. "Yes, the weather, it is not like summer. It's very windy and it is very hard to ride here.

"I'm very happy to leave Ireland with the yellow jersey."

The German touched 63 kmh in the final sprint before hopping on the bus to the airport.

The Tour has left us. Boardman is still with us. Ireland has had a new experience and the country is richer.

These days that is a major sporting success.