Eneco Tour stage 4

Today’s crowd put yesterday’s to shame in terms of size but definitely not with enthusiasm. It seemed like all of Essen showed up since it was a holiday and yesterday’s stage winner, Zdenek Stybar, lives in town with his girlfriend. Despite the numbers, the crowd only showed signs of life for Stybar, chanting, “Go, Styby, go!” and were otherwise pretty sedate.

UCI president Pat McQuaid was at today’s departure.

The first riders to sign on today included Team Sky’s Bernie Eisel (center) and Matthew Hayman (right).

Canadian Guillaume Boivin.

Laurens De Vreese received a glass bowl of flowers with a glass plaque in the center for holding onto the black combativity jersey for another day. Unfortunately, this is probably one of the last photos of his flowers and plaque. Seconds after he had mounted his bike to ride back to his bus, gingerly balancing his unnecessarily delicate prize, a Vacansoleil rider accidentally bumped into De Vreese and it tumbled out of his hand, smashing into a dozen pieces. Oops. The poor Vacansoleil rider looked so guilt stricken.

Left: Belarusian Yauheni Hutarovich.

Stijn Vandenbergh.

Fellow Canadian Hugo Houle.

Julian Kern.

Svein Tuft.

Assan Bazayev may be the most soft spoken rider in the peloton.

Marcel Kittel came over and talked with us before signing autographs.

I do my best to ask for autographs, but what I love the most is getting to talk with my favorite cyclists. It’s absolutely worth getting up at an ungodly hour to catch a bus and 2 trains to arrive at the start when I get to say good morning to Svein Tuft, Taylor Phinney, Tyler Farrar, and Ramunas Navardouskus and, more importantly, they often say good morning to me first!

Today Maciej Bodnar asked me if I was at the Tour de France and when I said yes, he said he had remembered me. Later on, Philipe Gilbert signed my flag and when I told him I saw him in this year’s Tour, he looked at me and said, “I know, I remember you!” It’s pretty crazy that the current world champion recognizes me as easily as I recognize him. I’m still pretty dumbfounded and humbled that I’ve made such an impression on so many riders!

The rain started to come down pretty quickly with several dozen riders yet to sign in, so I got a few more autographs and then retired my flag for the day.

It was too crowded to see the actual start of the race but we caught the last dozen or so riders making their way to the start in the final minutes. Below: Maxime Monfort.

Alessandro Petacchi.

Francois Parisien took his time adjusting his brakes. When he eventually rode off, I cheered like crazy for him and he responded with the biggest smile.

Maarten Tjallingii and Maxim Iglinskiy.

Nick Nuyens.

The rain had more or less let up by the start time.

After about 19 kilometers, the peloton completed a lap around Essen. A 4 man breakaway (Pieter Jacobs of Topsport Vlaanderen, Ioannis Tamouridis of Euskaltel, Pim Ligthart of Vacansoleil, and Staf Scheirlinckx of Accent Jobs) had close to a 5 minute advantage over the peloton.

FDJ led the peloton with race leader Arnaud Demare in 5th position.

Left to right: Daniele Bennati talking with a Lotto Belisol rider, 2012 Eneco Tour winner Lars Boom, Danilo Hondo and Andre Greipel both smiling, and Bob Jungels.

Today I collected a whopping 23 signatures from: #2 Theo Bos, #11 Philippe Gilbert, #22 Sylvain Chavanel, #33 Matti Breschel, #46 Gabriel Rasch, #47 Chris Sutton, #50 David Lopez, #55 Boy Van Poppel, #82 Assan Bazayev, #85 Evan Huffman, #107 Alex Rasmussen, #111 Marcel Kittel, #114 John Debenkolb, #115 Tom Dumoulin, #122 Winner Anacona, #126 Ariel Richeze, #149 Maciej Bodnar, #158 Francisco Ventoso, #161 Yauheni Hutarovich, #171 Ruben Perez, #177 Romain Sicard, #181 Arnaud Demare, and #201 Danilo Napolitano.

UPDATE! To see the photo Francois Parisien took of Fien and I with my flags, go back to the Eneco Tour team presentation post. I’ve also added several photos that the official race photographer has taken over the first 3 stages of various riders signing autographs for us, so visit the posts for Eneco Tour stages 1, 2, and 3 to see them! You’ll immediately know which photos are new because they all have an obvious Eneco Tour border.