Stage Five

Yvon and I positioned ourselves under the oldest tree in Alsace, a 700-year old lime tree in the picturesque town of Bergheim, when the peloton flew past us on its way to Colmar 45 miles from the finish.  We were sandwiched between a tent of the elderly from a nearby nursing home, many sitting in wheelchairs, and a rambunctious bunch of ten-year old boys who had been a terror recklessly flying after everything the caravan tossed.  And directly in front of us was an older woman who clapped vociferously and shouted out a staccato “Bravo” during the entire passage as if she’d just witnessed a stunning performance by Nureyev.  It was another ultimate Tour experience in the thick of all these devotees who’d had a pleasant afternoon of conviviality waiting over two hours for this moment, just as we had.

During our wait under the shade of the historic tree, Yvon and I perused the many pages of Tour coverage in the local newspaper.  It included a full-page story on the 88-year old Roger Hassenforder, a local who had been a Tour star in the ‘50s and ran a restaurant named for him that was on today’s route.  He won eight stages during his career and spent four days in Yellow in his first Tour in 1953.  He was a prankster and was known as “the joker in the pack.”  He became a friend of Johnny Hallyday and would go hunting with him.  The article mentioned Hallyday by first name only, reflecting what a national icon he is, unlike any other.  Hassenforder was on today’s podium to present Alaphilippe with another Yellow Jersey, holding on to it for at least one more day before the much-anticipated sixth stage to La Planche des Belle Filles.

Shortly after the passing of the caravan began Yvon and I escaped from the shade to a less densely packed area out of concern for our safety from the rambunctious boys, who were like sharks attacking raw, bloodied meat.  There were a few more sponsors than in Belgium, but their numbers were still truncated, taking a mere twenty minutes to pass, half of what it has been in the past, and still no madeleines.  I at least nabbed a 100-calorie cookie from the new King of the Mountain sponsor, the supermarket chain E. Leclerc, replacing Carrefour, which had sponsored it the past five or six years, succeeding the supermarket Champion when I first came to The Tour.  

I also came up with another sunscreen for Janina and then scored big when Yvon and I drove to the finish, where there were sponsors galore passing out goodies and got a couple more.  Her car will be well decorated with these purple ovals.  We also picked up a polka dot jersey and cap from an E. Leclerc van parked just beyond the finish without too many people around.  Quite a few people had donned the jersey and hat along the finishing stretch.

We parked a couple miles from the finish and biked into the throngs and found a spot at the 150-meter to go marker with a vantage of the Giant Screen, arriving 45 minutes before the peloton charged past us with Sagan a convincing winner by a full bike length, silencing his doubters.  Yesterday’s winner, Viviani, who is second to Sagan in the Green Jersey competition and had beaten Sagan in the intermediate sprint, was nowhere to be seen, evidently spent by the preceding pair of Category Two climbs. 

It was a genuine relief and pleasure not to be in any rush after the stage, as I would have been had I been on my bike with the need to be getting down the road.  I could be patient as we inched along pushing our bikes through the thick mob that had gathered in front of the podium.  Nor did it matter that the bottleneck continued past the 22 teams buses, each with a throng of fans.  

At the end of the road where all the buses were parked was a roundabout with a replica of the Statue of Liberty, as its designer was from Colmar.  The roundabout had been appropriated by a cluster of Yellow Vesters, demanding liberty themselves from the corporatization of France.

Earlier in the day we stopped by a replica of the Eiffel Tower, the other of the world’s most recognized objects, that the peloton will pass on the next day’s stage just a mile from where I’m staying with Yvon and Pierrette.  We could stroll a block over from their home to watch the Stage, but we will head into the Vosges and take in it on one of the day’s four Category One climbs on this monster of a stage.

This will be the first test of who is to be taken seriously.  Many questions will be answered—if Bernal is stronger than his teammate Thomas, if Pinot is the Frenchman to watch rather than Bardet, if Alaphilippe has graduated to genuine contender and can keep the Yellow Jersey, if Valverde’s shedding of three kilos has made him a force to be reckoned with, if Fuglsang can continue his strong season, if Yates and Uran and Van Garderen and Aru have it, if Nibali can win it again and if there are any surprise candidates.  After watching them battle it out on one of the early climbs, Yvon and I will race down the mountain on our bikes to his van and rush back home to watch the great climax on La Planche de Belles Filles, a five-mile climb with grades up to twenty per cent.  

