Tour de France pt.3

Yesterday's Tour de France prologue in Rotterdam was absolutely fantastic. I was feeling very flat and a bit sick with a cold at the start of the day, but am so glad I still went along as it was undoubtedly one of the best sporting events I've ever been to (definitely up there with the Sydney Olympics and Melbourne Commonwealth Games).

The day started with two train trips over 1.5 hours from Beverwijk to Rotterdam, arriving at the start of Le Tour at about 11am. I got off at Rotterdam Centraal Station and was very impressed by the city's organisation for an event where they were expecting up to million spectators. Yellow signposts marked out the walking route every 50 metres with estimated walking time, making it very easy for tourists to navigate their way to the course.

I travelled to the event by myself as Sandra and the kids, along with our Dutch friends were staying back for the 2nd birthday of their son Paul.

After making it to the first point along the course, I decided to walk along the 9km route initially with the aim of finding the best vantage point with a little shade as the weather was already very warm and humid. However, after a 5km walk to the start, it was clear that here was the best place to be as behind the start line were all of the team buses with mechanics working on the bikes and the occasional glimpse of a rider checking out the course.

Unfortunately, some of the team buses were completely out of the public view such as Lance Armstrong's Team Radioshack. However, it was surprising how close spectators were allowed to get to most of the other buses parked close to the barriers. While it was very cool to check out the behind-the-scenes set-up of the big names like Garman, Rabobank (hard to see only because of the huge numbers of Dutch followers), Astana and Saxobank, I was particularly keen to see the new Swiss team BMC Racing - mainly because their lead rider is Australia's Cadel Evans. By about 12.30pm the weather had turned from very hot to bucketing rain (though still quite humid), so an added advantage of following BMC was that they were parked under a bridge which offered a little protection from the elements. After waiting for about an hour and talking with a few other Aussies who similarly had donned their national flag, we caught sight of Cadel. As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, it was absolutely wonderful that he saw a bunch of Aussies and came over to sign autographs (see pics in post #2 below). Before now I had always watched the tour from home into the early hours of the Australian morning supporting a rider or two, but not a team. Now, I'll be cheering on the boys from BMC who I got to see a fair bit of over the space of 2-3 hours around the start area.

It was surprising how quickly three hours disappeared, and just after 2pm the official parade started with all of the sponsor's cars and floats blaring music and giving out freebies along the course. An hour later, the riders were allowed out on the course for training, though with the 198 riders all riding individually in time trials during the prologue, the top ranked riders were not out as they were not due to race until 7.20pm in the case of Cadel, or 7.30pm for Lance

Armstrong (2nd last pic in this post) and last year's winner Alberto Contador (last pic).

The leader's yellow jersey was claimed by Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara from Team Saxobank in a time of just 10 mins even. Englishman Mark Cavendish (3rd last pic) was sensational last year, but was down the rankings after the prologue. Armstrong came in fourth, ahead of Contador.

Cadel Evans finished 23rd - 39 seconds off the lead, and unfortunately lost one of his team mates Mathias Frank who crashed out and sustained an injury (not a good start for 'my' new team of BMC).

After a fantastic day out, I navigated my way to the nearest regional train station at Rotterdam Zuid and made the 1.5 hour trip back. When I arrived back at our Beverwijk 'home', it was great to see that the party that started a few hours earlier was still going (though the party boy had retired to bed at his grandparents). It was really nice to meet a few of Sofie and Daan's friends, even though I was completely exhausted from feeling sick with a cold and having walked at least 15kms around the Rotterdam course.

Earlier in the day, Sandra and the kids walked to the nearby market which the locals call by its original name 'the Black Market' because it's where all of the 'off the back of the truck' items used to be sold. Strangely, they all came back empty-handed which just goes to show that we're all starting to get pretty tired after so much travelling (surely they could have bought me a machine gun, rocket launcher or at least a dodgy DVD at the 'Black Market', though I think it's more the place nowadays for junkie electronics from China that you'll find at most markets around the world).

So, I wish my young friend Paul a very happy 2nd birthday. I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your party young man, and even though there's a bit of a language barrier, "Papa Lachie" (Lachie's dad) as he calls me ... wishes you a great year and hopes to see you a couple of years older in Australia some day.