Orla Chennaoui: We almost need a break from the thrills and spills at this year’s Tour de France

A few days ago I had to issue an apology on air that I have never had to before. I am well used to accommodating those of a sensitive linguistic disposition when foreign riders casually drop an F-bomb in a post-stage interview.

Swearing in English comes as naturally to some Europeans as apologising does to many from these shores. Most cycling fans understand it but I have pre-watershed standards to maintain all the same.

Never in my coverage of 12 Tours 
de France, however, have I felt a 
need to apologise for the racing being too exciting.

Tour veterans have their three-weeks-of-summer routine. After the early break is established, the race purrs gently in the background, keeping you company and reassuring you of your place in the world and annual calendar.

If you can clear a window of peace and quiet, when the garden has been mown and dinner doesn’t yet require thought, you can sneak in a little snooze on the sofa. The heat of the past week has been especially well suited to that haven of half-sleep, knowing the rising tones of Rob Hatch and Carlton Kirby will alert you to the drama of the day, with enough time to clear the dishwasher before settling in for the race finale.

But this year, cycling fans everywhere have had their age-old habits disrupted. For the past 17 stages of racing, that stolen siesta has been an impossibility. We have been treated to the most consistently exciting Tour de France I have lived through, with rule-book ripping action every day.

I have always found cycling fans and pundits to be spectacularly optimistic. Every single Grand Tour brings supplications and seemingly genuine belief from all corners that we will see something exceptional, that we may see attacks on a flat, that a Queen stage