This is the fourth time it has been included in The Tour, the first in 2012, the Wiggins year.  Froome won the stage, but Wiggins maintained his hold on Yellow.  In each of the three times it has been on The Tour route, whoever has been in Yellow after the stage, has gone on to win The Tour, Froome and Nibali the other times.  It will be fascinating to see if this holds true this year.  It promises to be Another Great Day at The Tour after my first experience of watching the peloton pass twice in the same day.  

Stage Four

A stage doesn’t go by that I don’t shake my head in wonder at some completely surprising, imaginative bike decoration that fully validates all the effort and the many miles I ride of The Tour route in search of such manifestations of Tour fervor. Today I was at once dumbfounded and exalted by a “Library Bike,” maybe my greatest discovery yet.  

Libraries and bike touring have long gone hand-in-hand for me. They are twin passions/obsessions, so I couldn’t help but be absolutely thrilled by the brilliant idea of inserting books in a bike wheel to promote what may be mankind’s two noblest pursuits—reading and riding. I’m only sorry I didn’t have time to drop in on the library responsible for this stroke of inspiration.

I can rarely even spare a few moments to pause and appreciate the effort and detail that goes into the many mini-shrines on the route, just slipping past them with a hurried glance.  I’m always pleased though when I do take the time, as I’m invariably amazed by what I’ll notice with a little extra gazing such as the mini-bikes on these window sills.

I am continually uttering “thank you, thank you” for one creation after another.

It was nice to see the Stanislas statue in the heart of Nancy, today’s Ville Arrivée, draped in Yellow, which it hadn’t been when I reconnoitered Nancy a month ago. The peloton bypassed it by a couple miles, as it stuck to the outer periphery of this sprawling city, but I swung by it after I was blocked from continuing on the course at the three-kilometer to go mark when it dropped down onto a superhighway for a kilometer-and-a-half. Away from the roads the peloton would grace, all was still as if this bustling metropolis  had been evacuated with all its inhabitants drawn to The Tour route.

As I merged with the mobs at the finish I was presented with two bottles of cold Vittel water from the first of many sponsors passing out product.  I gave the Giant Screen a brief look and saw that a three-rider breakaway was barely a minute ahead.  I couldn’t stick around and watch the stage to its conclusion as I was meeting Yvon for our annual Tour rendezvous at a bar in a town ten miles away.  It would be the first of four stages we would see together, our most ever, as the next three stages are all within range of his hometown of Mulhouse. 

I wouldn’t be doing much riding in the days to come, but I’d be having a quintessential French Tour experience such as I’ve never had, going to the roadside at some stage mid-point to watch all the festivities and then driving to watch the finish.  Yvon is a master at planning.  He has everything figured out to the minute, just as he did our meeting point at a town 100 miles from Mulhouse.

I arrived at the bar where he awaited me a minute before our appointed time of 4:45.  I had hoped to be earlier, but it took me more than half an hour to extricate myself from Nancy with all The Tour road closures.  The wind had slowed the peloton, so rather than finishing at five, it didn’t reach Nancy until 5:30.  This was one of the flattest stages of The Tour so ended in the anticipated sprint. Alaphilippe in the Yellow Jersey was among those leading out his Italian teammate Elia Viviani.  And he was among those rewarded with a hearty hug when Viviani took another win for the Belgian Deceuninck-Quickstop team, the year’s winningest team.  It was Viviani’s long-awaited first Tour stage win.  He’s among the handful of current riders who have won a stage in all three Grand Tours.

Yvon and I had a pleasant two-hour drive through the Vosges Mountains on highways that I’d never ridden, as they were forbidden to bicyclists.  The scenery was as captivating and pleasurable as if I were astride the bike, despite being confined to a car on a four-lane separated highway.   As we listened to the radio, when the news came on at the top and the bottom of the hour, the lead story was The Tour de France.  It didn’t hurt that a Frenchman was in Yellow, with Alaphilippe holding on to it for a second day.  It’s the first time the French have had Yellow in five years.

Yvon’s partner, Pierrette, had a fine dinner awaiting us when we arrived at eight.  We ate on their patio overlooking their garden where I could set up my tent, my preference for sleeping.  It was actually quieter than many of my campsites in the woods that are often near a road and are accompanied with chirping birds.

