Now, I’m not disparaging, but many fans of the sport who visit this site may think that the Tour de France starts for us journalists on the ground, perhaps a day before the race begins. And I’d fully understand if you thought that way. But the truth is, we’re here on the ground from the Tuesday preceding the Grand Depart. Here, with more regional, national, international journalists, we get every detail in the build-up to that first pedal stroke that will take the peloton around France.
And for us, one of the major jobs in the build-up to the race involves dashing from one Holiday Inn to any given Travel Lodge, Ibis, or Ma ‘n’ Pa run B&B car park to harass team mechanics and media liaisons so we can bring you the latest Tour tech. It involves more than just snapping a few shots and asking a few questions — it also involves realizing you’re driving in a poorly marked bus lane, parking in unfeasibly small parking spaces (and maybe incurring insurance issues), sweet-talking members of team staff into revealing secrets and making sure you place the team bikes in a position so the wind doesn’t blow them over. It’s all very technical!
And over the past few days, that’s precisely what we’ve done (and more). We’ve hit the hotel car parks and have the bikes or at least some of them.
In this video we take a look at a selection of bikes that took our fancy, there’s not one, but two bikes that have paint schemes inspired by famous artists, Matisse and Mondrian, a very new bike for an ex-World Champion, and a fleet of bikes that should tick all the boxes for both the flatlands of the North and the spikey roads of the Pyrenees and Alps that the peloton will tackle later in the race.
So, please hit that play button and check out the selection of bikes that we thought needed highlighting at this year’s race. Stay tuned for more tech coverage from the Grand Boucle. We even have a tech video involving a mangled pizza box, some rough maths and a union worker! Yeah, I know, that’s piqued your interest!
Cheers, and Vive la Tour
Dave