I am writing this at a friend’s house in the Alps, where we have been based for some unforgettable days spent watching the Tour de France, the world’s greatest annual sporting event and surely the hardest.

Sport is about far more than who stands on the top step of the podium, and Le Tour is a pageant, a spectacle and a happy coming together of people from all nations.

This year I fulfilled a decades-long wish to see the ‘queen stage’ of the race, when 159 riders headed for a mountaintop finish on the iconic Alpe d’Huez, and tens of thousands of fans converted what is usually a ski resort into a seething cycling Mecca.

Many fans identified themselves with national flags, but none of them were so wrapped up in embarrassing nationalism for it to cloud their respect for the worthy winner of the stage.

This time that was 22-year-old Yorkshireman Tom Pidcock, and we naturally cheered him home as one of ‘our lads’.

But our cheers were drowned out by the roar that greeted his arrival at the top of the mountain, because every single person who was lucky enough to be there recognised his stunning achievement.

And yes, even the French cheered.

To understand why that matters, you first have to know that a Frenchman hasn’t won Le Tour since 1985, and since then riders from no fewer than 11 different countries have taken home the winner’s yellow jersey.

Furthermore, barring a miracle, no Frenchman is going to be the overall winner this year, once again, nor probably in the foreseeable future, either.

If you think about our wait for a British man to win Wimbledon, and the relief when Andy Murray finally did it - you still have to multiply it by ten to understand how much the whole of France is yearning for a Frenchman to win Le Tour again.

It’s their country and their race and (because Alpe d’Huez was on Bastille Day) it was even their day when we were there, so victory on that stage would have been a nice consolation.

But if their best-placed rider only finishing eleventh on the day wasn’t bad enough, Brits coming home first, third and seventh only compounded their disappointment.

Sometimes that has led to some so-called supporters showing themselves to be bad losers, but thankfully it was only ever a small minority that embarrassed the true French fans, not unlike the crass so-called football supporters that always spoil it for the genuine ones.

I can’t help thinking that if Le Tour had been a football match, we would have been thumbing our noses at the disappointed French, while some flag-draped hooligans would have been throwing plastic chairs at them.

But sport doesn’t have to be like that.

Nor life in general.

The more you respect inspirational people and rise above the cheats, liars and other losers, the sweeter the victory is when it is finally yours.

Vive la revolution and all that.