Day 8

Crusey day today (an Aussie term for an easy ride). We did 32 miles, 30 of it on the course today. The last interim sprint point was an up hill sprint of about 3-4% grade. It would prove to be a bit of a stinger for the pros, but not too bad. The final 10 km of the race today will be FAST. We were tooling along at 23 mph without needing to put in a ton of effort; the pros will be cooking along at about 30-35 mph and this is before the final sprint. To make the final 10 km even more interesting, there is a ton of road furniture on the route and several chicanes. Road furniture are fixed objects in the road, like roundabouts, small speed bumps, fixed sign posts before/after the roundabouts and various other objects and barriers. We took all the elements at speed with a smaller group of 8-10 riders; pretty fun. Along the way, I was thinking to myself that in a few spots there were a sufficient number of hidden surprises that an accident would surely happen.

Well, it did. At about 8 km to go, a Gerolsteiner rider came blitzing around the roundabout clockwise. As he tried to rejoin the traffic which went around the roundabout counterclockwise, he came across the middle too soon. In the middle of the road, only 1 car width from the roundabout was a concrete circular fixture with a metal sign secured by a 3" thick metal pole about 2 feet high. The rider hit it dead on. Both the rider and the bike launched in the air. He went about 2 meters high, the bike about 3. The bike was flung high enough, several other riders passed under the bike as it spun through the air. The rider fortunately landed on his ass. Anyplace else and I am sure the injury would have been race ending. On the replay, they show the team support personnel dragging the bike back to the support vehicle. It was literally snapped in 2; held together by only the brake and shifter cables. What an amazing sight. The rider was up and walking around, limping quite a bit. Not sure whether he finished or the state of his general condition, but it was an impressive crash. Cavendish, Team Columbia, won his 4th stage today. He gapped Robbie McEwen big time with 200 meters to go. He had clear separation and then a group of 6 trailing him. I was 50 m from the finish. Damn, these boys are fast.

Only unpleasant experience of the day was the crowd. The Euros are very pushy and impatient. The crowd at the finish was big. People simply needed to take there time and it all would clear. Not good enough. The folks were shoving people, diving there shoulders between older couples try to manage the crowd and did not care one wisp about who they were hurting. Several older women's faces showed they were clearly distressed, near the point of breaking down. One jack ass, shoved me hard to make a one person advance in a huge crowd. I fell to the left an was able to brace myself with a near by pole. At the same time, he shoved on older woman to my right into other people separating her from her husband. She was falling and I had support. I helped her up with my right hand, grabbed the jack ass by the neck from behind with my left and pulled him behind me. I ushered the older woman up to her husband and turned to face the jack ass. He was about my age, with a punk ass look and a prissy looking earring in his left ear. In my best French, I said "If you don’t chill out, I'll drop you right here." My right fist was up and I guess I looked a little fierce. I think he understood my French. Several people clapped and shouted something French; I think it was positive.