WITH the streets gummed up by road blocks and pedestrians, a large number of whom were, well, French, London was officially a “ruddy nightmare” in the view of taxi drivers. It was taking an hour to drive a mile on some routes close to Trafalgar Square. “Cycling? It’s about as big as curling, innit?” said one cabbie. “Who’s going to be watching? Just foreigners.”

He would have agreed with the view that bringing the Tour to these shores was as relevant as removing one of the various world darts championships from the mega-pubs of Essex to relocate it in a pavement cafe in Montparnasse. Or trying to export Cumbrian wrestling to Provence.

He was mistaken, of course. That it is the world’s most cosmopolitan city is the essence of modern London’s appeal. London Mayor Ken Livingstone began the Prologue with a swish of a flag. It was 20C and the sun had come out for the Mayor. Along the Mall, where the riders finished, there were English families, German teenagers brandishing pink inflatable hands, reflecting their country’s leading team, T-Mobile.

There were Americans wearing old Lance Armstrong cycling jerseys. There was a toddler, held up over the barriers by his mother so he could see the finishers, wearing a bandana in the colours of the Colombian flag. In Parliament Square, near the start, cycling fans of many nationalities sat on the grass cheek by jowl with an established group of London denizens – the peace campaigners in their rainbow-patterned tents who camp there as a reminder to the nation’s lawmakers.

And there was Kevin and Jan Grant, Kevin with his camera, Jan with her banter, there to see the cyclists swoosh down White-hall at speeds approaching 50kph before slowing for the first bend – a sharp right turn into the square before heading up Victoria Street. The Grants had spent five hours on the roads to get here from Somerset. They were here for the whole weekend and were proof that cycling is not just a foreign interest. Kevin has been a cyclist for 35 years, for Frome and District Wheelers, a club approaching its centenary year. Jan has been into cycling for the last seven years.

“Since I met him!” she laughed, giving Kevin a playful dig. “For us this is fantastic, a dream,” Kevin added. “I was there in 1974 the first time the Tour came to Britain, but it was basically just cyclists going up and down the Portsmouth bypass. I was there 13 years ago when it came to the South Coast and that was incredible. But there’s nothing like having it in London. It really puts cycling fans here on the map.”

It may not be a universal love, but cycling is to mainstream sport in Britain what jazz is to mainstream music: a fringe pursuit, yes, but one with a large core of aficionados who yield to nobody in terms of knowledge and passion. The reach of the sport could be seen in the different backgrounds of the five homegrown riders in this year’s peloton. There is David Millar, a middle-class Scot from an expatriate family who was raised in Malta. There is Geriant Thomas, a young rider from the Welsh valleys. There is Charly Wegelius, the Liquigas domestique making his debut at the relatively late age of 29, who is part Finnish.

There is Mark Cavendish, a 22-year-old from the Isle of Man who ignored his islands’s traditional love of motor sport for a competitive pursuit where the propulsion comes not from spark plugs and petrol but sinew and human pain.

If Cavendish – as is hoped for – can use his sprinting prowess to win on one of the flat stages during the Tour’s first week, try telling the Isle of Man that cycling doesn’t matter. Cycling has reached out to all these Britons, coming from their very different parts of our society, and to Bradley Wiggins, the down-to-earth Londoner who learnt to love being on a bike by cycling in Hyde Park as a boy. He was back by the Serpentine yesterday, and passed through Victoria, close enough to his mother’s house, he said, “to have dropped in for a cup of tea”.

When the event got underway, Wiggins was over his han-dlebars, crouched in racing position, straining for every joule of effort he could find. He was the big hope for a home win and rode his heart out, but the cries of “Come on Brad” died a little, coming up the Mall, as it became obvious he would not pass the mark set by Andreas Kloden of 9min 3sec. Gulping air as he sliced through the finish line, Wiggins had the extra agony of looking up at the clock and seeing he had also missed Levi Leipheimer’s time by hundreths of a second. He was third at that point but was later demoted to fourth as Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara won in 8min 50sec.

Not that it mattered to the velo fans from many nations, and to the Kevins and Jans who travelled from all corners of Britain, to be in London yesterday. In the end they would have been happy to see cycling score its biggest victory on British soil.