Saturday 3 May 2008

Tour de Romandie

The Tour de Romandie had a stage finish in Zinal today, won by Italy's Francesco de Bonis. That they were still really racing by the time they passed our house was pretty extraordinary, as was the transformation of the village, with a full-blown media circus, massive lorries with mobile TV studios and enough helicopters filling the air that you might have thought a war had broken out. As a keen cyclist of a non-racing kind, my strongest impression was that there must have been more support cars (and certainly motorbikes) than there were cyclists. It reminded me of the US statistic that more miles are driven in cars carrying bikes than are ridden on them, which I reckon is nearly as silly as driving to a gym to pedal an exercise bike.