We pored over the day’s newspaper, which had four pages of Tour coverage, including detailed route information and road closures.  In two days Yvon and I will be part of the coverage, as he arranged for a newspaper reporter to come by the house for an interview, as he has often done in other parts of the country where we have rendezvoused for The Tour.  Our bicycling friendship is a human interest story no French newspaper can resist. We know we are fortunate to have discovered each other fifteen years ago at the Notre Dame des Cyclists cycling chapel near the Pyrenees.

Stage Three

In my sixteen years of following The Tour not once have I come upon the course marker crew in the act of mounting a marker. I haven’t had many chances, as rarely am I riding a full day ahead of the peloton on the course before the markers have been placed, just on occasion on a rest day. When I’ve had that opportunity I’ve been on the alert for a convergence of them for a photo and to let them know how much I appreciate their creativity in finding odd spots to place a market. They have brought me much pleasure.

This year’s route gave me two opportunities early on to catch them in action while I rode stages three and four a day ahead of the peloton. Yesterday it didn’t happen, but today I had that much-longed for moment as I come upon the first of the three vans and its two-man crew just as they were finishing a mounting. They were happy to be photographed and curious about me too, wondering how many kilometers I rode a day and where I was from and how many Tours I had done. Not as many as them, as they’d both been at it for twenty years.  

When I observed that the marker had a new logo this year they asked if I’d like one. They hardly needed to ask. For the first time I have a marker without the pair of snakebite punctures that the wire is threaded through to hold it in place. I almost asked them to autograph it, as I once did of Christian Vande Velde. This was as great a moment as if Eddie Merckx himself had made the presentation.

My day was also highlighted by managing to fall into the draft line of one of the women’s groups riding the route. I hung on for half an hour upping my speed from twelve miles per hour to fluctuating between sixteen and twenty. It felt good to be breezing along, but I hoped I wasn’t stressing my legs too much.  

There were a couple of guys amongst them, one over-sized at the back who provided an ideal wheel to sit on. They rode two abreast chattering away in French having a jolly good time, even stopping to take a photo with some farmers in the background. We were passed by another much more serious cadre of the female set.

Today’s biggest “Wow” came from a half-mile stretch up and over a hill of several hundred bikes a few feet apart facing the road. A community had made a concerted effort to round up all the stray bikes from miles around and give them a new life along The Tour route. It was a boggling spectacle, almost as spectacular as the terra cotta soldiers of Xian.

It was a nice variation on the usual impulse to pile them in a pyramid, though the pyramids, just like cairns of rocks, are always a welcome totem of homage giving the spirit a jolt.

Along with the regular signs of “Vive Le Tour” are expressions of “Merci” to the caravan or The Tour or a rider or a team.

Today one community gave an artfully designed blanket “Merci” to all.

Perhaps the most innovation decoration was one with flowers made from plastic bottles.

I arrived in the city of Bar-le-Duc, home of the Michaux father and son who put pedals of the bike, at four o’clock, just in time to find a bar for the finish of the stage. I thought there would be one near the monument to the Michaux’s at the town center, which the peloton would pass, but none of the several bars along the Main Street had a television. Nor did the one by the train station.  My search took me to the plaza in front of the Hotel de Ville.  A bar with seating in the plaza finally had what I was looking for, though I had to ask to have it turned on.  It took a couple of minutes to connect and when it did the French favorite Julian Alaphilippe was making an attack on the final of four short categorized climbs in the last twenty miles of the stage ten miles from the finish.  

With great anguish chiseled into his face he managed to hold off all the chasers and dashed up the final climb to the finish twenty seconds ahead of everyone else to claim his third career stage win after two last year and the Yellow Jersey for the first time in his career. He crossed the line punching the air harder than its ever been punched before according to the Cycling News.  He was so spent his soigneurs  had to hold him up when he got off his bike, but he still collapsed to the pavement, not even having the strength in his legs to remain upright with assistance.   Moments later as he was being interviewed he choked up when the interviewer asked him how it felt to wear the Yellow Jersey for the first time.

I had a little choking myself as I rode today, as I awoke to the news that Milos Stehlik, founder of Facets and my landlord for fifteen years, had succumbed to lung cancer.  I had been awaiting this outcome, as I knew he had accepted  hospice care a month ago.  When I let him know I was sorry I wasn’t back home to lend him help in any way he needed he said his wife Elizabeth was looking after him very well.  And he thanked me for all I had done for Facets and film.  

