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Tour
de France Diary |
| David Millar |
I really wanted to see David Millar’s comeback ride and arrived down at the ramp just as he was circling to await his start, looking so skinny you want to hit him. Bradley Wiggins was doing the same thing but the pair studiously ignored each other.
Millar was being greeted every two minutes by riders and management figures, pats on the back and hand shakes; ‘welcome back son, could have happened to any of us.’
Once Millar was off I ambled over to the other side of the Place, at about 500 metres to go to watch the stars finish and try for sunstroke (don’t I ever learn) Savoldelli looked good, so did Valverde, Boonen, Rogers, Zabriskie and Hincapie but Hushovd was just awesome, mouth open, pain in every line on his face - a beast of a boy.
With the benefit of hindsight the course was made for him – a strong man’s parcours, but one where bike-handling was at a premium.
A surprisingly slow ride came from Floyd Landis, but it transpired later that he missed his start, despite being on the patch I don’t know by how much he missed it, but word is that he could have won without the penalty.
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Millar was 17 th, but what will really piss him off is that Wiggins was 16 th, I was hoping for a Scottish win, but to expect the man to compete against men who have been racing since January is unrealistic with the benefit of that old hindsight thing again.
Wiggins, well, he’s a wonderful pursuit rider but I just don’t think he has the sheer horse-power to be a top chrono-man, despite what the Comic says.
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They both looked lean, smooth and fast, but didn’t have that slow-revving, mega-power technique that Hushovd and Hincapie demonstrated.
Back to the press room to write it all up, caption the pics and email it all away, then time to write this. That’s 19.30 from a 06.00 alarm, with no stop lunch, I think I’ll enjoy that pizza even more tonight. Sprinter’s day tomorrow, I might even ride the last 10 Kso I can give Big Tom some tips, talk to you then.
Sunday, stage one – a day for the sprinters.
It was quite late when I got to sleep, I had a coffee in the hotel after I came in from my pizza place, it was too strong for a wimp like me late at night and my efforts to nod-off were also seriously hampered by demented French men driving around Strasbourg blowing their car horns all night. Apparently there’s some football tournament or other on the go?
I did my washing before bed last night and it was practically dry by morning. It’s no big deal washing stuff in the bath and it means you can carry a lot less clothing.
Breakfast up at the Ibis isn’t bad and I got to pour my own coffee this morning, plenty of hot milk, I can’t handle that strong, bitter stuff. I decide to go down to the Tour village first-up, Pez wanted ‘race colour’ shots and he has a thing on the site called ‘daily distractions’ which are pictures of attractive young ladies, the publicity girls always oblige, although I always feel like asking if they have pics of their mums handy.
I also had the notion to do a piece with Brad Wiggins and David Millar about their respective prologues.
It was the back of 8.00 when I got down to the village; it was set-up in the normally tranquil Park de l’Orangerie in central Strasbourg. The disco music was already pumping – Positive Force were letting everybody know that; ‘Bernaard’s [no, it’s not a typo, you can’t have cool black guys called Bernard, it’s Bernaard] got the Funk, he’s got the funk, yeah!’
Little old ladies walking tiny dogs and new-age-girls practicing their yoga did their best to ignore this intrusion to their Sunday morning.
Bob Sinclar, Barry White, Al Green, Gloria Gaynor all had their turn over the PA – I shut my eyes and for a minute I was in my 2.8 Capri – anyway! I got plenty of ‘colour’ shots – publicity girls, fan’s banners, girls on stilts, - yawn!
A minor coup was finding Thor Hushovd’s new 595 carbon Look on the roof of the CA team car, which arrived really early. A fellow anorak was agonising over Hushovd’s stem length, he was a Dutch guy from a technical magazine; ‘It’s not a 12, but I need to know if it’s a 13 or 14.’ When I plucked the tape measure from my bag, he just beamed – there WAS another man in Strasbourg as sad as he was; and its 14 cm if you are interested.
The new 595 is different from last year’s 585 in that it has a really nice fly-thru seat tube arrangement, an integral front mechanism hanger, new forks, new gear cable routings and a hiddenset with two sizes of bearings – the bigger ones at the bottom to take the loading.
He rides 53 x 39 on 11 – 21, Dura Ace, with a Sella Italia saddle, PRO bars and stem on Conti tyres (available at Velo Ecosse).
My Dutch chum also told me that Hushovd is running ceramic hub bearings; at a cost of six or seven hundred euros.
Soon it was caravan time – bears and kangaroos are popular this year, but I did get a free Skoda hat of a rather nice lady; no sunstroke today. I waited patiently at the Cofidis bus for Bradley, snapping passing stars. I have an idea for a ‘raves from the grave’ Tour feature, but I can tell Pez isn’t keen.
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Anyway, today I bagged, Jaja, Hennie Kuiper, Johan Museeuw, Dirk Demol and Sean Kelly. Bradley was an easy man to talk to. He said he was just glad to get the prologue over and done with and get into his first Tour. He’d found the first half very technical and had only been 45 th at the first check, but pulled it back to 16 th at the line.
