On Sunday we took ourselves, along with 300,000 other Parisians, into the centre of town to witness the final Stage of the Tour de France.
After having cycled 3,500km over the last 3 or so weeks, the riders still find the time to compete on the final stage which is a 160km stage, involving 80km to get into Paris, followed by 8 laps of a 10km course around the streets of central Paris.
We dragged ourselves up out of bed early to join a big bunch of other Australians staking out a prime position on the side of the road about 500m from the finish line. We arrived at 10:30am, however the cyclists were not to arrive untill 4:30 or so. In true Australian tradition, we cracked open our first beer at around 11am, and proceeded to drink our way until the cyclists arrived, engaging in witty conversation with our new found Australian friends.
Our early arrival with sheer numbers and multitude of Australian flags hanging up along the fence however, did not perturb a few locals who arrived quite late to the festivities from wanting to fill even the tiniest piece of personal space between any of us. One particularly large gentleman who tried to use his ample stomach to wedge his way into our space, was greeted with scowls by a couple of other Australians and a small agrument ensued. It was quickly mediated by the local constabulary, who found in the favour of the Australians. (Owing only to the earlyness of our arrival.) This gentleman, despite this setback in losing round 1,and more notably his prime position on the fence that he felt was rightfully his, (due to the rotund nature of the aforementioned stomach) decided he would take up a spot right in the middle of our group, much to our annoyance. In order to combat this and hopefully cause as much grief to him as possible, loud conversations were had, in both English & French straight across this man with the hope he would feel uncomfortable enough to leave. Sure enough, with the persistance of 30mins of conversations going backward and forward across him, he packed up stumps and left. He however was not the only infiltrator to our little patch of Australia on Rue de Rivoli that afternoon, as we had a few other people trying to encroach on our little space of fence that we wished to defend with honour and dignity.
About 4:30 the cyclists arrived for their first of 8 laps and quickly a small group of 8 riders took the lead putting a 30sec gap on the main bunch. However, there was a sustained pace on the front of the bunch from Team Columbia who wanted their man Mark Cavendish to pick up his 6th stage victory of the Tour. The gap was slowly closing as each lap came through, and by the
last lap, Team Columbia had everything working great having already swollowed up the bunch of 8. As they came past us for the last time 500m out (in photo on the right) they had their man George Hincapie on the front with Aussie Mark Renshaw following in 2nd and their main man Mark Cavendish in 3rd. Right on his wheel though was green jersey holder Thor Hushvold who although was winning the green jersey did not have a stage victory to his name. Aussie Mark Renshaw lead out Cavendish beautifully with 250m to go and Cavendish won the stage easily with Renshaw coming in 2nd.
Overall winner of 'Le Tour' was Spain's Alberto Contador (pictured here in the Yellow Jersey)
After the festivities were over as far as the cycling was concerned, we retired with our big group of Aussies to the closest watering hole for a couple of quiet post Tour beverages.
(Thor Hushvold) - Green Jersey Winner
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