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| Dave | profile | all galleries >> France & The Tour de France 2012 >> The Tour de France >> TdF Stage 17: Peyresourde and Peyragudes | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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The next day brought light rain as we departed from the village of Ste. Marie de Campan. Once again, I ended up off the back because I stopped to take pictures. But this time was worth it. In the 1913 Tour, early star Eugene Christophe was leading by 18 minutes as he descended the Col du Aspin toward this small village. But then . . . his fork broke and he was forced to walk over 6 miles down to the village in search of the blacksmith to repair his bike. But it wasn’t that easy . . . for in this era riders had no team cars, no support at all. If your bike broke you had to fix it yourself. So Christophe sought out the village smithy of Monsieur Lecomte. Lecomte told him how to do the repair, but race judges still penalized Christophe because a 7-year-old boy helped stoke the bellows. On this day, guide Dan told us the very smithy where this happened was just down the hill from the village, so I naturally headed down there as the rest of the pack headed up the Col du Aspin. It gave me the chills to stand in front of the very building where this legendary incident had happened, now marked by a plaque. The atmosphere—foggy, drizzling, and with me all alone on the road—just added to the feeling. So onward . . . I did get over the Col du Aspin, caught up with at least some of the rest of the group, and then up the Peyresourde to Peyregudes, the giant ski resort where today’s stage would finish. Once again Trek Travel had rented out a whole restaurant, set up tens, and big screen TV’s for us and the travelers in several of their other tours. We once again got to watch the race caravan come by, then the riders, with Valverde charging past us first to take the win a kilometer up the road, for we were standing directly under the “red kite”—the giant banner that marks the last kilometer to the line. Once again we had to wait to descend—this time even longer since the entire race caravan left first from this dead end mountaintop. But eventually we got down the other side of the mountain, once again descending through the clouds, to find out bus in Bagneres-de-Luchon. |
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