I then high-tailed it up to the Saunier Duval bus to see if I could nab David Millar. Fortunately we have a mutual friend so that eased the intro, I didn’t get as much time with him as I would have liked, but he was OK with me and said that he’ll give me his time if I catch-up with him.
It’s just a hunch, but I think he’ll go OK in the Rennes time trial next week. He certainly looks in good nick.
The chaos at a stage start has to be seen to be believed, and that’s with hordes of stewards and police. I got away quickly after the start and drove the car back to the press room car park, set-up my laptop in the permanence so my place was safe then got the bike out and pedalled down to ride the last five kilometres of the stage. It was flat, fast and windy with some scary bends including a cracker just before the red kite. If the Ormiston APR had the same finish, the Western General would have to open a new wing.
I took a sequence of photos and wrote notes so we could talk readers through the finale. It was baking-hot and I felt dehydrated after 15 k. never mind 184.
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The finish line was the last pic, and then it was time to pedal back to the press room and start tapping. I wrote-up the stage finish piece first, emailed it off, sorted-out the pics to go with it then sent off a whole load of general pictures – maybe 60.
Thor’s velo was next-up and the pics to go with that, then finally the Brad/David piece, complete with pics.
Last but no means least, it was time to keep in touch with you dear readers in Bonnie Scotland, but its 8.00 pm now - can I go back to the digs - please?
PS - Hushovd's in hospital, update you the morn.
I was involved with TV today – no, no, not like that, cycling dot TV - the Internet TV guys who Brian Smith works with. I met their guy, Steve Masters in the press room yesterday and he scrounged a lift off me to the start at Obernai with his camera man, James. My wee Suzuki Swift was bursting at the seams, but they are good lads. I decided to latch-on to them for the day and first-up was the Tour start village. The grub for breakfast there really is superb – scrambled eggs, sausage, ham, cheese, beautiful bread, juice, coffee – ideal.
I think I said yesterday that I’m trying to get old Pez to do a ‘Golden Oldies’ section, but I’m up against it - anyway I snapped Pou-Pou & Thevenet today.
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| Eurosport's Christi Anderson |
Steve wanted interviews with riders and we battled our way up to the signing-on. It was mental busy and we had to take to the road beside the publicity caravan to get through the crowd.
It was baking-hot today, 28 degrees and I was glad I had the bunnet on. First to arrive was Zabel. You’re not far from Germany here and he’s a popular guy.
Wheels were ‘Lightweights’ at around 3,000 euros a pair, complete with ceramic ball races – his Milram team are on Shimano and ‘Lightweight’ don’t ‘bung’ stuff so they came out of his own wallet.
The CTV guys interviewed Leipheimer, McEwen, Wiggins and Horner.
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| The Cycling.TV boys use their technical viewing gantry |
A muckle TV camera carries a certain gravitas and riders never seem to ignore requests for interviews. The subjects all chatted away without problem, I’ve spoken to ‘Little Robbie’ a couple of times and despite his ‘difficult’ reputation I’ve always found him polite and articulate.
I grabbed Bradley for a minute, he told me that the first stage hadn’t been too hard, he’d had to work for Casper early on, but at the death Casper is his own-man, no lead-out train required, just bob and weave in the wheels.
I got a wee chat with David Millar too - not one of my best interviews ; “great to be back; felt like I’ve never been away; easy day; typical Tour finale.” I took a load of pics for the site – girls, riders, and local colour – the usual. The CTV guys wanted to film the roll-out so James was hoisted on to Steve’s shoulders so as he could shoot over the heads of the throng.
The race departed to a huge cheer and it was time for us to get mobile. The route was more or less a ‘straight there’ job so there wasn’t time to waste.
In the Tour ‘road book’ they mark-out the quickest route that you can take to the finish and today we drove the same last 15 k. as the race. It was great. The crowds were hanging-over the barriers, the picnics were set-up on the climbs and it was really a special experience. A very tough finale though, with two really brutal climbs and lots of bumps and bends.
The press room is a big gymnasium today, it’s not as hectic as it was at Strasbourg, but it’s damn hot in here. There were really nice freebees here today – Caisse D’Epargne notebooks, they’ll be great for impressing folk at Dundee track league.
I didn’t watch the finish. I was here, in the press room banging the keys for Pez. I watched the last 4 k. on TV though. McEwen is the same kind of sprinter as Casper, small and physical. They don’t have the same watts as the Boonens or Hushovds, but they are agile, fearless and have ‘zip’ with less body-mass to accelerate. Hushovd finished third and took the yellow jersey back after yesterday’s disaster.
McEwen said to the CTV guys this morning that the organisers should put double barriers at the finish. As well as Hushovd getting cut there was an object hurled into the leaders in the Strasbourg finish and it was bouncing-off riders.