There wasn’t a more devoted advocate of cinema than Milos with the voluminous archive of films he had gathered for rental and his weekly commentaries on Chicago’s NPR station and serving on the board of governors of Telluride for years, including a stint as its president. This was the first Cannes he had missed in 31 years.  It left a hole not crossing paths with him and sharing a film.  Telluride will be even more empty without his presence and astute observations.  His film knowledge was second to none. Facets has been a large part of my life and led to many friendships, including that of Janina.  May it live on.

Stage Two

Merckx continued to be a strong presence with huge photographs of him mounted on buildings and smaller ones adorning poles along the eighteen-mile team time trial route through Brussels.

There seems to be a bottomless reservoir of stirring photos of Eddy capturing his intensity and charm.

The route also featured a symmetrical conglomeration of bikes designed by a genuine craftsman. Those with a sharp eye will notice that the course marker in the background has a new logo in two of its corners, the first change in over fifteen years. I wasn’t planning on adding any more this year to my collection, but now I must.

Rather than hanging around Brussels all day waiting for the time trial to commence at 2:30, I had a glorious day back biking in pastoral France where homage is paid to their Tour at every turn. I completed eighty miles of the next day’s stage as far as Reims, then started in on Stage Four, getting twenty miles down the course for my first century of The Tour, commemorating the centennial of the Yellow Jersey.  I ought to set a goal of one hundred miles every day, but that will be thwarted after Stage Four when I meet up with Yvon and spend a couple days with him in Mulhouse for the two stages in his backyard. 

I spent a little more time than anticipated on the bike as I couldn’t find a bar to watch any of the day’s action until I reached Reims shortly after it ended, just in time to watch the Jumbo-Visma team of yesterday's stage winner take the podium.  The Yellow Jersey inspired them to beat Ineos by twenty seconds. It was a remarkable performance by the Dutch team. All twenty-two teams were within two minutes of one another. A mere twelve seconds separated the second through eighth teams with the biggest surprise the French FDJ team of Thibout Pinot only losing 12 seconds to Ineos. Pinot may be a genuine threat.  Froome before he crashed out of the Dauphiné did comment that he  thought Pinot was the strongest climber there.  Three of the five French teams in The Race finished in the bottom four, as the French teams generally do.

The new course markers hadn’t been posted when I started riding at 7:30.  I kept waiting for the crew in three yellow vans that puts them up to catch up to me and start marking the way.  When I stopped for groceries at 9:30 I came out hoping to see that much-anticipated sight of course markers, but no such luck.   I had to continue to navigate on my own, going astray through one tricky town and missing a turn later adding several kilometers to my day.  

If I weren’t carrying such a load I could have latched on to several of the groups that passed me at a good clip that are riding the route a day ahead.  There are more than ever doing it. There were three groups of women and the same of men, each with support vehicles driving along with them.  The largest group of women with more than twenty-five I had ridden with last year and were maintaining a pace I could manage passed me while I was paused eating.

It wasn’t until 11:30 that the marking crew caught up to me and gave a friendly toot remembering me from years past.  With the way now marked it was as if a yellow carpet had been unfurled for me to follow.  Shortly after noon I saw the crew pulled over being diligent about having their lunch.  A little further I came to a cemetery, where I stopped for water and to have some lunch too, waiting until the crew returned to work.  They didn’t take the traditional hour-and-a-half break that most stores take, just thirty minutes.  One of the vans stopped and offered me a bottle of the official Vitel water.  

Later in the day another cyclist pulled up alongside me and called out, “Hey George.”  It was Ralph.  I knew he was in Brussels and that he intended to ride several stages, but our styles are so dramatically different, he on a carbon-fiber bike carrying just a small bag on a rod jutting out from his seat post and staying at hotels that he has already booked, it is next to impossible to coordinate meeting up.  We managed it three years ago at his only other Tour appearance at the first stage finish at Omaha Beach won by Mark Cavendish.  He’s meant to return for a more substantial dose, but hasn’t managed to do it, thwarted one year when his bike was stolen in Strasbourg.

Today was his first genuine ride along The Tour route.  He asked if all the white campers with Tour course markers in their windows were official Tour vehicles, not realizing that fanatical followers often claim a spot along the road a day ahead of time.  He’s in for a big thrill tomorrow when he rides the final thirty miles of the stage over four categorized climbs that will be packed with fans. He plans to ride a couple more stages, but taking advantage of the train to reach them.

