Sunday 12 July
Another beautiful sunny and warm day. The plan today was to watch the Tour de France stage on the Col du Tourmalet. We got on the road soon after 08:30 and after topping up water bottles at Saint Marie de Campan, started up the 18km climb to the top of the Col du Tourmalet. As expected it was very crowded with people riding and walking up as well as people, cars, and camper vans parked on the road side.
After the Tour caravanne came through throwing out all the goodies from the sponsors, a couple of the red official cars pulled up at the summit and out stepped Bernard Hinault, Bernard Thévenet, and the current Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme. A small monument to former Tour de France director Jacques Goddet has recently (since I was last here in 2006) been placed at the summit and Hinault, Prudhomme, and Thévenet were there to lay flowers at the monument. Hinault ignored the crowds, some of whom were trying to get his attention, but by contrast Christian Prudhomme seemed very friendly and approachable, and spoke with a few of the spectators before being driven away.
When the race arrived about half an hour later Filippo Pozzato got over the summit first closely followed by Perrick Fedrigo. A few minutes later the chase group arrived which were the riders that Pozzato and Fedrigo had left behind about 10km earlier. The main bunch containing Armstrong, Contador, Evans, the Schlek brothers, etc were about 5 minutes further back. The last rider over the top was around 45 minutes behind the Pozzato and Fedrigo.
After the Fin du Course went through we rode most of the way down the other side to Barèges and watched the last 20 km of the race on television at a café. The stage was won by Fedrigo who out-sprinted Pozzato by about half a bike length. The main bunch were about 30 seconds behind.
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