Le Tour de France
Le Tour as it is called here has captured the
world’s cycling imagination for over a century.
The race started July 1, 1903 with 60 cyclists and covered 471 km. The first winner was Maurice Garin. This year’s Le Tour will be the 99th
running of the event, covering 3497 km from June 30 to July 22. And thankfully two days are set aside for
rest! This year 11 of the stages are in the Pyrenees region,
convenient for me living in the Midi-Pyrenees region. I had the opportunity to see two of the
stages that were closest to Toulouse.
We set out fairly early both days to see the Publicity
Caravan. This is a parade of sponsors
prior to the day’s cycling stage. The
Caravan was started in 1930 to stabilize the race, allowing funds for teams to
use the same equipment and to nationalize the teams. The Race Director of the times, Henri
Desgrange contacted major French companies to become the corporate sponsors of
the race. Since then, sponsorship has
grown and the pre-race caravan is what almost 50% of the spectators cite as
their reason for coming. The Caravan is
fun, somewhat reminiscent of a Mardi Gras parade where people act silly to get
beads. Here, I’ve taken an elbow to the
stomach because someone really had their eye on the keychain trinket being
tossed. My reflexes are not what they
used to be, but I still managed to come home with a bag full of laundry
detergent, key chains and refrigerator magnets.
The cost for a spot in the parade ranges from 200,000-500,000 euros. Not to mention the give-aways to toss and
manpower to staff the caravan for 22 days as they travel through out the country.
The riders can earn different colored jerseys by winning
different stages:
Yellow Jersey: Best Individual
White Jersey: Best Youth
Green Jersey: Best Sprinter
Polka-dot Jersey: Best Climber
The first stage I could get to was Stage 14, one of the more
aggressive hill climbs in the Pyrenees.
The race started in Limoux and ended in Foix. We chose to watch outside a small town called
Massat, right before the final hill climb.
At that point, the riders were broken into a lead pack and the main
group called the peloton. The peloton was at least 15 minutes behind the lead
group. Somewhere in those 15 minutes,
just meters beyond where we were standing, someone threw tacks onto the
course. This caused blow outs for many
of the riders, 5 of the entourage motorcycles and a number of the cars. The lead team, Sky had a rider down with a
flat. Due to road conditions, help took
a long time to get to him. Sportsmanship took the lead here, the yellow jersey
wearer; Wiggins and the rest of the peloton decided to wait for all to fix
flats and ride in together. No word yet
if the tack tosser has been caught or what punishment would be appropriate
for this type of sabotage.
Stage 18 from Blagnac to Brive was much less dramatic, the
course was relatively flat. We settled
down to watch near the beginning of the race just outside of Seilh. The Caravan came through, and this time we
were a bit savvier. We stood apart from
the crowd, and subsequently gathered a bit more stuff. The best thing they threw was packets of
laundry detergent, so I can do 4 more loads of laundry as a result of going to
today’s parade! We saw the group pass by in a blur within 5 minutes of the
starting gun. Since there were no hills
and not enough time to slow anyone down, I barely could snap a few pictures
before I felt the back draft! They were
gone in a blur. Can’t wait until next
year!
For more information on the History of Le Tour and the
current Tour, check the links below.
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