Leading Article: Glamour of Le Tour in a land of weak tea

IF EVER proof were needed that cycling has become a glamorous, big-money sport, it can be seen in the two-day visit of the Tour de France to England. The southern towns through which the cyclists will race have paid handsomely for the privilege, in the hope of recouping their investment from tourists. Advertising trucks that will cruise along the route before the competitors have an equally commercial intention. Even the racers are fully- fledged professionals. Cyclists are not yet in the league of boxing or Formula One, but a top racer such as Miguel Indurain can still pull in a cool pounds 1m a year - and the more popular the race, the greater the cyclists' expected receipts.

Many of the expected spectators will be taking a day off work to see Le Tour because the rail strike gives them no choice. But its arrival in Britain should be a matter for celebration for hundreds of thousands of others. Cycling is one of the sports that is most demanding to competitors and most exciting to spectators.

Part of the glamour for the British enthusiast is the image the race conjures up of French culture. It is no coincidence that the plot of Peter Mayle's recent novel - a sort of fictional A Year in Provence - centres on a bank robbery perpetrated by a group of cyclists. Yet the placards in British towns announcing 'Le Tour est ici' also show that the sport's appeal is spreading beyond France to the rest of Europe.

With cycling's surging popularity supported by admirable coverage on Channel 4, the decision this year by the Milk Marketing Board (now Milk Marque) to cancel its long-running sponsorship of the Milk Race now seems misguided. The public appetite for racing in Britain is indisputable.

The present Tour of Britain, which takes place in August, is a small-scale affair. Whether it will ever come to rival its French equivalent is impossible to predict. Small problems, such as the refusal by the British police to allow fans to paint the names of their favourite cyclists on the road, may not prove an obstacle.

But one of the joys of the race is to watch it from a vine-shaded restaurant terrace in the mountains, idling over a post-prandial black coffee in the summer sun. Somehow, nursing a weak tea inside a Little Chef as the rain lashes down on the bypass outside is not quite the same.