Since I won't be riding for a few days I figured I'd put up an extra bonus post.
Even though my blog was inspired by the Tour de France, it occurred to me that I haven’t talked about it much, except for Peter Sagan <3
Here he is with Tour champion Chris Froome & runner-up Nairo Quintana pretending his trophy is a gun O_o
I love the look on Froome's face, like ‘Aw. They’re so cute at that age.’
As a newcomer to the Tour de France, I've been pleasantly surprised by how exciting it is (No shade intended, cyclists). I’m not sure what I
thought it was going to be like ... I guess I just thought that road racing would be more like the cycling version of golf, all quiet and polite and kinda boring. (Shade intended, golfers). But it's actually really rad! It’s like
a travel documentary and a soap opera combined; The Young and the
Exhausted
I know this makes me sound like an old lady
but thing that drew me in first was the scenery. (You would have thought butts in lycra right? Not this time, surprisingly. Close second though.)
Stage 4 was when I really started to get hooked. They were riding through these rustic French farmlands, bouncing down crazy dusty cobblestone roads. When I heard ‘cobblestones’ I pictured something more like the old bluestone alleyways in Melbourne, like solid sections of cobbles. But these are old, old roads, where the cobblestones are buried in the dirt and it’s like riding over rocks. Craziness! The dust clouds as they barrel along, the riders grimacing as they hold on for dear life praying that their teeth don't fall out of their head; and then hitting the normal wide roads in a mad dash between each cobble section, try to grab the slightest lead before hammering back onto another boneshaking cobble road. SEVEN times. It was fascinating!
Stage 4 was when I really started to get hooked. They were riding through these rustic French farmlands, bouncing down crazy dusty cobblestone roads. When I heard ‘cobblestones’ I pictured something more like the old bluestone alleyways in Melbourne, like solid sections of cobbles. But these are old, old roads, where the cobblestones are buried in the dirt and it’s like riding over rocks. Craziness! The dust clouds as they barrel along, the riders grimacing as they hold on for dear life praying that their teeth don't fall out of their head; and then hitting the normal wide roads in a mad dash between each cobble section, try to grab the slightest lead before hammering back onto another boneshaking cobble road. SEVEN times. It was fascinating!
And it seemed like everywhere they went was a page from a French tourism calendar. At one point I pondered an alternative Tour De France that’s only the ugly parts, behind factories and abbatoirs, along dirty industrial canals and along railway lines. But knowing France they're all old-timey and cool looking anyway, jerks.
But yeah, the beautiful scenery just would not quit. Along the coast, huge white cliffs off in the distance as they roll into beautiful little seaside towns; then rolling farmlands, then vineyards; French Revolution-era mansions; medieval castles. Postcard city! Everywhere so beautiful and breathtaking. The best is the villages along the way, everything's a billion years old and there’s people standing outside shops and houses, townspeople, cycling nerds, little kids and grownups, everyone waving and cheering.
Things started to get pretty intense once they moved up into the Pyrenees for the beginning of
the mountain stages. I thought the flat stages were exciting enough,
but oh man, the mountains were something else. Again with the incredible
scenery of course; but my interest in the race itself cranked up too because, y'know, The Agony
and the Ecstasy of it all. Watching the riders face hours of grueling climbing
and descending in a single day, sometimes thousands of feet of climbing
(I mean, they’re actual mountains, these aren’t just hills), only to go
to bed wake up and do it over again…and again…and
again. And the guy who wins one mountain stage might not win tomorrow or even place in the top 10 because he's so bloody gassed from going all-out. And it's not like the sprinters get to jump in a car and get driven over the mountains, they're riding too, usually somewhere in the back trying not to collapse in a puddle of woe. AND: you can't just take your time if you're chilling in the last group of riders. Even the slowies have to make the finish-line by a certain cut-off; so you might have to stay within, say 20 minutes of the leader, for example. If you lag beyond that you get eliminated from the Tour. It's brutal!
And oh by the way once
they’re finished with the Pyrenees oh hey we’re going to go and ride over the
BLOODY FRENCH BLOODY ALPS. With barely any flatland in between the two sets of mountains. These guys! They’re machines of muscle and
adrenalin and crazy. It’s amazing to watch.