With the Tour moving every day now, there’s much less opportunity to write. I’ve been rattling-out three pieces a day for Pez but I think that will have to go down to just one due to time constraints. Anyway, theCTV guys are winding-up their editing so it’s bolt time; visiting the SRM Power Crank factory tomorrow – I’ll tell you all about it.
Day 6 - Tuesday 4th July, 2006
You know you’re in Luxembourg when the sanitary ware in the public toilets is by up-market ceramics company Villeroy & Boch.
After I closed the diary last night it was another drive - to Kirschberg, a suburb of Luxembourg with Portuguese flags flying everywhere. The cycling TV guys were letting me share a room – Pez pays the bills remember, not L’Equipe.
It was a Novotel – big, impersonal, clean and expensive – just like Le Tour. Johan Bruyneel was schmoozing in reception when we arrived.
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After a shower we headed down-town to find a plate of pasta and a cheap and cheerful joint to eat it in.
On the way out of the hotel, in the foyer most of the CSC and Caisse D’Epargne teams were sitting on the floor chatting – looking like school boys on an outing, Sastre, Karpets, Valverde and a dozen others.
We found a wee caff open where a Portuguese dude was in full rant to the locals about how good his football team was and how bad the French were. I was thinking: “If this boy starts on me I’ll just point to my two English chums and yell – ENGLEESH!” That should do the trick. Fortunately the bar man calmed him down and we were able to scoff our tagliatelli in peace.
Sleep wasn’t hard to find and I was up, showered, shaved and re-packing the car to make it look less like a rowp on wheels, by 07.50. Valverde strolled-by in his snow-white leisure suit, looking like a sailor from a Jean Paul Gaultier after-shave ad. (He didn’t look so cool later-on in the day when he was carted off to hospital with a broken collar bone.)
Talking of Spaniards, I was looking at Iban Mayo yesterday If power-to-weight is important, then he’s well on the way to a good Tour – the man is skeletal.
More driving to the start, le Village and breakfast – melon, scrambled eggs, croissants and coffee with beautiful girls as a back-drop. I bumped-into fellow Pez man, Randall Butler in there and had to hide my wee Olympus camera, his has big lenses, a flash gun, wires and all the stuff. I grabbed my humble shots for Pez – girls, the jazz band and, of course – riders.
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| The "Boogie Man" |
‘Boogie’, resplendent in a fresh Dutch national champion’s simit; Rujano - jeez he’s tiny, Bobby J, Eki and a couple of my ‘Golden Oldies’ – Eros Poli and Guido Bontempi [respect].
Main gig of the day however was to meet-up with Ulrich Schoberer, the inventor and business brain behind SRM Power Cranks.
This year he has organised nine riders (2 each from CSC, Quickstep, Gerolsteiner and T-Mobile, plus one from Milram) to have their SRMs wired-up to a sender so that it transmits their data via the mobile telephone network to TV companies ARD and OLN who can then display it on-screen.
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| SRM's impressive "factory" |
Speed, cadence, heart-beat and power are all available, but the TV guys only display two at any one time so as they don’t ‘over-load the viewers with data’. “Bulshit!” reckons Uli.
I watched him setting the electronics up on the T-Mobile Giants before the start and once le Tour was safely on its way we headed for Julich, Germany where his factory is situated for a photo sesh and an interview.
The drive up was a pain, with road works everywhere, but the trip was worth it, SRM’s industrial unit isn’t big, but if you are a sad anorak figure, then it’s a joy. Back in 1986 Ulrich used to race, but he got frustrated trying to figure out a way of measuringhis fitness on a week by week basis to see if he was improving. He was an engineering student, so he sat down and analysed the best way to measure his power out-put. Power expressed in watts is the absolute measure of how well you are going, cadence, heart rate and speed can all be influenced according to circumstance.
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| Uli hard at work on a new PowerCrank |
If a rider is trying to join the Australian track team for example, they will be given an ergometer test and if the watts aren’t there, then no squad-place.
Uli figured that the best place to measure the output was between the crank and the bottom bracket before too many frictional forces have intervened.
The original Power Cranks were crude affairs – but they worked - and after leaving university he only worked for one year as a technician in a college before he set-up his own business – 20 years later his product is recognised as the best cycling training-aid ever.
If you like cycling history then his factory is a shrine, he has kept all the old models of power crank and the control boxes to gowith them, he has a marvellous collection of bikes, jerseys, photos and memorabilia from grateful clients - how does Armstrong, Basso, Boardman, Cipollini and Lemond sound for starters?
I interviewed Uli for a future Pez article – we’re not going to run it during the Tour, it will just get ‘lost’ – and took a load of pictures.
Uli had bought-in pizza for us and wanted me to get stuck-in to the wheat beer, but I resisted and it was with reluctance that we hit the trail again.
Destination Maastricht to pick-up Cycling TV’s Australian cutie-reporter, Rebecca – ‘Becks’ is OK, but not ‘Becky.’
