AubrysInFrance: July 13 – The Tour de France Comes to Lyon

We continue to find new and unique things to experience here in Lyon. Admittedly this next one was a very short experience, but it included an up-close glimpse of the one of the most famous athletic events in France – the Tour de France.

For those of you not familiar with this happening, the Tour de France is a bike race over about three weeks, around various parts of France. Each day is a separate leg, sometimes disconnected from each other, with the winner being the man who covers the entire course in the fastest time. The man with the fastest overall time during the race wears a yellow jersey and helmet. This year Chris Froome of Great Britain won three legs, and wore the yellow jersey for most of the last days of the race, and won the overall race going away.

While this sounds like a very individual sport, it is in fact done by corporate-sponsored teams, in which one man is selected to be the person who will be promoted as the team's candidate to win the race. The rest of the team members assist by setting the pace, by allowing the selected candidate to ‘draft’ behind them, and by doing everything in their power to help their man and hinder the opposing teams. The race’s last leg is into Paris, but traditionally, no real racing is done the last day, the riders simply hold their relative positions to the ceremonial finish line.

Looking Down the Course, Waiting for the Riders.

Support Vehicles with expensive bikes on top

This year the Tour covered 21 stages totaling over 3400 kilometers. On July 13^th, the 14^th stage covered 191 km and finished in Lyon. We went down to the route along the Rhone about 4PM, just in time to see the racers go by. We also saw the team support vehicles, each with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of spare bikes on top. David managed to take lots of pictures, a few of which give one an idea of the race, as everyone sped by at more than 30 miles an hour.