Well that was a good two days of cycling to see … surprisingly enough some amazingly good weather!!! How did that happen?
Estee and I headed off to London on Friday afternoon so that we could go and see the start of the Tour de France. I was working the crowd on Saturday at the London Prologue so had to get there early so that I could get all the necessary items to do what I had to do including information about the course and yadda yadda yadda.
Was a little concerned that the weather wasn’t going to be very good for the tour as the past month had been pretty miserable in London … most of England actually but it turned out pretty good first thing on Saturday morning. Went off to breakfast and then down to the Queen Elizabeth II Centre to get briefed. After the briefing, we were then taken up to Hyde Park and placed at out positions around the course. You can see more information about Saturday over here.
It was a great day seeing the riders on the course and then the amount of people that had come along to see the event. I didn’t get around the whole course as I was kind of stuck to one place but I can say that it was packed in the area that I was in and the amount of people passing us was huge.
For the Canterbury stage, I was not on the volunteer staff so I was able just to go to the race with Estee and see the event in all its glory with out worrying about anyone else. We arrived at about 1230 and headed for the finish line. Not that we were going to get to the finish line just heading in that direction. When we were walking past the roundabout with 1km to go it wasn’t too crowded and it was looking good for pictures. So we got settled in for the stay and waited for the caravan to come through.
The caravan came through and we caught a few items that were being tossed or handed out of the vehicles. It was pretty much a mad scramble to get things as they flew through the air. At one stage, I took a few steps to my left and reached under the barrier for something and by the time I moved back, someone was in my spot. So had to ask them to move so I could get to my gear. I then stayed putt. Some women then told me that if I moved I lost my spot. I didn’t get the chance to tell her to go fly a kite somewhere.
Not to worry we just waited for the riders then and that was going to be a quick flash as they went past of that we were sure. As they came close, the whole area had the cameras pointing to the road and then swish … the riders were flying past us. I pointed the camera and just held the trigger down as they came through the round-a-bout. A few tail end charlies’ got had their picture taken too but they were going a little bit slower than the leader.
It wasn’t until we got home that we found out that Robbie McEwen had taken out the stage. But this was only after a fall that happened about 23km’s from Canterbury. Fortunately his team was able to come back and get him then drag him back to the bunch. With 5km’s to go he was on the back. BUT in my pics as they go through the 1km mark he is sitting 3 wheels behind Boonen. So he has managed to almost get around 189 riders doing 50km+ to get to the front and then take them on in a sprint and win! That is a phenomenal feat. As Phil “the voise of cycling” Liggett would say ‘McEwen has used Harry Potters Invisibility Cloak to perfection’.
Cavendish, the english sprinter on T-Mobile also crashed hitting a spectator. He was not a happy camper on the tv pictures we saw nor on the pictures that we took of him …. ooopppsss. More pictures can be seen on my Photo Gallery.
It was a great day without a drop of rain ….
Posted by telfie 
