| 08/02/2001 | Racing News for 8/2/01+ NEWS
ARMSTRONG HITS NEW YORK: New York City and the U.S. Postal Service welcomed three-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong today (Thursday) as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani declared it Lance Armstrong Day in the Big Apple. Armstrong was honored in a ceremony on the steps of Manhattan's main post office branch. Giuliani said: “The people of New York love you and admire you, and respect your achievements as an athlete and a role model for taking on a deadly disease and dealing with it and thriving”, said Giuliani, who is battling prostate cancer himself.
Armstrong spoke: “I want to give my heartfelt thanks to the Postal Service. They were the only team that would support me in 1998 when no one would. They were there for me when I was coming back. I can't thank them enough.
Armstrong spent part of Thursday on a bicycle, taking an impromptu ride through Central Park, before heading to Washington on Friday to meet with President Bush. Armstrong also threw the first ball at the New York Yankees baseball game against the Texas Rangers.
VERBRUGGHE RENEWS: Belgian cyclist Rik Verbrugghe, recent Tour stage winner has extended his contract with his team, Lotto-Adecco until the year 2003. The 27-year old rider had victories this year at Criterium International, Fleche Wallone, the Giro d’Italia Prologue and the longest stage of the Tour de France.
ITALIAN TRADE RUMORS: After a disappointing Tour de France for the Italians, the market has begun to fill with rumors. One of the most prominent is Dario Frigo, who will face at least a six-month suspension, but when he return to the saddle in 2002 will probably ride for Lampre Daikin. Lamore, which has managed to retain Gilberto Simoni could count on Frigo to be their man for the shorter stage races, since he has won Paris-Nice, the Tour of Romandie and was second at the Tour de Suisse, taking the place of Belgian Vandenbroucke or Swiss Camenzind. Davide Rebellin will ride for a new German Team called Gerolsteiner. Rebellin will go to Germany with a few teammates from Liquigas, which is looking to fill the gap left by Rebellin’s departure by signing Danilo Di Luca, although this last one is in the cross eyes of Team Saeco.
Michele Bartoli is also in the market and Alexia Alluminio is interested, although he seems interested in riding for Fassa Bortolo, where he would take Frigo’s place. Fassa Bartolo will continue with Casagrande for their man for the Giro. Team Mercatone Uno looks to be extending their life for another year, confirming a team built around Marco Pantani, although the definitive decision will be made after the Vuelta and will depend on Pantani ’s performance at the race.
+ MY TOUR DIARY
Dear Friends,
This is my humble attempt to share with you some of my experiences at the Tour de France. I hope to be able to transmit a little bit of the special feeling of being able to witness such a grand event. Also, feel free to visit www.infociclismo.com to browse my Tour Photo Album. Special thanks go to Denis, Rob and Darren for making this an unforgettable experience.
PART II: Aix Les Thermes.
After what seemed like the blink of an eye, I woke up at 7:15 AM local time and headed out together with Denis, who had so graciously not only found me a place to sleep, but also took me to the finish of today's stage. The press and related Tour personnel are require to drive to the finish of the race through an alternate route to avoid any problems with the waves of spectators that will be present on the course. As some of you may remember, last year a boy was killed by a car from the Tour caravan and the organization is enforcing this new rule. We did get to climb the last 11 km category 1 climb and it is amazing how steep it is. The weather this morning is nasty at the finish, with rain, and temperatures in the mid 50's. But the prospects are good, with the stage starting under very favorable conditions and finishing under cloudy skies. Actually by the time the stage is finished, the weather is beautiful on top of Ax-les-Thermes.
Today I spent the day walking around the press compound. One of the really cool things about being at the Tour is the amount of active and retired riders that you get to see. For instance, last night at dinner I saw Frederic Moncassin, then later on that night at the Aquarel party, I saw Eros Poli. I also saw previous Tour winners Eddy Merckx, Laurent Fignon & Pedro Delgado. Today I ran into Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett and was able to talk to them for a little while. Sherwen was gracious enough to show me their booth. If you go to the photo section in www.infociclismo.com, you’ll be able to see the two huge two-story trailers where the TV and Radio narrators work…amazing! Their setup is really small. They have a TV monitor in front of them with the footage from France TV and they are
connected to the Online Tour narratives that are also posted at www.letour.fr by means of an intranet. In their headphones, they listen
simultaneously to each other’s voices and to Radio Tour. They each also have a laptop, with a database, where they keep rider information at their fingertips. They also have all sorts of data books to supplement the computerized database. It turns out that Liggett and Sherwen are not only transmitting Live to the USA, but their narratives are also heard in South Africa and Australia. The US coverage is regularly interrupted with TV commercials, when this happens, Liggett and Sherwen pause for exactly one second and then they continue to narrate for the folks that are watching uninterrupted coverage. Interestingly enough, France TV shows the entire
Tour stage, uninterrupted, without commercials. It was sort of funny, because while watching the French coverage, I kept expecting the
commercials, but discovered that the only commercials are the rider’s jerseys. When I ran into Phil, he was kind enough to spend a few minutes with me and he took me to the huge van where the OLN (the cable channel that showed the Tour in the US) staff was quartered in. The thing looked like NASA’s Mission Control and that is where the staff spends their day.
