Tour de France chronicle: The view from the Alps

The best part about watching an ascent finish on the hardest climb of the Tour de France is leaving it. The gendarmes opened the barriers, and let loose a lead-out Vittel van and me in a Peugeot. Together, we bombed down 1,750 meters with no oncoming traffic. As we dipped farther down, the Alps gradually filled up our windshields until mountains were all we could see if we lifted our eyes from the road. They were blue. So was the sky, with flakes of haze. We had little time to appreciate it as we screamed into the serenity.

The worst part is trying to follow what’s happening in the race. When the riders were 60 kilometers from the line, I advanced as far as I could in the media area, and ended up somewhere where TV vans were packed together and cables were thrown about with little caution. I don’t know how far a dark green press pass is supposed to take me, but I ended up 15 meters in front of the finish line, where there was nobody. Suddenly, a parade of French products broke out.

There was sausage ...

Dorito-like substances ...

Horse chariots I guess ...

Sugar syrup to mix into your drink ...

And a bunch of other things you shouldn’t eat on a regular basis. The French love sweets. Candy companies take up roughly 99 percent of the country’s advertising space. The host of the caravane bounced around the start line hocking products -- ah oui oui, Haribo a le meilleur gout! -- to giddy, clapping fans wearing free yellow hats. If you’re still wondering how the French stay thin, stop it. It’s ennui, and always has been. They’re indifferent to filling their skin sacks with anything like fat or muscle from exercise, and that’s why no one does sallow-sexy like the French.

And ennui did set in. On the final climb -- the toughest of the Tour according to Podium Cafe -- the awful emcee finally gave way to a play-by-play announcer who did a good job of getting everyone excited about a bike race they couldn’t see. Whenever he announced the advancing group of Vincenzo Nibali, Alejandro Valverde, Bauke Mollema and Frenchman Thibaut Pinot, he would over-enunciate Pinot’s name in an even cadence -- Tee-Bo-Pee-No -- and the crowd would bang the boards. Louder and louder they banged, as the group quickly proved it would soon be overtaking the head of the course. One man across the road would anticipate the PA’s call and make sure to bang his section of the barrier louder than the rest for Pinot.

Then Nibali broke away and the enthusiasm for Pinot ceased. They stopped banging the boards, though there were fewer than six kilometers to go to the finish. Few looked dejected, mind you. The man across from me did for a moment, but he ultimately agreed with the crowd that urging on Pinot at that point would be a silly thing to do. He leaned over the barrier and stuck out his iPhone like the rest of us.

He probably caught Nibali’s exhausted roll into the line ...

And a lot of shots that looked like this ...

After the race, fans had easy access to riders as the rolled from the line to team buses just past barriers that weren’t particularly well guarded. I nearly walked into an Astana rider gliding back to his bus while I tried to take a good picture of Czech-garbed fans supporting Leopold Konig.

The scene reminded me that the Tour de France is essentially the world’s largest and best rec sports event. And I don’t say that to demean the effort of the athletes or the team and event organizers, which would be unforgivable. But the feel of attending the Tour de France is jovial and informal. As soon as riders have caught their breath and finished answering questions, they have quick access to their teammates, fans and family, and it’s a small skip to imagine them cracking beers to unwind right there in the road.

College football is my favorite sport, but it’s an incredible undertaking to attend a game when there are just 12 per season, and you have to shell out for $100 tickets and buy concessions at varying levels of expensive depending on where you are. It necessarily puts a lot of pressure on you to have a good experience.

The Tour de France is less oppressive, and so perhaps that accounts in part, too, for why fans are less likely to throw their hats or kick things if the rider they traveled lengthy distances to watch fails to secure what would have been a monumental win. It’s not that they don’t care, they just remember to enjoy the view.

On to Grenoble.