We both gloried in the unparalleled French countryside.  It was all the more wonderful after all my time in densely populated Belgium.  Riding through vast swaths of forest and fields of grains on rolling terrain that go unbroken to the horizon in every direction on roads with no traffic was like a sip of cool water on a hot day.  One is enveloped by peace and tranquility.  Climate change and all the other malevolent issues become a distant concern. 

Stage One

The theme of honoring Eddy Merckx wasn’t simply confined to Brussels, but was evident all along today’s route which made a 122-mile loop south of the city.  There were grand productions with props.

There were minor home-made tributes, whose makers were proud to have their picture taken with.  Some acknowledged other Belgian greats along with Merckx, such as Lucien Van Impe, the last Belgian winner of The Tour over thirty years ago and the recently retired Tom Boonen, a winner of the Green Jersey. 

The Belgium gendarmes let me ride until thirty minutes before the caravan was to pass. 

 I hadn’t quite reached the town of Charleroi, where I planned to peel off the route and head over to Binche, the Ville Départ for Stage Three, but I was close enough. I sat and finished off my breakfast of muesli and waffles  before starting in on my sandwiches as I awaited the caravan and what goodies it would have to offer

They were more meager than ever, not even any madeleines to supplement my caloric-intake. It has been in serious decline since it stopped giving out “L’Euipe” five or six years ago. Last year there was no official daily Tour newspaper that had always been packed with human interest stories on The Tour and the region it was passing through. I did gather a couple of cycling hats and refrigerator magnets and perhaps the chintziest item ever, a tiny packet of ketchup. I could at least use that on my final Belgium cheeseburger I was saving for lunch. There’d be no more bargain supermarket cheeseburgers after I crossed into France later in the day.  Janina will be happy to learn that I nabbed another of those purple fold-up screens for her car to keep the sun out.  We lost one last year in Utah when it flew out the window.  

Often when The Tour starts outside of France there isn’t a full complement of caravan vehicles. Usually it takes over half an hour for the caravan to pass. Today it took fifteen minutes, so there is hope for madeleines and more in France.

I and many others headed off immediately after the caravan passed, not wishing to wait some 90 minutes for the peloton to fly by. Binche was just fifteen miles away where I could watch the finish in a bar. Before seeking out a bar I stopped in at the tourist office to see if it had anything more to offer on The Tour than it did three weeks ago. It actually had better souvenirs than the caravan—a Yellow Tour pen, a button and an Eddy postcard.  

I had a choice of several bars clustered in the city center. The first one I peeked in had The Tour on and several crusty guys in rapt attention. The breakaway had long ago been caught and the teams of the sprinters were at the head of the pack riding with grim faces. I had ridden the last several kilometers of the stage a couple of times on the way to the campground I had stayed at, so it was very familiar, especially the grand cathedral a kilometer from the finish that provided a picturesque backdrop.

In the furious sprint to the finish Mike Teunissen of Holland nipped Peter Sagan in a photo finish that took several slo-mo replays to determine.  Teunissen will be in Yellow tomorrow, the first Dutch rider with that honor in thirty years. He was a surprise winner, as his role was to be the final lead-out man for Dylan Groenewegen, one of the day’s favorites, but he crashed a kilometer from the finish. 

I can sometimes spot Skippy at the finish, but not this time.  I had tracked him down the day before.  After a day of random riding around Brussels, previewing the time trial course and hanging out where the stage starts and finishes were being assembled and not crossing paths with him I dropped by a downtown bike shop where he had connections and within a couple of minutes he appeared after a day of making the rounds himself. He had spent some of it at The Tour headquarters, known as The Presence, and had a gallery of photos of many of the luminaries in attendance including Poulidor and Merck’s son Axel, in from the States, where he directs a successful team.

The bike shop was a classic, simply titled Cyclo, which it spelled out in bike parts. One of the mechanics had photos to share himself. He had encountered the CCC team out on a ride and was thrilled to have a photo with the Belgian Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet.

I thought Skippy might be celebrating his 25th Tour, but that doesn’t come for three more years, though he’s not sure if he’s going to make it as he said it gets harder and harder every year now that he’s into his 70s. “Sometimes I ask myself why I’m still doing this,” he said, though I know there is no stopping him. He’s already ridden the Giro and the Dauphiné and theTour de Suisse this year and will do the Vuelta as well after The Tour before returning to Australia, so there seems to be no stopping this fanatic.

