Course au Soleil

I needed to get from Marseille to Nuernberg i.e. from crisp blue skies, warm sun, delicious food, wine, coastal mountains, and Mediterranean ocean to cold, flat, cloudy, smoky, schnitzel-land. (Okay, France is pretty smoky too.)



The saving grace was that I would be passing through Paris again, and the prologue of the first race of the cycling ProTour would be going on in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, the "village at the gates of Paris". Apparently its a very sporting town. There is a huge sports complex there, and my impression is lots of sporting events are centered here.

Lance Armstrong had announced a few weeks earlier that he would indeed be doing the Tour de France again, and that Paris-Nice would be part of his schedule. It's supposed to be a classic race, but interest in it had recently waned, as many of the biggest name cyclists had been skipping it. The announcement that Lance, and several other big name riders, would be participating was good news for the race.



By late Sunday morning I had wandered into Issy, having no idea what time or where the event might be. Before long I found some workers setting up the finish line, and heard a rumor that the race started at 1:00. It turned out the race started at 2:00, and I was quite cold after staking out a position near the start for 2 hours. I then proceeded to stay there for entirely too long. It was a time-trial event, which means each rider goes individually and is racing only against the clock. Not being able to understand the loud-speaker commentary in French very well, but just occasionally hearing the words Lance and/or Armstrong, really made me paranoid that if I left my spot I would miss him. I spent a couple more hours perfecting my timing with the camera.



When Lance still did not show up on the starting line, it occured to me he might go last or close to it. Not knowing how many riders there were or what time the event would end, I decided to wander around. It was a lot more fun, and I was able to shake off the hypothermia in no time.

Last year's Tour was the last event with Lance and U.S. Postal. I was able to find his new team's bus.



My timing was perfect.



I was able to capture this Deutscher Bob Exclusive Footage of Lance warming up. He was amazingly friendly to the mob that had gathered around him. People kept yelling "Lance" "Lance!" "Hey Lance.." in an effort to get him to look up for their pictures. When one guy yelled, "Come... on... Lance.." with an attitude meant to convey that Lance needed to be warming up better somehow, or faster, or something, Lance finally looked up, laughed and said something like "I'm going.. I'm going.. what do you want me to do here?"

Lance finished 140th in the stage.