Tour de France intro makes Fortune magazine

FORTUNE | Pack mentality

Paul Hochman, familiar to OLN's regular Tour viewers as “that guy with the glasses,” has a Tour preview in the current issue of Fortune magazine, of all places.

In keeping with the neighborhood, he explains the Tour as a commodities marketplace, where the various players buy stage wins at the expense of GC placing, buy TV time for the price of a suicide break, and even dominant champions find themselves allying with opponents when the situation is right.

Hochman quotes Bob Roll, who says it's less corporate than that:

"It's basically a penitentiary," says Bob Roll, a former Tour rider and an anchor for OLN TV. "You've got your walking boss, you've got that sneaky little bastard who was in "The Longest Yard," you have the honorable veterans, and then the guys who are just doing time, which is most of them. Nobody wants to be anybody's boy, but sometimes you have no choice."

If you're a regular, most of this won't be news for you, but it's definitely worth keeping around for friends and coworkers looking for an introduction come Tour time.