I get the impression that it wasn't much of a spectator sport. The stages were often in excess of 200 miles, and few spectators had any way to get to the dirt roads in the high mountains where these dramas played out.

But it does seem to me that the sport lost something in the transition to derailleurs and carbon fiber and endless parades of sponsors. I read stories and see pictures of "professional" racers so poor they had to hold down regular jobs outside the racing season, riding 30 pound gas-pipe fixed gear bikes around 250 miles of goat track in the Pyrenees during a blizzard - and then I see a news clip of rich, Lycra-clad Euros riding $10,000 bikes and *****ing because it rained during their 100 mile fully-supported TdF stage on perfect roads. Hmm...