Having finally caught up with Skippy I would have headed out of town and found a place to camp on the Stage One route but I had one more cycling event to attend—the annual talk by the Telegraph Cycling Podcast crew. Last year it was on the Rest Day in Annency. This year it was pre-Tour at a brew pub—the Brussels Beer Project. It was packed, standing room only, when I arrived at 7:30, just as it started. Richard, Lionel and François were seated at a table and during the next ninety minutes they were joined by fellow contributors Orla and Chiro and Jonathan Vaughters, director of Education First.  

I was delighted to see Vaughters as I wanted to ask him about Dr. Lim returning to his team as an advisor. He’d had a very acrimonious breakup with Vaughters in 2010 when he left his Garmin team to work for Armstrong and the Radio Shack team. Vaughters said he isn’t officially working for the team, just some of its riders. He said he respects Lim very much, but there are times he’d like to strangle him. One of the riders he’s working with, even attending team training camps with him, is Tejay Van Garderen, who is riding better than he has in years. Vaughters didn’t want to give Lim any credit. He was taking it all for himself, saying he’d provided a more relaxed environment for him at Education First, after years at the more demanding BMC team, and that he also told Van Garderen he didn’t need to race at as light a weight as BMC wanted, which was giving him more power and endurance.

With Van Garderen going as strong as he has there might be some concern that he would want to be team leader rather than Uran, but Vaughters said that isn’t an issue at all. He and Uran have become great friends. Vaughters spent two weeks in Colombia training with Uran and was emailing Vaughters every day saying what a cool guy Uran was. Richard interrupted to ask if that meant they were rooming together during The Tour. Vaughters isn’t so hands on to know the answer to that. 

After the program was over I hung around to ask Richard about an interview he’d recently had with two of the British women who are part of a women’s group riding The Tour route a day-ahead as a group of women did last year. He’d said there were only ten of them. I met up with such a group last year and there were 25 or 30. It turns out there is more than one group of women doing it this year.

I couldn’t linger too long as I had at least an hour of riding ahead of me to get out of the sprawl of Brussels to find a place to camp along The Route route. It was the first of my many rides in the days to come to near dark, always a great pleasure.

The Presentation of the Teams

With Saturday’s opening 121-mile stage beginning and ending in Brussels and Sunday’s eighteen-mile time trial taking place entirely within the city, the much-revered Yellow course markers are all over the place, especially in the city center where the peloton will follow a lengthy neutralized zone at a parade pace before the action begins.  Their route will take them down the narrow cobbled street that goes by the iconic peeing-boy statue, that still remains free of a Yellow garment.

The peloton will also pass through the Grand Place, three blocks from the statue, where the presentation of the teams was held.  It was already packed ninety minutes before the first team rolled up on the station at 5:30.  A large screen to the side of the plaza showed the eight-rider teams led by a boy in a Yellow Jersey riding through the throngs to reach the stage.  Their faces were all wreathed in broad smiles as if they were atop the podium at the end of a stage responding to the cheers along the way.

Each rider was introduced and then one or two per team was subjected to a brief interview by one of the two emcees.  It wasn’t until the sixth of the twenty-two teams, Dimension Data, that an interview was conducted in English.  Under ordinary circumstances that interviewee would have been Mark Cavendish, who hasn’t missed a Tour since 2007 and is second to Eddy Merckx in Tour stage wins with thirty, but Cavendish has been struggling and wasn’t selected by his team.  As Dimension Data approached the stage one of the announcers pointed out it was “sans Cavendish.”  The non-French or non-Dutch speaker on the South African-sponsored team that spoke a few words was the Norwegian Edvald Boassen Hagen, the team leader who has won three Tour stages in his career.  The announcer made some joke about him being an Eddy, that didn’t really work.

During lulls in the two-hour program between teams reaching the stage reporters roamed the crowd conducting interviews of their own.

Some used the stage as a backdrop while a team was being introduced.

A fan wearing a vintage Belgium jersey worn for the World Champships made an irresistible subject. 

Only one of the four Americans in The Race was given the mike on stage, Tejay Van Garderen on the Education First team.  Though he has twice finished fifth in The Tour and finished second in the recent Dauphiné, he will be riding in support of the Colombian Rigoberto Uran, who finished second in The Tour two years ago.  Despite the strength of the Colombian riders, with two other potential contenders, Nairo Quintana of Movistar and Egan Bernal of Ineos, there are only four Colombians in The Race.  They may have the most fanatic fans.  There were more Colombian flags in the crowd than all the others combined.  

