Tour de France - The Prologue

Ok...if you are interested in bike racing then here's a bone for you...as a continuation of the last post. There actually was racing going on. Saturday was officially known as "the Prologue of the Tour de France". It was a race against the clock. Each rider was turned loose onto a 7.1 kilometer course (about 4.4 miles) and expected to cover it as fast as possible. Sixty seconds later, another rider is turned loose. This continues for 170 or so riders.

When I say "turned loose", that is exactly what I mean. Each rider is released down a ramp kind of like a ski jumper. The opening picture shows one of them just after release.

Though the prologue counts in the overall standings it is generally considered to be a puff piece for the fans. Real racing, they say, happens over a 150 mile course in the mountain stages. The city circuits are for the sponsors.

Regardless of the puffery, it's still good theater. Each rider is preceded by a police motorcycle, then sometimes a television cameraman on a motorcycle, then comes the cyclist, then comes a chase car with about $100,000 worth of equipement strapped to its roof.

The big news this year, at first, was that Lance Armstrong had retired after winning 6 times in a row. It's not fair to generalize... but it can be accurate. One can generally say that Lance Armstrong was despised in Europe. Despised may actually be too weak a word. Every purist on the continent was looking forward to the winner being either Ivan Basso (Italy I believe) or Jan Ulrich (Germany??). Then, on the day before the race, a big doping scandal broke and the favorites were banned from the race. The purists weep.

If you want to see other pictures of the Prologue of the Tour de France, you can go to this link or also to this link.