In these troubled days, we’re learning that you can watch a bad thing developing in front of your eyes, in real time, and yet feel utterly powerless to stop it. Fill in the blank with your own choice of contemporary socio-political phenomenon. But it can happen at a much more modest level, too, even in something as essentially trivial as sport. Which is how we come to the appearance of Team Sky’s “race hub” at the Vuelta a España.
The race hub is a large articulated vehicle decorated with the team’s logo and those of its various sponsors. It travels each day from one stage finish to another, where it is reconfigured – a little like a Transformer toy – into a two-storey building complete with facilities for (to quote from the official announcement) “communal eating, team briefings, pre- and post-race relaxation” and “guest hospitality and media”.
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