If someone made me ride up a mountain (let alone a bloody hill) I’d a) cry and b)
no seriously I would lay down on the ground and cry until they removed
me.
Being new to cycling (and regular exercise, let's be real), and witnessing all this in the Tour de France, I am completely in awe of the level of endurance. Even the guy
who finishes last: that guy is last in a pool of 160 of the best riders in the world. The amount of stamina it takes to complete ONE of
those mountain stages, let alone a flat stage, let alone get a stage win, let alone win or get a podium spot in the Tour overall? It’s
staggering.
But after all the blood sweat and tears in the mountains, it's Bonjour Paris for the final stage. It was pouring rain when they got there - apparently they hadn't had rain on the final stage of the tour since 1977, and everyone was freaked out. But with good reason: the
women raced earlier in the day around the Champs D'Elysee in the pouring rain and there were
SO many horrible crashes, carnage everywhere. The guys were apparently watching on their team buses and were like “O fuck", so when they started their tour through the forest on the outskirts of Paris, up to the Paris Observatory and then down into the Champs D'Elysee, it was slow and steady like a parade, they weren't racing at all really.
But even with the rain and the slowness, the Paris stage was still
cool. Because once they hit the
Champs D’Elysee and are cruising around the Arc d’ Triomphe you kind of want to
cry at the symbolism and
the history and the beauty of it all; but also how exhilarating it must be for them to be riding there
in that moment. Fighting your way up and down mountains and
now suddenly being celebrated in the most beautiful city in the world, everyone waving and cheering. As you can tell I got a bit emo over the
whole scene. It was nice!
So they do laps of the Champs and the rain has cleared up and the sun's coming out and voila, the cobblestones are dry so at the end
of the last lap, the sprinters race to win the final stage which is fun, who doesn’t love a good sprint…and Andre Greipel, the German
locomotive with a hematoma under his kneecap that
ONLY HURTS WHEN HE PEDALS wins the sprint in majestic fashion. Dude is
like a cannonball on the sprints, what a beast. So great!
Chris Froome was the overall winner (yellow jersey), Nairo Quintana came second and also won the
white jersey for being the best young rider, and my boyfriend Peter
Sagan got the green jersey because he's the most handsome...er I mean
because he got the most points. The riders are fascinating to me. The
rider who came in second, Nairo Quintana is a 24 year-old from Columbia –
you have never seen anyone climb a mountain with the beauty and ease
that this guy has. It’s incredible! He doesn’t
grimace or anything, it’s like watching a dancer. I never knew cycling
could be so beautiful. This is a video of Nairo in action, it's pretty cool:
One of my favorite riders, just for sheer
perseverance was Jean-Christophe Peraud, the 38 year old veteran – he
famously crashed in front of his family in 2013 and had to leave the
tour; he came in second in the Tour last year; this year
he crashed horribly in Stage 13, skidding across the road & turning
his arm into mincemeat, but even though he was covered in blood and
looked like a Walking Dead extra, he got back on the bike, brought water
for the rest of his team up ahead AND not only
finished the stage but the entire Tour, crossing the mountains wrapped
in bandages like a total badass. Talk about tough.
What I love the most is that the Tour is a
combination of individual effort and team effort. Even though there are individual winners of stages, and winners
for the most points, and cute rockstar riders,no rider wins the tour on
his own; you are only as good as the team that's supporting you. The way the best teams work together to support each other is
fascinating to watch. It reminds me of football a bit. At first you just see the flashy stuff, the quarterback throwing the touchdown and the receiver making the catch. But after a while you see the way the team works around the quarterback to give him time to throw the ball; the blocks that have to be made so that the receiver can get down the field and get into position. Cycling or football, the teamwork still works on the same level: the best teammates sacrifice without ego, and the best stars of those teams have the humility to know they didn't get there alone. They're also the rarest.
Okay now I'm talking football and we're veering into Rime of the Ancient Mariner epic poem blog post territory. So I'll call it quits.
Ooh: PS: here are some fun facts I discovered while reading about the history of the Tour De France:
The winner's Yellow jersey is yellow because that was the color newsprint used by the newspaper Le Velo that started the first Tour De France in 1903.
The Green Jersey was first awarded in 1953 and is green because it was originally sponsored by a lawn mower company, La Belle Jardiniere.
