Sorry, Demo! Spoiler boxes from here out.
Don’t want to say watching bike racing is dull, just one of many sports I’ve never really gotten into watching. But I would appreciate it if folks would explain what it is like to watch in person. Always seemed a little odd - seems like you would stake out a place, sit around for some time, and then in a pretty brief period of time WHOOSH!.
-How long does it take for the entire field to pass a specific point, say 1/3 of the way into a relatively flat stage?
-Can you watch them pass one point, then hop in a car and catch them again further in the same stage?
-Is the main interest being part of the group experience and interacting with other spectators?
I would have thought it would be very difficult to hop in a car and catch the race further up the course. Don’t forget that the roads being used by the race are closed off to normal traffic. So you are stuck where you are .
The official TDF site has a nice graphic display showing the progress of the current stage and the breakaway-peloton gap.
Last year I was working the evening shift and got to watch most of every race live. I’m experiencing withdrawal symptoms this year. At work, they have a nice TV in the break room hooked up to the Dish network–but they subscribe to Versus, dang it!
I like to read the live race reports on cyclingnews.com. It’s the race tactics that make it interesting for me.
My wife watches for the scenery, and I like it too. In fact, we’ve planned some vacations based on things we saw while watching bike racing.
As for being there and watching the race, I think that the people who do that go for the party. At the few big races I’ve been at (in Paris for the final day a few years ago, and in Atlanta for the Olympic time trial and road race in 96) I’ve really would have been out riding myself rather than watching the race. Though it is fun to see the big names in person.
I’ve only been to a couple of road races-- Tour prologue a couple of years ago and the start of a couple of the Spring classics while in Belgium. For the latter I just went and hung around the start with the crowds and the schwag vendors, and for the former the whole city was just a big party and you could watch each rider individually whip by on the route and bang your cowbell or whatever. We got some beer and hung around with the press mob behind the finish line and watched everyone come in and get photographed and manhandled, except for Lance who right after the line bunnyhopped the curb and fled directly to the team van or something, avoiding molestation-- it was pretty sweet. Took photos with the Devil-guy and ate terrible food and drank a lot and the trains to and from the city were a riot. It’s a party.
A lot of the people you see by the side of the road are either popping out from their houses or pubs close by as the peleton passes, or out to make it a day in the country with a wine picnic or to wave whatever splinter-nationalist flag for the international TV cameras. When the tour goes through your village it’s a big thing. Also before the racers go by there’s a huge procession of industry cars and floats and such giving out schwag. It’s an event.
That would be: “…they DON’T subscribe to Versus…”
Dang it!
No, no! I don’t think spoiler boxes are necessary, I just wasn’t thinking when I got the email notification. 
I find spoiler boxes annoying anyway, if you don’t want to know what happened before you see the race, don’t read the thread! 
I just finished watching it, I hope all the injured people are able to keep racing. I’m looking forward to the climbing stages coming up where we get to see Levi come out of the woodwork!
Are they going to decide who won last year’s race before this year’s is over?
The absence of a final verdict from the arbitration panel does seem overdue. Who knows what kind of games they’re playing on the timing of the announcement.
Today’s stage was rather boring for the most part. Things didn’t get interesting until the last 25k or so.
Some very nice scenery, though. What they should do on the coverage is get some Food Channel and History Channel types to give background coverage about great restaurants, foods, historic sites and events, architecture, of the places the cyclists are going through.
“I notice the leaders are picking up the pace as they pass through the Rue de Morgue on the way to the 10-kilometer mark.”
“Now, that statue in the middle of the roadway that the pelleton cyclists are trying to avoid commemorates the Crazy Weekend of August 9, 1604, when roving bands of Lombards forced hundreds of Huguenots to wear wooden pants as a protest against the Diet of Worms.”
“Well, who wants to eat worms when there are so many better things in the area? If the pelleton would just turn left instead of going straight at the next traffic circle they’d soon arrive at Le Truffle Trouble Restaurant, where they have the most incredible selection of gruyere cheeses in the region. Incredible taste!”
When Phil retires, I nominate you to take his seat!
LOL Evil Captor! That would be the bomb!
Thank you. Thank you.
Really great finish to today’s Tour. I won’t say who won, but you never knew until the last second, and thirty seconds before the finish, it could have been any one of many riders. Tasty, tasty.
Also, some really great scenery among those twisty, scenic roads through the villages. It looked like on some of them, if you ran off the road, you were in somebody’s living room almost immediately.
Just finished watching this evening’s re-run. There was so much going on there at the end, I had to watch multiple replays to take it all in. Tomorrow is when we start separating the climbers from the sprinters, I think. I’m hoping that Big George can make a move.
I screamed at the end, thinking Hincapie was going to win, sadly he attacked too soon and got whooshed. Isn’t Cancellara a machine? I thought for sure he’d lose the maillot jaune today. I can’t wait for Saturday. Sadly I won’t be able to watch the Tour again until Monday. It’s going to hurt!
Some nasty crashes today. Kloden rode his tail off, but not in a good way! And Vinokourov, too. Do the injuries kill their teams’ hopes?
If you’re curious the best road races to watch in person are criteriums, where riders do laps around a course in an urban area. The first one I ever saw was in Boulder, CO in the '80s. It was crazy because they used neighborhood streets for 3/4 of the course, then everyone had to squeeze onto a bike path for the backstretch. Davis Phinney was involved in a pile-up at the transition, pulled his bike out, got on, cut and bleeding, and won the race! Pretty exciting, and if it’s a big enough course you can see how a peloton can reel in a breakaway at the last possible moment live, rather than watching it on TV (which is exciting to me, too).
I read some accounts of people going over to watch the TdF and there’s sort of a travelling carnival of all the sponsors that goes by for a while before the actual riders. So there’s a bit more than just the Whoosh.
I don’t know why, but I have no problem watching a four hour stage on the TV. I just can’t believe how those guys ride 100+ miles day after day.
:smack: like capybara’s
An ex-girlfriend of mine went on a package vacation where she got to ride the stage prior to the tour coming through. She did Alpe d’Huez and lived to tell the tale. She was totally jazzed when she showed up on some network coverage, and even got a photo with Miguel Indurain, his arm around her shoulder. Pretty cool.
(Hi, Patti!)