goatwarden wrote:The large lady sreaching spoilt it all!
Much as I don't like the sound soprano singers make, "the large lady" is Lesley Garrett a well known English soprano singer so a reasonable choice to make & a more personal touch than just having canned music (I'm not sure getting an orchestra organised would have been a practical option).
Rick.
Former member of the Cult of the Polystyrene Head Carbuncle.
To have an apparently self-important woman, of no apparrent sporting ability and draped in a flag foreighn to the host country screaching the words just made it painful. It devalued the win to the level of "Brits on Tour" and was most undignified.
+1 to that. Totally superfluous, embarrassing addition to proceedings.
Tourer : 2010 Giant CRS City 4.0 Other : 1963 Denton retro (now back in the loft!)
Lesley Garret is not my cup of tea, but it is the Tour organisers choice who they get to invite along. It's their gig after all. Maybe when we anglosaxons get around to organising as prestigious a race as the Tour de France, perhaps we get to choose who to invite along to the award ceremony
Last edited by 7_lives_left on 24 Jul 2012, 5:17pm, edited 1 time in total.
Without wishing to use an appalling pun, it's a question of what might be called gravitas. Think of Montserrat Caballe and Freddie Mercury singing Barcelona.
Lesley Garrett has a beautiful voice - I've been to one of her concerts and it was well worth going - but she tends to treat everything as a joke. With all that skirt-swirling she looked to be about to do a can-can.
IMO, it's an excellent idea to have a singer of her standing perform the national anthem rather than some taped version, but it's a serious moment for many people.
Idon't think Lesley treated it as joke and the singing was spot on, Shame about that dress though Nice of the organisers to do something so diffrent, in honour of Bradley, He just looked totaly miffed by it ?
Last edited by NUKe on 25 Jul 2012, 10:03pm, edited 1 time in total.
thirdcrank wrote:Before the thread drifts into history, it's worth remembering that in the run up to Paris, we were all superstitiously avoiding any suggestion of hubris. They do say "The show's not over till the fat lady sings." So, with apologies to Lesley Garrett and Kenneth Wolstenholme "She has now!" (I just wish I had thought of that line on Sunday evening.)
Shirley it's another ten years (or however long they keep the samples) until said lady can sing. Personally I think Brad is clean, but if the Armstrong case actually finds against him that could be nearly all the TdF winners later disqualified in the last decade!!!!
I think that Wiggo would have preferred Paul Weller (with or without the frock) for the sing song at the end.
That really would be a spoiler. I started work on 14 July 1967, the day after Tom Simpson died. For years, I happily assumed that all the talk of drugs killing him was gossip. I survived L'affaire Festina with my naivety intact. I think it was David Millar (+ the death of my satellite receiver for Eurosport) which sickened me off completely. (There's a thread somewhere on here from me about GB successes in the TdeF which completely overlooked Cav's early stage wins because I hadn't been following the sport.) I only started watching again when I did my achilles (3 years ago?) and I was grounded till it healed.
If anthing goes wrong this time, I'll never watch a bike race again.
nez dans le guidon wrote:I agree. Wiggins has made his views on it pretty clear.
Whilst I don't doubt that he is on the level, one has to say that there have been a number of people condemning drugs who have since been banned. I think that really, we are never going to be 100% sure either way.
nez dans le guidon wrote:I agree. Wiggins has made his views on it pretty clear.
Ah the Mandy Rice-Davies gambit! Altho' in this case I rather think that BW is clean. Not that it would matter to me if he were not - Pantani remains one of my favourites. What Marco did, he did - including climbing like no one else.
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