France and Belgium have the most riders in the field with 34 and 21.  There is no contender among the Belgians, but the French may have thier best shot to win in years with Romain Bardet and Thibot Pinot, as Christopher Froome, Tom Doumilin and Primoz Roglic, who finished second through fourth last year, are absent due to injury or fatigue.  And last year’s winner, Geraint Thomas, is questionable, as he’s coming off an injury at the recent Tour de Suiss.  Van Garderen might be a surprise contender too.  He switched teams this year and his new coach, Dr Andrew Lim, who has worked with the Garmin and Radio Schack teams and a wide array of top cyclists and even George Bush,  is known for getting the best out of riders.  He may have resurrected Van Garderen with his second at the Dauphiné.  The announcer asked Van Garderen what he thought of Belgium.  He called it “the Mecca of cycling.”

Before the program began the large screen in the plaza showed highlights from Merckx’s career.  We were kept waiting until after the final team made its appearance, the defending champions Ineos, formerly Sky, for “His Royal Highness,” as he was introduced, to take the stage.  Many in the crowd were wearing caps with Eddy on the upturned bill.  He answered a few questions.  The only answer I could decipher was The Rolling Stones and I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. 

During the proceedings my loaded bike attracted a couple of admirers.  One was a representative of Giant bicycles who well knew my Trek 520.  He was in attendance as Giant is providing the bikes for the CCC Polish-sponsored team, whose director is the American Jim Ochowicz, formerly of BMC and the Postal Service team. The Giant rep was based out of California.  This was his first Tour and he was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm all round.

A Belgian touring cyclist wanted to know about my front rack.  It was just what he was looking for.  It is a Bruce Gordon and has served me for over twenty-five years. Gordon was a reknowned frame builder who took up the craft after dropping out of art school in Chicago and moving west. When we goggled him, his blog came up.  His last blog post in May said how much he missed France.  It didn’t mention he passed on a month later.  

My first order of business on reaching Brussels was to head to its downtown Decathlon store and buy a tire, replacing my rear tire as I do before each Tour.  It was worn thin but had gone nearly 3,000 miles without a flat.  I also replaced m

my chain, conducting the operation in the shade of a plaza across from the mobbed Decathlon.  

I kept waiting to hear my name shouted out with the Australian accent of fellow long-time Tour follower Skippy, but we managed to avoid each other in this large metropolis.  Ordinarily we find one another in short order at the Grand Départ.  I did cross paths with Tour director Christian Prudhomme and two of the last three French Tour winners Bernard Hinault and Bernard Thévenet. The third, Laurent Fignon, is at rest in Père Lachaise. They stopped in at the Tour information center facing the Fan Zone.  I was talking to a Belgian who asked me to take a picture of him in front of a photo of Eddy Merckx with his director, who was this guy’s uncle.  

Van Garderen certainly had it right—Belgium is Cycling’s Mecca.

Stavelot, Belgium

When I stopped at the tourist office in Stavelot to ask the way to the monument to Eddy Merckx at the summit of a climb outside the town, the woman at the desk said to simply follow the road beside the office. It would cross a river and then begin a steep climb of one kilometer where I would find what I was looking for. 

 Then she showed me a picture of it. A plaque on the corner of the monument listed his major triumphs—three World Championships, five wins of The Tour and the Giro, seven of Milan-San Remo and five of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. There was no mention though of the equally, if not more, prestigious Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders, which he also won multiple times.

I was back in the French half of Belgium and it didn’t care to acknowledge the great races in the Flemish portion of the country, where winning its one-day Tour of Flanders stands as a greater accomplishment to many Flandrians than winning The Tour de France. If the monument had been in Flanders it might have ignored the Liège race, since it takes place in French-speaking Belgium.  

Residents of the two halves of the country find curious ways of dissing each other. At some point in the not too distant past trains in one half of the country stopped making announcements in the language of the other half of the country, so the other followed suit.  There is sentiment on both sides of having their own countries. It would almost be more logical for Flanders to be absorbed by the Dutch and the French Belgians meld into France, since both halves are so akin to these neighbors, but that is a concept few would cotton to.

I fed the presumed prejudices of the woman at the tourist office and said, “The roads they make the riders ride in those races in Flanders are straight out of medieval times, rocky cobbled paths through fields.  It’s like going back to the Middle Ages. They live like peasants over there.”  