She is taking-over from Steve and she had been waiting for us at Maastricht for hours, Stevie’s mobile battery had gone flat so it was me who got the steady stream of text messages – ‘where are you? ‘What’s your eta?’ But she was fine when we got there though she can swear a bit - a real Aussie Sheila. They were sharing their hotel with Quickstep, CSC and Lampre – Boonen had just taken the yellow jersey behind stage-winner, Mathias Kessler (T-Mobile) and ‘Tornado Tom’ fans were out in force.
There was no room at the inn for Ed though and I had to go and find my own digs, The Admiral Hotel where I’m sitting banging this out on Wednesday morning (I think it's Wednesday anyway).
After my shower last night, I was lying on my bed thinking about captioning pictures and writing this when the mobile rang. It was Steve, inviting me down to his hotel to use the internet connection. I drove back down there for about 9.30 pm and left at around 11.30 pm without getting near the internet, apparently the connection was a slow one and he was still sending film when I left. I wasn’t too concerned because I got the use of an office to caption my pics and write most of this.
The Germany/Italy game was on the box downstairs and the place went crazy when the Italians scored. Apparently the Germans in the audience stood up and switched-off the set after the second goal. The night air was lovely, so I decided to have one beer outside my hotel on the patio – it was just perfect.
I beat my 06.30 alarm this morning, sat down to write at 07.00 then ran Steve to Maastricht station for 07.30, it’s 09.00 now and time to pick-up Rebecca and James (the cameraman) and head for the start – must dash.
Day 7 - Wednesday 5th July, 2006
We were spoiled at Strasbourg those first two days with the hotel just a couple of minutes from the press room and the action all within easy reach until the start on Monday.
The driving is a killer now, not just because it’s boring and tiring but because of the time you waste. If I do a Grand Tour again, I’ll definitely organise a driver so as I can write as I travel. Today we were on the road at 9.30 and it was wearing-on for 11.00 when we got to the stage start at Huy. Leaving Huy immediately after the riders rolled-out it was nearly three hours to get to the finish at Saint Quentin.
After our business was finished in the press room it was another hour plus to the hotel in Compiegne – a lot of driving, a lot of time wasted. The hotel where James and Rebecca were staying was host to Lampre as well as Quickstep and DS Guido Bontempi was standing outside with former Giro-winner Damiano Cunego.
I thought I’d tell hem a bit about ‘Big Guido’ and began to explain that he was one of the fastest men in the world back in the 80’s and early 90’s. Rebecca butted-in: “And now he’s just a big fat bastard”. She’s that kind of lady.
The stage started in the town of Huy, famous for its ‘ Mur’ in the Fleche Wallone Spring Classic. The start seemed less chaotic than usual and it wasn’t too bad getting my pictures for my piece fro the day, which was on style – haircuts, siders, ear-rings and the crucial issue of sock-length.
The big Russian, Karpets of Caisse D’Epargne is the hairiest man in the peloton complete with beard.
When I suggested the story to Richard he liked it, but said to get quotes from the riders about why they had adopted their look. How do you ask a Russian guy why he has chosen to have a head like a burst couch?
Coolest socks were those gracing the feet of Giovanni Lombardi of CSC – plain white, no logos, just above the ankle like a 70’s six day rider. Un-coolest were those of big Christophe Moreau, AG2R – they seemed to almost come up to his knees.
The drive to Saint Quentin was uneventful, except for a frites-stop for James and Rebecca, I was sensible and just had a cheese sandwich – Rebecca nicked one end of it though, to make a chip-buttie.
At St. Quentin we were on the actual course for the last few kilometres, which is always a great experience with big crowds hanging-over the barriers hours before the start.
The press room didn’t seem as busy today – maybe a lot of Dutch and Belgian guys are doing their reports off the TV now we’re heading deeper into France.
I had a load of work to do – all of the previous day’s shots, all of the SRM visit shots and all of today’s shots had to be emailed off, a total of more than a hundred. But you can only do five at a time or ti causes hassles for Pez when he’s trying to open them.
I also had to write my piece and get it away before we headed-off to our hotel, which was about an hour away, in Compiegne.
We had seen enough motorways for one day, so we went cross country on minor roads through villages deserted in anticipation of France’s world cup clash with Portugal.
The residence for the night was an Ibis Hotel in the middle of a French ‘project’, high-density housing estates, notorious for social problems. Still, the room was clean and the shower worked.
It’s not every day you are in France when their team is playing a World Cup semi-final and we headed down town to find a bar to watch the fun. As you will no-doubt be aware, the French won 1-0 in a rather lack-lustre encounter.
I must confess that I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Hordes of wasted young French guys started rampaging through the streets, many waving flares around, bathing the whole scene in red light. It was just-short of a riot – exit, stage right, pronto – it was just a tad scary. On the way back to the digs a fully-loaded car-transporter passed, complete with numerous flag-waving gentlemen among the cars on the top deck – crazy.
