Le Tour de France is the most important cycling event in the world. I'm not a big fan of cycling, but I always find myself following the Tour. I like reading about it in the papers and knowing the team names and all, but I think watching it on TV is tiresome. All one gets to see is the back of the cyclists, and the camera is always oscillating, giving me motion-sickness.
This year I got to go the the finish stage in Paris. I wanted to see how it looks in real life. Besides, the French are crazy about cycling, so I wanted to see the crowd and their behavior.
I got there a couple of hours before the planned arrival of the riders. The peloton set off at the Bois de Boulogne, at the West of Paris, and then would circle the Parc des Tuileries, along the Avenue des Champs Elysées and Rue de Rivoli, between the Musée du Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. I was standing somewhere in the Rue de Rivoli under an inclement sun. The riders were late, so I ended up waiting about three hours before they arrived. To get a really good place, though, one must arrive very early in the morning.
I found that there is absolutely no relation between watching the Tour on TV and seeing it in real life. I think the difference is even bigger than that between watching football in the TV or going to the stadium.
For one, the speed these guys reach is amazing. They go *fast*. You already know they go fast from reading the average speed of a race on the paper, and yeah, it looks fast (sort of) on TV. But you don't really know how fast a bicycle can go until you see Lance Armstrong leading the peloton , really straining himself, zip by with one hundred cyclists behind trying to catch him and take the glory.
And the final stage is supposed to be largely ceremonial. Yeah, right.
Also, the crowd is a spectacle by itself. I met people from the US, England, France and Russia, and those were just the ones standing besides me. The place was packed, and the first time the peloton passed by everybody went nuts.
Photographic Technical Note. Trying to photograph the Tour in Paris was a difficult experience for me. The light was extremely bright, causing very high contrast. It was hot -close to 30C (~95F), and I had to stand in direct sunlight for several hours. My lenses and my camera were burning hot. And if, from the pictures below, you think that Paris' streets are white, you'd be mistaken. They're black, but there was so much light that they came out completely white.
All pictures taken with a Nikon F80 and either the 70-210mm f/4 AF or the 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6 AFG Nikkor lenses, Ilford HP5+ film. Printed on Ilford paper, then scanned with HP4100C. All digital processing done was to improve contrast and unsharp mask on Paint Shop Pro.
The 70-210mm lens proved too short, even when I was on the sidewalk and the cyclist zoomed by in the middle of the street. Many of the following pictures are cropped, some significantly.
Part One: The Crowd
It was hot, the wait was long, and the sun was merciless.
Some people there were real hard-core fans...
...and some were there just for the show.
On to Part II: The Pre-show
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Copyright (c) 2001 Miguel Bazdresch