“We like it better over here,” she replied with a smile.

The Merckx monument was my second of the day honoring a former Belgian World Champion.  I had passed another to Stan Ockers, who won the 1955 title, twelve years before Merckx’s first.  He died in a track competition in Antwerp in 1956.  His monument was erected in 1957 at the summit of the mile-long, eleven-per cent Côte des Forges, where he had made his move to win Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1955.  The climb actually levels off at his monument ten miles from Liège. His statue is noteworthy as being the first in Belgium erected of a cyclist.  Until then that honor had been reserved for statesmen.

Between the Ockers and Merckx monuments I went through Rouchamps, which had named a small plaza on its outskirts by a cluster of apartment buildings for Philippe Gilbert, the last of 18 Belgians to have won the World Championship in 2012.  The 18 Belgians account for 26 World Championships, the most of any country.  Italy is next with 18, then France with 8.  Gilbert grew up in a nearby town. There was little likelihood of seeing him out training as has taken up residence in the tax haven of Monaco, as have many cyclists.  He’s still racing, but wasn’t selected by his Belgian team to ride in this year’s Tour even though he’s a former stage winner and quite popular in Belgium.

A few days earlier I sought out another monument to a Belgian World Champion, Jean-Pierre Monseré, a mile outside the town of Lille on the road to Gierle.  It was at the spot where he was hit by a car and died during a race at the age of 22 in 1971 while World Champion.  He won the World Championships between two of Merckx’s wins and could have become a household name if his career hadn’t  ended prematurely. He was one of the youngest of World Champions, along with Lance Armstrong. 

The day after my venture off on bike paths that took my through a lake and up into the trees I passed through Borgloon, which had its own special attraction for cyclists—an eighteen-mile loop that linked seven works of art in the countryside by artists from around the world.  None were by Andy Goldsworthy, who has an array of works around Digne-les-Baines on the fringe of the Alps that Janina and I visited two years ago, that may have inspired the idea for this project that came along in 2012, well after Goldsworthy’s array of cairns and rebuilt shepherd’s huts.  Not being a weekend there were only a handful of others seeking them out, including a group of a dozen women on Vespas being led by a guide.

Among the works is a one hundred foot high see-through church by the Belgian architectural duo Gijssels Van Vaerenbergh entitled “Reading Between the Lines.”  Perched on a rise surrounded by agricultural land of grains, it could only be reached by foot or bike on a narrow path.

The Scottish artist Aeneas Wilder contributed a wooden cylinder of slats that provides a magnificent 360 degree view of the landscape.  Wilder intends the experience of walking the interior circumference to transport one to being in a monastery. 

Tucked in a narrow lane of plane trees surrounded by fields of grain were four tree tents by the Dutch artist Dré Wapenaar, who specializes in such structures. They can accommodate up to four and go for 70 euros a night with a fifteen euro breakfast optional.

Among the pleasures of biking around a land where the bicycle is revered are the totems erected to honor them.  Besides the many bikes in people’s yards with a basket of flowers on the handlebars and over the rear wheel are striking renditions of the bike.  Over-sized bikes are popular.  One in front of an auto-mechanic’s garage outside of Liège almost looked rideable.  It did have a chain and the tires were inflated.

This in a roundabout was meant simply to be regarded, perhaps on bent knee.

A community went to more than a little effort to erect an arch of bikes and fill a field with a peloton closing in on it.

These gave me a small taste of what awaits me along The Tour route in the days to come, where such installations and tributes will abound. I am always eager to see what new creations people have dreamed up. It is a relief that The Tour is finally upon me.  My five-weeks of training, riding some 2,500 miles around France and Belgium, has gone well.  The legs are ready.  I can gauge them by how they responded to the two and three mile climbs of the Ardennes the past couple of days.  It’s the first long climbs they have been subjected to in a couple of weeks.  I have been able to power up them with vigor.  The legs are no longer fatigued at day’s end.  They want to keep going, as they will get to until nine or ten when The Tour commences.

Tomorrow it’s back to Brussels for the presentation of the teams, always a grand affair in an outdoor space attended by thousands, who will fill a plaza and line the city streets along a fenced off route that the teams will ride to reach the stage and then the streets that they will continue on for a spell afterwards, cheered all the way.  I am glad to have scouted it all out, including a campground eight miles from the city center.  No worries.