Back at the ranch and there was ‘Stuey’ O’Grady ambling around in shorts and T-shirt and buying water from a drink dispenser – skinny? Anorexic.
I’ve been sitting outside the Ibis since 07.00 Thursday, (07.55 now) writing this up, the Credit Lyonnais and Mavic people have nearly all hit the trail and CSC are starting to stir.
Raymond Poulidor was stotting-around earlier - he just looks like he did when he was battling it out (always without success) for Tour glory against Anquetil. He has a Credit Lyonnais van with his name and portrait on it – handy if you’re trying to find it after too much vin rouge. Shower time, talk to you from Caen.
Day 8 - Thursday 6th July, 2006
I said this morning that I would talk to you from Caen; well it’s actually Lisieux, around 50 kilometres east of Caen.
It took the usual hour to get to the start this morning. Beauvais was ‘en fete’ for le Tour - not the grotty part of Beauvais you encounter en route to Ryanair’s tent at the airport but the nice, old part complete with Gothic cathedral.
A thing I noticed today was that the dreaded, large plastic PMU hands, which were ‘banned’ after one nearly cut Thor Hushovd’s arm off, were being distributed with gay abandon at Beauvais. Safety is all very well, but you can’t piss the sponsors off.
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| "Local Colour" |
My piece for the day was to be on the bikes which will probably be doing the winning in a fortnight in Paris.
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| Hincapie's Trek |
I targeted ten – Evan’s Ridley, Sastre’s Cervelo, Leipheimer’s Specialized, Landis’ BMC, Hincapie’s Trek, Moreau’s B2win, Mayo’s Orbea, Kloden’s Giant, Menchov’s Colnago and Alabasini’s Bianchi.
It was that old patience thing again – wait and explain to the team PR man, slowly (remember I come from Kirkcaldy, sir!) and politely that you are from Pez and doing a feature on the bike to win the Tour and can they pull out the leader’s velo from the row of team bikes?
Sometimes you are lucky, like when Levi Leipheimer came back from signing-on and leaned his little Specialized against the team car in splendid isolation; it even had the chainset facing towards me.
The normally aloof T-Mobile guys were great. I was handed Kloden’s lovely Giant and left to get on with it; within minutes I was trying to fight fans off the thing and get it back safely behind the ropes.
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| Kloden's Giant |
Rebecca and James wanted a McDonalds so we nipped into the drive thru and ordered two ‘Beeg Makz’. I resisted the temptation though.
The scoffed them, went quiet, said they felt sick and then fell asleep as I pointed us at Rouen.
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| Becks with the De'il |
It was cooler today, in the mid-twenties for the first time in days and I had the air-con set low.
Even by the mind-numbingly boring standards of Tour stage transfers it was a sore-one; the first part was especially grim, stuck behind trucks and tractors. One good thing was that it poured with rain for about two minutes, just long enough to give us a nice, clean windscreen – I had every known species of French aphid splattered on there.
I also bought some fresh-baked garlic bread and fruit roll at the roadside, it was at rip-off tourist prices but absolutely delicious. The A13 wasn’t too bad but we were on the road for around four hours – dire.
The press room was good though, big, cool and with beautiful catering, although I didn’t get much chance to sample it.
I watched the stage finish on the monitors today, which is more than I managed to do yesterday, when ‘Little Robbie’ gubbed everyone again. Today it was Oscar Freire back on form and giving Rabobank something to smile about after Erik Dekker ended-up in hospital the other day. Boonen is trying so hard but even with an awesome lead-out from Van Summeren he couldn’t get the win.
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I got wired-in to my piece, but I allowed myself to get talked-into leaving the press room early so as we could get back to the hotel.
I agreed, but only if I was guaranteed internet access at the digs so as I could email my piece and 50 pics off to Canada.
You can guess, can’t you - after another hour on the road – no internet at the inn.
On that trip we stopped for gas; the guy had pumps on both sides of the road and had to keep crossing back and forward across the road to serve people – only en France.
The prospect of driving round a strange town in the dark to find an internet caff which might not exist is not one I was not going to explore.
The piece is written and the captions are organised so tomorrow the plan is – up early, coffee in Lisieux, miss the start, drive to Vitre (scene of the stage finish) drop James and Rebecca in the press room, email my stuff off, then drive to Rennes on my own and cover the route of Saturday’s 52 kilometre time trial course so I can write a preview. I had planned to bike it but I’ll have to see how the time goes - then back to Vitre to write and submit the preview – simple!
It’s gone 12.20 a.m. Friday now, with no dinner, just the bread and cheese we had in the car – that’s the glamour of Le Tour for you. I’ll let you know how the master-plan works-out later today, bon soir.
Much of the cynicism I have built-up about the commercialism and rampant ‘janitor-mentality’ of many of the officials on Le Tour evaporated on Friday as we drove the full race route from Lisieux to Vitre.
