La Grande Boucle! (Otherwise known as the Tour de France)

This past Saturday Lyon was visited by the Tour de France, commonly referred to here as La Grande Boucle. It had been 10 years since the Tour last made a stop here, and this time marked its 15th passage to Lyon since the first Tour in 1903. This year actually marked the 100th Tour de France, which they cleverly put in to their logo using the "e" in France to mark le 100e which is 100th. You might be wondering how it's the 100th Tour given that it started in 1903 and it is currently 2013. I certainly was! The reason is that there was no Tour (understandably) during the world wars.

Saturday was the 14th stage out of 21 and it was a pretty toasty day for anyone spending the day outside, let alone cycling at high speeds for several hours. The day started out for the competitors in Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule nearly 200km away from Lyon and arrived here just past 4:30pm local time. 

We'd been waiting for about an hour and a half prior to that to ensure a good vantage point and to catch the passing of the caravan. I really knew nothing about the caravan before Saturday but it's basically an entourage of sponsor cars honking, playing music and giving away free stuff. Everyone went wild running to grab whatever was thrown their way, it reminded me of the Pride parade! My favourite car/float had a stationary bicycle on top of it with a guy cycling in the air, it was pretty cool.

We set ourselves up in Croix Rousse on la Montée des Esses to have a decent chance at really seeing the competitors climb the hill instead of just whipping past us on a flat stretch (thanks to a hot tip from my mom courtesy of the cycling-savvy John Perreault). The map above shows the winding strip they had to ascend and James and I were nestled nicely in between the two loops at the bottom overlooking the first bend from the ridge above. We brought ourselves a little picnic and a couple beers and soaked up some soleil while waiting for the big moment.

Once the last of the caravan drove past you could feel the excitement start to grow, and then the sound of cheers floated up from further down the route. Before we knew it we saw the leader charging up the hill and I'm shouting "Allez! Allez!" with the rest of the crowd. The guy in second place wasn't too far behind, and then the peloton came up from behind. After another few minutes the pack from the back came through as well and just like that, we'd seen the Tour de France!

Because I knew my photos wouldn't do justice to what we were seeing, I took a video to capture the insanity. Allez-y!