Tour de retirement?

I recently attended Le Grande Depart of the Tour de France in Yorkshire. It's estimated that over five million people witnessed the opening three stages of the world's most famous cycling event in England, possibly more than all of those who will see it in France. The level of interest was really quite staggering and having witnessed it first hand, it's been quite difficult to take in what's really happened here. Let's face it, until really quite recently, cycling and Britain were not involved in the ‘love-in' they now seem to be. For a start there was very little interest in profe...