Today I also got the chance to hang out around the finish area. The best way to describe it is as a maze of cables and trucks, where one has to walk carefully in order not to trip. I kept thinking that if I stumbled on a cable, I could take out the Dutch television Tour coverage, so I was very careful. Most important activities related to the Tour are all mounted on trailers, which are then all neatly folded in for transportation. For instance, the booth were the TV commentators operate is basically made up to of two trailers. The trailers are parked one next to the other length-wise and made into a long, long room. Then the top of both trailers pops up to create a two-story setup.
Tour Radio is another interesting concept. The voice of the Tour Director, Jean Marie Leblanc, is the voice that is mostly heard on the radio. Typically transmissions through Radio Tour are brief, from 5 to 10 seconds and they are the way that everyone finds out when a rider has crashed, or has flat tire, or what time gap there is when there is a break. Tour radio is heard by all personnel that is involved in the actual operations on the race course like the judges, the team cars, as well as the TV & Radio commentators.
Another interesting job is that of Bob and Rob. Yes, Bob and Rob! They are the ones that are responsible for the up-to-the minute updates at www.letour.fr. Bob does the French version and Rob Arnold, of RIDE Cycling Review fame does the English version. If you were to see where these two spend 4-6 hours daily doing this work, you would become claustrophobic. The work is intense and it takes a lot of attention to detail. They have access to every bit of information available at the Tour. First of all, they each have two small monitors, which they can switch back and forth between the cameras located at Moto 1, 2 and 3 or the helicopter feed. They also have a larger monitor with the French TV coverage. On the audio part, they are listening to the French narrative from French TV, as well as Radio Tour. As part of their work, not only are they responsible to prepare the newsflashes that we see at the official website, but also work on a wrap up of the stage to be delivered by the end of the day. It is a crazy job, trying to keep up with the time gaps, who's on a break, who crashed and if they are ok, while inserting interesting snippets in-between the actual race narrative. It is easy to take the information for granted since it is so readily available. The Tour is a technological marvel and even though sometimes there are hiccups, they are insignificant when you consider the size of the endeavor. Another cool thing that cycling fans have not experienced before, is being able to follow the Tour on a cell phone. Yes! This year the Tour has added a WAP internet site for those people that want to access up-to-the minute Tour information on their WAP compatible mobile phones. Denis was kind enough to show me the site in his Nokia phone and there you could not only see the stage’s profile and the day’s results, but also the same newsflashes that appear
online. Amazing that so much information can be seen in such a relatively small screen.
Today, Colombian Felix Cardenas (Kelme-Costa Blanca) won the the first of three stages in the Pyrenees. Cardenas dedicated his win to his newborn son and to the Otxoa family of his teammate and former TDF stage winner Javier Otxoa who continues to recover from the accident that claimed the life of his brother Ricardo. In what has become a pattern, Armstrong and Ullrich marked each other throughout most of the day until the ascent to Ax-les-Thermes. With around 9 kms to go, Ullrich put in his most serious attack of the Tour so far, one which could only be matched by yesterday's surprise 4th place in the TT, Roberto Laiseka (ESK) and Armstrong. With Laiseka eventually moving forward to claim second place, Armstrong rode Ullrich's wheel until about 1.5 km to the line and then surged forward to
claim 3rd place in the stage gaining 25 seconds over Ullrich in the process. Frenchman Francois Simon (BJR) rode valiantly and even though he lost more than 4 minutes today to Armstrong, he held on to the Yellow Jersey.
Today was the only day that I had finish line clearance, so I was able to get really close to Cardenas and Simon to take their photos. I also caught Armstrong and Ullrich coming in.
Tomorrow: PART III
+ RACING
02.08.2001 15.08.2001 Volta a Portugal POR 2.3 MEL
STAGE 1:
1. Constantino Zaballa (ESP-Kelme) 4h.22.13
2. Jorge Silva (POR-P.Ravessa) at 17
3. Pedro Martins (POR-Gresco-Tavira) at 31
4. Juan C. Vicario (ESP-Festina) at 47
5. David Clinger (USA-Festina) at 1.12
6. Candido Barbosa (POR-ibanesto.com) at 1.13
7. Salvatore Commesso (ITA-Saeco) at 1.15
8. David Muñoz (ESP-Kelme) s.t.
9. Mario Traversoni (ITA-LA-Pecol) s.t.
10. Stefano Venturini (ITA-Barbot) s.t.
G.C.
1. Constantino Zaballa 4h.21.55
2. Jorge Silva at 27
3. Pedro Martins at 38
4. Juan C. Vicario at 1.04
5. David Clinger at 1.40
6. Candido Barbosa at 1.41
7. Salvatore Commesso at 1.43
8. David Muñoz at 1.43
9. Mario Traversoni s.t.
10. Stefano Venturini s.t.www.infociclismo.com
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