When you watch the Tour de France live, you're in the thick of the action. Cheering, watching the riders whizz by, waving at the helicopters circling above. However, you have absolutely no idea what's going on. After manning our little patch of footpath on part of the stage two course at Les Essarts for six hours, it's only now, after looking on the Internet, that I have any idea what happened today.
For the first time in three years the team time trial was back. After waiting around for hours yesterday to see seconds of racing, the time trial offered a bit more activity, even if it was again for only seconds at a time.
Les Essarts is about an hours' drive from Fontenay-le-comte and has a population of about 5000. Traffic was blocked about 1km from the town, with the cars directed to park in paddocks. From there everyone walked into town. Although the course is about 23km, getting out to the parts that are away from the town would have been a bit of a trek so we followed the course and ended up about 500 metres from the start line.
Despite the thousands of people who would have been in Les Essarts, we secured a good area just in time for the caravan. Aussie flag around my shoulders, yellow Tour umbrella in one hand and my other ready to catch anything thrown in my direction, I prepared for battle. Today's haul was a little more impressive than yesterday's. First score was a T-shirt (thanks Skoda), which became my outfit for the day.
Thousands of miles from home in small French village and we end up standing next to a family from Melbourne. They are in France especially for the tour. Later another couple also from Melbourne walks past and stops for a chat. Then some Kiwis. Yesterday we'd got talking to a Scottish couple that now lives in France, not far from where we are staying. We also spot one guy in a Richmond top and later one in a Carlton top.
The first team wasn't due to start until 2.30pm so we had a few hours to wait. We made salad sandwiches on the footpath using paper bags as chopping boards for lunch and then waited. The teams competed in reverse order, so the three Australians we wanted to cheer for (Matt Goss, Stuart O'Grady and Cadel Evans) were in the top four teams, therefore the last to come around. We couldn't quite see the start line but we could usually pick when a team was about to start because a chopper would take its place in the sky. At one point there were seven flying around. Then we'd hear the crowd cheer, the police motorbikes come round the corner, then the riders. We'd cheer, the team cars would follow and we'd sit down and wait seven minutes to do it all again. A woman in the house across the road was watching the race on TV and would come running out yelling something that we took to mean "they're coming", although she gave up that after the first few. We made a slight variation to our routine when it was time for the Aussie's to come round: we'd so a special "Go Aussie" cheer for them.
We were approached by the BBC to do a quick grab for them ("Hi I'm Megan, I'm from Australia, GO AUSSIE" type thing). I resisted the urge to refuse to do it unless they gave me a job.
We left at 6pm and were back in Fotenay-le-comte by 7pm and straight onto the Internet to find out what on earth happened today. For those interested, Garmin-Cervelo won the day, putting Thor Hushovd in the yellow. Cadel is in third. His team, BMC, came second, which was a bit of a surprise Team Sky, one of the favourites for today, finished third.
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