There’s still innocence and magic about the race – in these parts anyway – four and five hours before the race was due through there were thousands of people roadside. Every age group was represented, although it seems to be the old and the young who embrace the race most warmly.
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It was wet when we left Lisieux after a coffee and a bap at a café in old Lisieux with its quaint, half-timbered old houses. More by luck than good judgement we ended-up on the course. There’s an alternative road to the finish mapped-out for support staff, but it’s usually designed to induce terminal boredom.
We had decided to give the start a miss and go straight to the press room so we could get the previous days work sorted out. We thought three hours would get us there but it was nearer five because of the number of stops we made.
The first KOM (King of the Mountains) came early in the day – it was a stinker, narrow and twisty; there would have been a few chasing hard to get back-on after this one.
The crowd was already gathering and we stopped at the top so as Rebecca could do a ‘piece to camera’ at the top with the Champion banners in the background.
There were Gendarmes on every junction, however small, but it was still around five hours until race time.
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The Tour is such a media-magnet that many causes use it to air their case.
There were posters for right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen on back of many of the road signs; we talked to a union group who were protesting about hospital closure and yet another group were protesting about nuclear waste. Nobody was protesting so much as to upset the race however.
Closer to the finish we stopped so that Rebecca could interview ‘The Devil’. In all the whole 180 plus kilometres was a joy. Less joyful was finding the press room - it was four kilometres from the finish but cool with plenty of room and good catering.
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| Becks interviewing |
Unusually there were no glitches, I got my piece on the top ten velos away, plus the 50 pictures to go with it and I also fired-off the pics I took on the drive.
Next up was driving Saturday’s 52 kilometre time trial course from the Rennes suburb of Saint Gregoire via a rural loop back into the city of Rennes.
The rain was chucking it down when we arrived at St. Gregoire and it took us a wee while to orientate, but once on the route there were plenty of direction arrows and - without exaggeration – maybe a thousand camper vans on the route, remember the race wasn’t until the next day.
It was a typical Tour test, a bit of everything, but not too technical. If you had to categorise it, it’s a ‘strong man’s course’ with lots of long, tough drags where it would be easy to lose chunks of time. Some of the sections in the villages were tricky with cobbles, road furniture, speed-bumps and mini-roundabouts; if it rains it will need care. The test finishes with a five mile blast around the dual carriageways of the inner ring road in Rennes, long straights and long drags on leafy boulevards.
It takes a wee while to do a preview because you have to stop and take pictures as you go. I jot notes as I drive, maybe I’ll get am MP3 recorder for the job.
After our preview it was time to play ‘find the hotel’. It was in the town of Bruz, south of Rennes, but when we arrived we discovered we had been moved and were actually back up in Rennes. The driving is absolutely the worst part of the Tour and it was another hour before we reached our Campanile.
Pez wanted the time trial preview posted on Friday so, even given that they are eight hours behind us in Canada, I had to get to work on my write-up as soon as I sat down.
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| Support for le Pen |
James and Rebecca went to eat whilst I tried to make sense of my notes and double checked them back against the race map and profile.
Fortunately, the wi-fi in the room was perfect and I had no bother with internet access; it costs – but that’s life. The pictures I took weren’t the best because the light was so bad, but I organised captions and fired them off anyway. It was 10.30 pm by the time I had finished and I it’s not often I say it, but I was a tired boy when I slid into bed around 11.00 pm.
I dragged myself up at 06.00 am Saturday to write this and I’m sitting in the reception so as not to disturb James. It’s wet outside - maybe it will clear for the later starters.
First down the ramp is at 10.00 with the big guns not going-off until the afternoon. Game plan is to get up to the start, grab some food (I’m starving), take pictures of the time trial bikes for a photo feature which is my piece for the day, run Rebecca to the airport (she’s off home today), return to the race, maybe follow a rider round the course then back to the press room and start tapping.
Now let’s see if I can get logged-on to this wi-fi . .
Day 10 - Saturday 8th July, 2006
How could I ignore my hero Serhiy?
If I’d had a proper thinking-head on when I did the revue of the course yesterday I would have mentioned him; ‘a strong man’s course’ I said and who’s stronger than the man who rides 56 x 11? Isn’t it a joy to see him forcing that ‘death gear’ along the road, none of that embarrassing high-revving nonsense; face a mask of pain, giving his all – awesome.
It’s great to see him in yellow too, for a team that was down and out when Jan and Oscar exited stage right a week ago. T-Mobile are doing OK – two stage wins and the jersey already.
In the chrono today, as well as winning, they placed Rogers 4 th, Sinkewitz 6 th, Kloden 8 th , Kessler 14 th and Mazzoleni 16 th, not bad at all – Kloden to win?
Breakfast was braw today; I didn’t get time to eat last night so I was ravenous come the morning – fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, fresh bread, cheese, pastries, coffee - the biz.
