le Tour 4: in the Pyrenées

On a hot sunny day, three great cyclists power their way up to a 1517 metre hilltop, le Port de Lers. Further behind in another group was the Yellow Jersey (current leader of this race), and even further back, in dribs and drabs were the rest of the riders, including many expected to do well.

Lance Armstrong, five times winner of the Tour de France shares this climb with Jan Ullrich, five times runner-up of the Tour, and with Richard Virenque, who is aiming to win the spotty jersey - le maillot blanc à poi's rouges - for most hill-climbing points.

experiencing a mountain stage

Arriving in preparation to watch a mountain stage (6.30 pm the day before).	Spectators still arriving at 9.30 am, the day of the mountain stage. [Click photo for larger version.]

Going to watch the Tour de France on the flat or in a town is one thing. Going to watch a mountain stage, for instance in the Pyrenées or the Alps, is a completely different experience.

If you are not experienced in watching the Tour on the road and haven’t read Preparing for the Great Day or The Great Day arrives pages, you should first read them to cover the more mundane details.

On mountain stages, spectators arrive in their cars and camper vans at least the day before, staking out their prime position for watching the cyclists zoom or labour their way up to the top of the mountain pass [col]. Tents are set up, tables and chairs appear for the meals to be eaten while waiting, frisbees and boules come out. Those who arrive late have to make do with lesser viewing points and parking in possibly treacherous boggy heaths.

Waiting is a fine art. Playing cards, eating, watching a portable TV in the car, playing music loudly and listening to radio sports reports, visiting your neighbours is all part of the experience, painting your hero’s name across the road. For the keen, get up at 7am, pull on hiking boots and shorts, sling a pack on the back and grab a metal point-tipped walking stick, then go for a refreshing tramp up a nearby mountain.

On mountain stages, the road is shut to all motor traffic the afternoon before. It used to be at 17h/5pm, but recently the road closed earlier, so make sure that you and your vehicle are at your chosen spot early in the afternoon on the day before the stage goes through. The closure of the road leaves the race route clear, not only for the race to come, but also for groups of enthusiastic amateurs to ride the actual Tour route, or set up camp, before the race starts.

Then eventually comes the publicity caravan, bit by bit building up to a slow stream of multi-coloured bizarre, yet beautiful, carnival floats, advertising both race and team sponsors. Old and young wave, smiling eagerly, encouraging every vehicle, whether it contains goodies or not, to throw something their way.

Another long pause. Look at your Tour guide to check when the race is expected here. You know, don’t you? Having managed to corner a spot just a 100 metres or so from the top of a col (of course, you did that bit right, didn’t you?), the guide gives a clear estimated time for the first competitors.

Helicopters appear, a good sign; police motor bikes, another good sign. Then the breakaway pair drive up the hill to cheers, shouting and clapping. There’s Armstrong flanked by team-mates, with strong hill-specialists keeping pace. Then the next group, and the next. The grueling climb, the hellish pace, the heat make for leaden legs in all except those really suited and prepared for the mountain stages. The sprinters come near the back, along with once-vaunted favourites broken by the steep incline, the heat and the pace.

It is mainly in the mountain stages where the Tour is won or lost. Not just a few lesser contenders in a break-away, followed by a mass peleton as it sweeps at high speed on flat roads. Now the riders are strung out over miles when they are reaching the top of the category three climb where these photos and report were made. By the time the riders reached this point, they had already conquered two category one climbs, two category two and a previous category three climb on this thirteenth day of the Tour, with still the delights of a hors category climb [too awful to classify] to come, to complete their day’s 205.5 km ride.

By the end of the day’s ride, Armstrong had wound in more than nine minutes on the Yellow Jersey, Thomas Voeckler, the French cycling champion, since the flat stages gave way to the hills. With the Pyrenées behind them and the Alps still to come, Armstrong won the stage with only a 20-second deficit remaining on the leader.

The only other rider who has not been entirely shaken off is the Italian Ivan Basso. With the two individual time trial stages still to come, and Basso having lost 10 minutes in the three time trials last year, failing accidents, the writing appears to be on the wall for a mighty record-breaking sixth Tour victory for this phenomenal sporting giant. And all this from a man who is a recovered cancer patient.

after the stage has passed

Once the peleton, and then the Sweeper van have passed, it’s time to leave the mountainside and return to the hum-drum world down in the valleys below. And if you thought you needed patience to wait for the caravan and then the peleton to pass, it is nothing to the endless traffic jams to be exerienced as you leave the race road. There is no caravan to look forward to, just a queque of cars and camper vans making their way to the nearest motorway junction.

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© abelard, 2004, 18 july


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