Life Around Tour de France – Stage 5

This is a guest post by Mr.Q, a quizmaster by profession, a passionate traveller and hardcore Tour de France fan

Perpignan – the centre of the Universe!!

Salvadore Dali, the surrealistic painter from Italy whose works are psychedelic to some, once claimed that when he was traveling in the city he suddenly had a vision and everything became clear to him and that Perpignan was the centre of the whole universe!!

Today, it becomes the centre of the whole cycling universe. For the Tour de France with its army of cyclists are descending on this with a population of around 1.5 lac people.

The Stage 5 of the tour starts from Le Cap-d’Agde on the outskirts of Montpellier and ends at Perpignan. One of the sights which we had was the presence of two donkeys inside a special barricade with a poster that promise a ride for paying public on them as part of the exciting packages!! For someone who is from the sub-continent this Eco tourism offer by one of the major tour sponsor was an eye opener on what all people can get on to, if packaged properly!! (Personally I don’t think I know of anyone who would do this in India, even if paid to do so!!)

Though cycling is an individualistic sport, a multi stage road race like the Tour de France is a team sport too. Every team has 9 riders to start with and they have to develop strategies to keep themselves on par with their target for the tour. For some its to win the tour, but for most it is just to finish the tour after 23 days at Paris. In the mean time, there are different titles, stage wins, sprint points, team titles…etc. to grab.

Every team generally designates their top rider as the leader and he is protected by the rest for as long as they can. By riding in front the first rider takes the brunt of the wind and if a team rides properly their leader can pedal along in their wake with as less as 40% of the effort the rider in the front. The theory is the same as that of a flock of geese in flying formation. The riders who ride the front and protect the leaders are called “domestiques” and even do the job of supplying the riders upfront by dropping of from race pace, going to the back and fetching water bottles & energy snacks from the team car!!

Apart from the Yellow Jersey, which designates the Leader of the tour, the riders also fight for the Green Jersey – for the best Sprinter, the White Jersey – for the best Young rider on his Debut & the Orange Polka dotted Jersey – for the best Climber. All this apart, if you are watching the race now and find that there are several riders who are not wearing their team colours and are not in the 4 colours described here, like Alberto Contador for example, its because they are National Champions of their country and are allowed to wear their national colour in recognition of the fact!!

For the record – the Race course was 197 kms and Thomas Voeckler of France won the race with a break from the leaders group with 3.1km remaining. At the end of the race the individual standing at the top remains the same – Fabian Cancellera of Saxo Bank Team retains the Yellow Jersey & Lance Armstrong continues to be second with just a fraction of a second gap between him & the Yellow Jersey.

After the win, an emotional Voeckler said, “I was chasing victory for such a long time. It was only at the last 300m that I realized that I was winning this stage.” Voeckler has earlier worn the Yellow Jersey for 9 days in the 2004 tour when he was in the Yellow Jersey for 4 days.

The Race tomorrow heads into Spain and starts from the town of Gerone to Barcelona a distance of 181 km, and though there are 3 small climbs, the standings should not change much.

Au revoir…