So my husband is a huge Tour de France fan and so for the last few summers I have been watching the tour for 2-3 hours a day for THREE WEEKS. One summer he even tried to watch it twice a day (they show it in the morning and then repeat it at night) but I had to put my foot down about that. Anyway, though I am not the hugest cycling fan in the world, the tour is pretty interesting. Three weeks is a bit much for me but I do enjoy it some days. There's lots of little things to know and appreciate about the tour. But the one thing that drives me crazy every day of every race is the stupid frickin' crowds.
I posted a pic that I think is of last year's tour to give you a sense of what the crowds are like in the mountain stages. They quite literally stand so that they fill the whole street and draw back just enough to let the riders through. And once they pass, the crowd flows back in to the whole street. There is usually a little motorbike in front of the riders that serves to partially break the crowd but at the thickest points, fans just flow back in after the motorbike has passed. At other parts where the streets are little more open, fans will jump in front of the riders, wave and scream and then jump back at the last possible second. Others will run beside the riders waving huge flags at them and shouting. It makes me cringe - I'm always just waiting for a breeze to send the flag right into the wheels of the bike. They also pat them on the backs (which is illegal and can actually result in the riding getting a penalty if it looks like the fan pushed them), pour water on them and offer them water bottles. So of the not so nice fans also spit on them (WTF with that????) and call them names.
Anyway, this is a big part of the tour and since it's 200 K long a day, they can't really enforce crowd control. But it drives me nuts. Every single day I'm shouting at the tv "Get out of the way!!" I often resort to profanity. I mean, these cyclists have been riding uphill for 5 hours. Do you really think they want to have to weave among drunken or idiotic fans who can't get off the road fast enough?? And several times over the history of the tour, people haven't gotten out of the way fast enough and have caused riders to crash. Piss off!
Well, today was a treat for people like me. It was the tour's hardest mountain stage and the biggest crowd ever turned out. It was twice as thick as that pictured above - people were literally inches away from the riders on all sides. Anyway, there were a couple riders up in the lead and this guy jumped out to shout at them. I think he was running with them and then fell off the pace and stopped. In the middle of the road. There were more riders coming up shortly behind him led by a motorcycle (they carry guys on cameras who get all the crowd shots). The guy wasn't moving and he was threatening the safety of the cyclists behind and the integrity of the race so the motorcycle ran him over!! In fairness, there was absolutely nowhere for the motorcycle to go - it was surrounded by people on all sides, it couldn't have even swerved. It was awesome! It just hit him straight on. Of course the riders fell of the motorbike and the fan went down. But the cyclists were able to get through. Oh, it was brilliant. You might think I'm heartless but, dude, fans stay on the SIDES OF THE ROAD. If they're going to stand in the middle of the road during the tour, they deserve what they get.
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