As keen as I was to get to the sign in area, I had to make a quick stop to make first. The night before, I noticed Lotto-Belisol's team bus and cars parked in front of a hotel around the corner from me. Earlier in the season, the team gathered the names of about 1,000 fans and then randomly distributed those names on the jerseys of their cyclists. Fien, my Belgian accomplice who wasn't in Tours with me, has her name on the back pocket of Bart De Clercq. It looked like he was involved in one of yesterday's many crashes, so Fien texted me a message in Flemish (“I support you”) and I did a quick chalking for him in front of his team bus. Hopefully he saw it!
Even though I hadn't caught the start of a stage since Montpellier a week ago, when I turned up at the sign in area, my Dutch friends Kevin and Gerrie spotted me right away and invited me to take a tour of the podium. It's awfully efficient how it's designed: one of the long side walls of a truck opens up to transform into a roof and a floor which is where the podium goes. The hallway behind a thin wall which houses the sound system and storage leads to a mini kitchen where my friends and I enjoyed our morning tea out of the sun.
They also arranged a VIP bracelet for me! Unfortunately, it again went to waste since the VIP village was only open in the few hours leading up to the start. Going in would have meant missing out on a good spot for the sign in, so it wasn't a hard decision for me. Still, I appreciated their thoughtfulness!
While they got to work, I made myself at home.
The layout for the sign in today had an enormous space for the press and they took advantage of it. This meant that the cyclists were more or less blocked off from half of the fans, including me. But I've been more than fortunate with the interactions I've already had with the peloton, so I tried to focus on taking pictures and calling out to my favorite riders.
Cyrille Gautier was the first to sign in.
The cyclists from Europcar tend to sign in early, so David Veilleux rolled up with teammate Kevin Reza before long. Because of how the entrance was angled, my big Canadian flag and I were positioned right in Veilleux's line of sight so I just gave a quick, “Allez, David!” and his face switched to a big grin as he waved to me and biked to the podium. As he biked out, he turned in my direction before I even could shout anything and waved and smiled at me again.
Europcar captain and leader in the king of the mountains competition, Pierre Rolland.
The team leading the team competition receives a small award at the daily sign in so they typically show up together. Maybe Niki Terpstra forgot this or maybe he's just the lowest maintenance guy on the team and got sick of waiting on the team bus. Either way, he signed in and made himself comfortable on the little padded stools on stage while he waited for his 8 teammates to show up.
Gert Steegmans was the next from Omega Pharma-Quick Step to sign in. It took a fair while for the next batch of OP-QS guys to arrive and Steegmans, second from the right, seemed less patient than Terpstra.
Michal Kiatkowski signed in with the white jersey and Mark Cavendish wasn't far behind. When Cav was announced, the men around me split equally into boos and cheers. Obviously, the fact that the Tour's judges have forgiven Cav for his role in Tom Veelers' stage 10 crash and that he's already had urine thrown on him hadn't satisfied some of the spectators.
The team finally assembled, they received their little gift bags and teddy bears. They seemed to be having a good time up there as they were all laughing and talking. At least one of them threw his bear into the fans and Terpstra started to do a dance like he was going to break out into the Harlem Shake.
Despite the controversy (or perhaps because of it), the media formed a scrum when Cav began to sign autographs. I figured he'd just sign a couple of things and turn around rather than try to press his way through the photographers but he happily proved me wrong and signed my flag.
I greeted about half of the riders I was hoping to see: Maciej Bodnar, Sergey Lagutin, Jens Voigt, most of Garmin (no autographs today, though), several riders from Belkin and Lotto-Belisol, and Marcus Burghardt. Since Fien wasn't here today, Marcus didn't come over but I was pretty happy that he clearly recognized me and waved at me a few times.
The riders made their way to the start and killed time by fidgeting with their bikes and socializing. Below: Christophe Riblon, Andy Talansky, Andre Greipel, Cadel Evans, Ramunas Navardauskas, and Dan Martin.
A few riders doubled back towards the sign in to grab last minute snacks. Most of the fans had abandoned their spots here in favor of getting closer to the start. This let me saunter up to the few hungry riders and get my flag signed by Juan Jose Lobato (whose king of the mountain flowers I held after the first stage), Daniele Bennati, and Andre Greipel. I asked Lobato in Spanish for his signature, got Bennati's attention by calling out to him in Italian, and complimented Greipel on his win the other day. Greipel is a really serious looking guy as you may have noticed in yesterday's post but once I mentioned his stage win, he melted into a full face smile.
Waiting for the start, left to right: Cyrille Gautier, Lars-Petter Nordhaug, Roberto Ferrari, Andy Talansky, Andre Greipel, and Sylvain Chavanel.
Delighted with my new autographs, I moved closer to the sitting peloton just as I saw Svein Tuft park next to his Orica GreenEdge teammates. It had been too chaotic to get his attention at the sign in, so I gave it a try now and calmly called, “Hey, Svein.” He turned to politely wave but once he actually saw me, he suddenly smiled and waved enthusiastically. I waved the team cap he had given me and he gave a nod of recognition. I don't know if he had noticed me earlier after all, or if his teammates had given him a heads up (“That Canadian woman is out there again!”), or if Robbie McEwen had mentioned me to him after our drive (“So this woman from Canada randomly got in the team car with me yesterday…”), but I definitely got the feeling Svein had been expecting me!
I was pretty much at the back of everyone, so it was just the latecomers who I saw head on at this point. David Veilleux was one of them so I started to lift my arm to wave when he spotted me and changed direction to come my way. We took a couple of photos together and chatted quickly, neither of which was as easy as it could have been given the physical metal barrier and the linguistic barrier between us, but it was great nonetheless.
And then they were off for another day of riding their bikes around France, 5 hours at a time. I love it.
