So much for the best laid plans! Today I was supposed to be visiting the Houghton Hall exhibition and sunning myself in the process. Unfortunately, my body had other ideas so I had to abandon that and rest my dodgy hip – yippee.

I woke up at 5am this morning my hip throbbing and it took some time to calm this down. However, one of the bonus from walking so early is that we were able to prevent our house guests from coming into the bed room. The previous evening we had discovered the male of the pair in the bathroom which only goes to prove how domesticated they are. Anyway he was shoed away but it does mean you have to be on the look out for the pair coming into the house. Talk about unwanted House Guests!

What it has meant is that I can sit back and watch the Tour de France without feeling guilt about sitting inside whilst it is so nice outside. I have to say that Chris Froome is just unbelievable – you can understand why there are so many questions relating to dopping but I believe that Sky are clean and the whole team would collapse if there was any suggestion of cheating – including the return of Dave Brailsford and Bradley Wiggins’ knighthoods – so the costs of cheating are much greater than the rewards. Maybe that is the way forward.

As for the performance difference I think it must be remembered that the Sky team are different to all other teams, with the possible exception of the Australian Orica Greenedge team. Not only are they the richest team in Pro Cycling but they an off shot of the GB national team so have the advantage of some of the best sports scientist in the world to help them at little cost. Also they have a team of young and up and coming riders to test the science before feeding it into the pro team. In many respects it is more a kin to a top F1 team set up, such as Mercedes, which has a massive multi national company as well as engine factory as back up. None of this takes anything away from Froom – it just shows what can be achieved when you put a world class athlete into a world class set up.

So what has all this to do with my dodgy hip? Well I injured my hip on my exercise bike. I just hope that Froom doesn’t suffer the same problem – but then he is in his twenties and supper fit – two things that you wouldn’t say about me!

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk