The other day my parents announced that they were going into town to watch the prologue of the Tour de France so I decided to join them. It is fantastic to have it in London. We got down there by about twelve and went to see what they had in the village in Hyde Park before wandering down to the course. It was not as packed as I thought it would have been - I mean I saw the footage of Trafalgar Square yesterday; it was packed. We positioned ourselves on the inside loop near the end of the Serpentine and waited. Then my dad tried to send me to get water and I made him save my exact spot because I'd worked out I could get some good shots and I wasn't giving it up.
After a while the cyclists started coming round the bend on their warm up...



Then the parade thing by the sponsors an' stuff...


Then more cyclists warming up, including David Miller and George Hincapie...


By the time the cyclists started the actual race more people had gathered, but still not as many as I thought would. Maybe they all gathered at the start and finish points because most of the time the crowd wasn't too deep on our side. It became harder to take photos since everyone ahead would lean out so you would have to lean out more or move your camera to compensate and by the time that was done there was limited time to postition the camera for a shot before the cyclist whizzed past. Also we were positioned just after a bend so anyone who was going fast was taking the line that took them right by our side but making it harder to take photos as they were too close. It was a good atmosphere though with people cheering every cyclist that went past.



In case you can't see the name on the car, the last picture above is Bradley Wiggins who only managed 4th place after high hopes of winning. I had developed a theory that when the commentators, we could hear over the speakers, were talking about someone, if and only if they set off then, they would then be the fifth rider round the bend. In other words it took them about five or six minutes to get to where we were standing. With this in mind I had a rough idea of when Wiggins would appear and kept my dad updated. He'd put his camera into sports mode about fifteen minutes before and worked out that it would take a succession of photos and one of them would be good. Wiggins came round the bend, my dad hit the button but the gap between the motorcycle and Wiggins meant the camera took about eight pictures in succession of the motorcycle then ran out of memory as well as battery. It was actually quite amusing. I ended up with 119 photos. However, for all that, Cancellara was still going fast and I only managed a blurred photo of his car...


It was an impressive race, absolutely brilliant to be right there to watch it and hear the commentary relating to events unfolding before you.
Bring on the rest of the tour!

End Results:

1 Fabian CANCELLARA 8'50.000''
2 Andréas KLÖDEN 9'03.000''
3 George HINCAPIE 9'13.000''
4 Bradley WIGGINS 9'13.000''
5 Vladimir GUSEV 9'15.000''

Labels: cycling, london, tour de france