Mission for the day was to do a piece on time trial bikes, I took pics of all the interesting rigs – BMC, Look, Giant, Cervelo, Scott, Orbea, Time, Trek, Giant, Colnago, Specialized and Trek.
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| Time's TT Machinery |
Alan Butler, the Discovery Channel mechanic, is great with me - I get in behind the ropes and he tells me about all the new kit. Read an interview with Alan here.
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| Hincapie's bar setup |
Fresh today were Bontrager tri-bars for George Hincapie’s machine – nice.
There’s also a new Equinox TT bike in the truck but pros don’t like to mess with their position in something as important as Le Tour. I was up at the Saunier Duval truck too, tying to sneak pictures of Millar’s machine, I only got a few before they put a towel over it to stop me. It’s a nice bit of kit; ‘biplane’ forks and bars, brake behind the forks but the graphics aren’t to my taste.
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| Miller's bike with a towel to stop photos |
I got a couple of good ‘spy’ shots today - some of the Gerolsteiner riders are riding Swiss Walser frames sprayed-up as Specialized.
I know the bikes well because Franco Marvulli, one of ‘my’ riders in the sixes, rides one and I know the features on them instantly.
A really unusual one was that there was a black ‘Colnago’ on the Rabobank roster which was actually a Giant – hmmm!
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| Zabriski's TT bike |
I shot around 80 pictures before it was time to take Rebecca to the airport for her flight home.
The drive to the airport went well and didn’t take long at all; it must be the quietest airport in Europe.
I was sorry to see Rebecca go, she can be a bit of a Diva sometimes but in the main we had good fun and worked well together. This was more than could be said about the walk to find the press room at the finish, it was a Beau Geste job – march or die; for all the marvellous organisation sometimes the signage is simply dire. It’s a cool press room though with good facilities and great catering.
Richard wanted the pictures first so I emailed them off (five at a time or it causes his system problems) – 73 of them to be exact. Then I had my copy to write – 973 words of it.
As the race drew to a close I popped through to watch on the monitors a couple of times.
It wasn’t the race we expected - I had Landis second, but to Davie Zee with maybe Big George third. Honchar is a beast of a boy, he’s won a load of tests in his career and he held the pink jersey In the Giro this year so he’s not that big a surprise.
Third was Sebastian Lang, you would have got long odds on that, fourth was Rogers (the world test champion), fifth was Gustav Larsson and sixth Sinkewitz.
It was a grim day for ‘chrono-team’ CSC; Zabriskie was a distant 13 th and Bobby J crashed-out. It’s all going wrong for Big Bjarne in this race.
Leipheimer went like bag of spanners for 96 th at 6-06, worse even than Iban Mayo who was 82 nd at 5-37 and Big George’s new tri-bars could take him no higher than 24 th at 2-42.
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Bradley Wiggins placed 28 th at 3-10 and David Millar 37 th at 3-24.
I was a bit sad leaving the press room today, it will be the last time I’m in there during this Tour.
I’m going to watch the start of tomorrow’s Saint Meen le-Grand to Lorient, get my pics and quotes then head for Calais.
It would have been nice to visit Lorient again, I raced there back in the mists of time and visited again a couple of years ago when we were at the Worlds in Plouay but it’s a long way to Lorient just to come all the way back. James bought me dinner at the restaurant next door to our Ibis tonight, I think it’s the first ‘proper’ meal I’ve had since Luxembourg. It was nice just to sit and relax for the first time in days.
Anyway, bed time, talk to you tomorrow – from somewhere.
Day 11 - Sunday 9th July, 2006
There’s a great old 70’s film called, ‘The Omega Man’. To cut a long story short, Charlton Heston is the last man left alive (by day anyway) in a post-viral world. He roams this completely deserted US city with not another living thing in sight.
I felt like him last night as I drove towards Calais but the virus which had brought my world to an end was called, ‘The World Cup Final.’ French auto routes are really safe when there are no French people on them.
Even by the standards of this trip, yesterday was radge. It started well enough; we didn’t have to be up early and I drifted out of sleep at our Ibis at around 07.30. Shower, shave, an hour to the start at the wee village of Saint-Meen-le-Grand, scrambled eggs for breakfast, washed-down with local cidre – so far, so good. It was a tad damp, but that’s Brittany for you. It’s usually sunny by the afternoon.
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| Robbie relaxing before the rollout |
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| Magnus Backstedt |
I tried to get a few minutes with Bradley, but his wife and kiddy were in Le Village, so he was understandably preoccupied.
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| David Millar |
I spied David Millar sitting reading the paper and asked if a few words were possible. “No problem”, he said and I hit him with a few questions.
The answers were much fuller than I’ve had from him previously and I think maybe I’m connecting a little bit – this on the day I go home of course.
He’s enjoying the Tour, but taking it day by day, no goals or predictions. He was disappointed by his time trial but says he just can’t get ‘top end’ and hurt himself yet, I took some pics then left him to find his pre-race coffee.
