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A Tour de France
I’ve just been glued to the “box” for the last 3 weeks watching the TDF,
because of the time difference here in Australia I have to record the stages
and watch in the mornings before I hear any results on the news. It’s on the
news a lot here as there are some many good Aussie riders including the very
unlucky Ritchie Porte who crashed out so badly and who Eileen and I and Dot
Fuller saw win the Tour down Under in Adelaide earlier this year.
It reminded me of when I first saw "Le
Tour’. It was back in 1960 along with Roy
Chittleborough and Bert Colllins. We flew
to Paris, stayed one night there and
took the train to Avignon where we
arrived fairly early in the morning. We
rode about 15-20 miles to await the
arrival of the riders. Within a few hours
there were thousands of people there.
This was quite a famous stage or should
I say infamous in that the 3 time world
pursuit champion Roger Riviere was
descending following the Italian Gaston
Nencini who was a great descender and
unfortunately crashed over the edge, broke his back and never raced again,
I believe he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
As you will see from the ‘photos of Roy and I and Bert that this was before
cyclists rode everywhere in Lycra racing gear, we only rode in cycling togs in
a race, we also had small panniers and mudguards on our bikes. People rarely
seem to go on touring holidays on bikes these days and in my view they are
missing out big time.
The ‘photo of Bert on his own is of him crossing the border into Italy from
France, no lycra and even no shirt “sacre bleu”.
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