Well here we go, the magic day is upon us. Day 1: airport pickups.
From 6am to 7pm our clients arrived in Paris today. The first thing to do was to get the bikes out of their travel boxes and get them built up for the next 2 weeks of riding around France. For those arriving early enough, a ride led by Ex-Pro Dave McKenzie was on the menu. After that we loaded most of our bags and all the bikes out the bus that left Paris late afternoon in order to get to the Alps tomorrow in time for us to ride the Alpe D’Huez. We are traveling by TGV, the world’s fastest train.
Once all the dirty work was out of the way it was down to the bar for a cold beer and to watch the Tour of TV. This is going to be a very interesting Tour by the looks of things, and one that will keep us on our toes until the last minute in Paris. Sadly the Tour lost Michael Rogers today after a crash, but there’s still a long way to go to Paris and many more dramas to come I’m sure.
Right, now it’s off for a our welcome dinner where we’ll all meet properly, get in some much needed food after a very long flight for most of our clients. Then it’s off to bed.
Tomorrow we will be in the Alps… our first “real” ride of the trip.
Today all the guides met up at the hotel in Paris and we got all the bikes and equipment ready for the trip. One of our clients Russ Poole is already here, so he got his bike set up and very kindly lent us a hand in our preparation work. Once the dirty stuff was out of the way we headed to the roads of Paris for a little ride… we did the 50km loop that we will be doing with the clients who all arrive tomorrow. A nice loop that takes you very quickly out of Paris and through a couple of small towns, it’s easy to forget the big city of Paris is just off to your right.
The ride ends along a nice bike path that runs along the Charles de Gaulles airport fence. As endless planes take-off and land you seem to ride along side them for a little longer than you would think.
If Levi is ever to win a Tour this is the year, but that said he always has ONE very bad day, if he can limit his losses on that day things could still go in his favor with a good couple time trials. Cadel Evans is the surest man for a podium in my mind (behind Viny Vinokourov). He’s a good climber and is good at time trials. He can take advantage of a situation and take the race by the horns when he needs to, as opposed to Levi who tends to wait for the race to unfold infront of him. While we are on the subject of Aussies frankly I don’t think Michael Rodgers has what it takes. He had a couple of good years, but… Valverde was full of surprises last year but hasn’t been quite the same this year… so, fully aware that my pick for the top 5 or 10 of this year’s Tour is highly likely to be way off, here goes nothing:
Alexandre Vinokourov