The usual ‘Golden Oldies’ were cutting-about. I got a pic of Eric Caritoux of France – quality guy; he won the Vuelta in 1984 in a ‘death race’ against Spanish combines. It’s said by those who know, that Caritoux rode 100% clean, which makes his win all the more commendable.
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| Julian Dean |
I grabbed a few words with former Tour of Britain stage winner Julian Dean of New Zealand and CA.
He’s not the kamikaze sprinter he once was and his locks have been shorn. His role now is as lead-out man for Thor Hushovd.
And he told us that he was glad the cloud over the start of the race had vanished and was looking forward to helping Hushovd get another stage win.
By then it was roll-out time. We watched the tail-end of the bunch vanish.
I gave James, my camera man neebz for the week a hand with his stuff into the SRM van – they were giving him a run to Bordeaux and that was it. Alone in an empty car park - a long way from Kirkcaldy.
I popped the 70’s soul in the slot and bolted – I had a plan. The Isley brothers were giving it ‘This old heart of mine’ when Icaught site of Mont-Saint-Michel, reaching up on the horizon, the top of the steeple stretching into the heavens to get closer to God. It’s a wonderful place, despite the crush of people – if I wasn’t on a tight schedule I would have paid another visit.
The irony of working on the Tour is that you don’t actually see much of the race - it would be different today.
After I’d done around 100 miles, I dived off the auto route into the ‘bocage’ – the name given the earth banks topped with hedgerows which edge the roads and fields in these parts. Rural Normandy is quiet on a Sunday afternoon and it was a few villages before I found my oasis – Villers Bocage and the Bar de l’Hotel de Ville.
“Excuse moi madame, le TV pour le Tour de France, c’est possible, s’il vous plait?”
“A oui, certainement Monsieur!”
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| "My" bar in Villers Bocage |
I was close to tears, especially when I saw the Faema coffee machine (Merckx’s team in the late 60’s/early 70’s).
I sat on my bar stool, sipped my Amstel and watched the six man break try and hold-out to Lorient whilst trying hard to ignore the b.o. wafting-off the two guys next to me.
Calzati’s win was well deserved; his timing was just right – French stage wins are good for the race.
I had a Faema cafe au lait, reluctantly headed back to the auto route and decided just to drive all the way to Dover.
That was my Omega Man drive, and I relied heavily upon the Sounds of Philadelphia during those final 200 plus miles; Billy Paul, The O-Jays and Harold Melvin all did their job.
Calais ! What can you say? It’s a cowp of a place, and even worse when the French have just lost the World Cup.
I got myself an Ibis and rang Old Pez just to let him know I was alive and to tell him that I would file my copy and pics when I got home.
“Thing is Ed, it’s the rest day tomorrow and we don’t have any real content. I was kind of banking on a piece from you.”
I’ll spare you the grim details, but let’s just say that it was 2.00 am when I got to bed and don’t ever have your life depending on the wi-fi in an Ibis. I was up at 06.00 to give Pez a ring (10.00 pm Vancouver time) to ensure he got all those words and 60 pics. He got most of them, but I had another three falls or a submission with the wi-fi to re-send the last of the pics. It’s 08.45 GMT just now and I’m on the ferry.
If I survive those 500 miles back to the Kingdom of Fife I’ll give you a few words. A demain!
Postscript - Tuesday 11th July, 2006
Bonjour! Sorry I haven’t drawn a line under my sojourn in France sooner, but the last couple of days have been a tad hectic getting back into the groove. Here are a few pictures taken on my last day...
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| Gert Steegmans - he's Robbie McEwen's lead-out man. He'll win a classic one day. |
The 500 miles from Dover to Kirkcaldy were dire – but I knew that before I started the drive.
I was supposed to go home via London to do a piece for cycling.tv in the studio, but I couldn’t face the hassle, so my chance of fame will have to wait. It’s hard to live parallel lives.
On Le Tour the traveling is difficult, no doubt, but you have complete focus on the little bubble you are in.
All that really matters is pressing the ‘send’ button on the laptop once that copy is typed.
In the real world there are so many things to worry about – bills, family woes, work, getting the honde (that’s Flemish for dug) out of the kennel – but you know you definitely won’t bump-into Christophe Moreau at any stage in the day.
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| Carlos da Cruz - never puts his crash hat on till the last minute so it won't spoil his hair. You have to admire his commitment to posing. |
Still, it’s how I have chosen to live my life and I’ve forgotten what boredom is.
I think there are plenty of sources of information on Le Tour, not least PezCyclingNews, so you don’t need me to tell you about what you can see as well as I can on Eurosport.
I’m back on duty in Bonnie Scotland this weekend at the East Road Championships on Sunday.
Over the week and a half I was at Le Tour, I was in England, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium.
I can honestly say there is no place as green as our little corner of the globe, and East Lothian is especially beautiful.
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Evan Oliphant and Ben Greenwood are riding at Saltoun so it won’t be an easy one, see you there and thanks for all the hits on the site.
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