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ZAP: ZAP'S (NOT A) TOUR DE FRANCE BLOG: PIT ROW PHOTO GALLERY
Zap
July 5, 2011
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There a few things more important to the French than cycling and one of them is definitely the lust for baguettes.
If you get to walk past these banners, you know you've made it! This is the entrance to the Village Depart where all the high & mighty and well connected gather before each start. It's also the place to go for free crepes and coffee!
The latest in team mechanic footwear as modeled by a BMC wrench.
SRM is once again chasing the riders on the Tour and uploading many of their performance data via seatpost mounted transponders. Like most industry tag-alongs, SRM has a sweetly branded team car to call their own.
With a fleet of real Jaguars and re-badged Fords, the Sky team has one of the more impressive stables of team cars in the Tour. At last count there were 4 teams cars, the team bus, a main and minor bike bus, a camper for food preparation and two VIP vans.
You certainly would have a hard time mistaking the Euskaltel team cars for anything other than Euskaltel team cars.
Not to be outdone, Road Bike Action went big as usual and rented the latest in French auto technology.
Talk about having some excess coin, how about the Team Leopard food prep bus and support vehicle?
BTW, here's the SRM telemetry transponder that loads all the power info from various riders including Ivan Basso and Chris Horner. Horner's info has been going live on the SRM site, but apparently Johan is shutting it down as the Tour nears the mountains.
Print media may be dead, but that doesn't stop Andy Rihs (l) from relying on a newspaper to keep up on all the latest news.
A fan is a fan is a fan.
Prior to the start of stage three, a trio of Americans (l-r) Chris Horner, George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer decided to stay put in the shade instead of riding back to the team truck through the massive crowd. They were joined by Team BMC riders Marcus Bughardt and Cadel Evans, who like Andy Rihs still finds use out of print media.
Prior to to the start of a (very) rainy stage four, Oakley's Steve Blick kept busy applying their Hydrophobic solution to the riders' lenses which helps prevent water build-up and streaking. By chance, the last rider he serviced before the riders rolled out was Cadel Evans who was wearing Oakley Echelon Radar glasses - all the way to stage win!
Face masks, snorkels and swim fins weren't too out of place prior to the stage four start. It was pouring!
Similar to the dual language street signs found in Wales, the area in France that stage four raced though was Bretagne region and they have they speak both French and Gaelic. Now the big question is - will we get rain for stage five? |
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