Stage 16 of the Tour de France 2009

In the summer of 2009 my friend and I went to Italy on holiday. During our holiday we would visit two stages of the Tour de France. We were staying at a fellow cycling fan's place. On the 21st of July we had to get up really early to leave from her place, because we wanted to be on time in the Alps for the first stage (first for us, but 16th for the riders, from Martigny to Bourg-St-Maurice). We went to a little town called Pré St. Didier. We watched the first part of the race on TV in this little bar, where we had lunch. After lunch we were ready to go to our spot near the course. We went halfway up the mountain from were we could see the Mont Blanc, and the riders coming up our mountain. My friend and I were really surprised how fast the riders actually go even in the mountains (it was the first race we have ever watched live). So we both missed the opportunity to take a picture of the attackers. We felt a little stupid, as you can imagine, but we had more luck with the peloton.
We could see the team Astana was leading the peloton, which was divided in different groups. In the first picture you can see the chasing-group (actually the remaining part of the peloton). The first rider, from Astana, threw an empty bottle away. I had to jump away to make sure the bottle didn't hit me in the head... It was just crazy to see two men almost fight over a bottle .
A few minutes later the first group behind the peloton arrived at the place we were standing. Filippo Pozzato, Alessandro Ballan and Damiano Cunego were leading the group behind the peloton. Because we were standing on a curve of a mountain road, we could see the riders for a while longer then we would have had on a straight road. I managed to take a decent picture of Denis Menchov.
After the last group passed us, we started walking down the mountain to get back to the little bar from the beginning and watch the rest of the stage. When we reached a curve below the one we were watching the race from, a French police officer stopped us. He told us that we had to wait because there was still one rider who had to pass our spot. We were a bit scared by the police officer, who was really mean and angry, so we immediately stopped and waited in order to avoid getting in trouble. It turned out that Kenny van Hummel was the last rider from that stage (and almost every mountain stage of that Tour until he crashed and had to abandon the race). After he passed, we moved on and got back to the little bar. We watched the last part of the stage and we saw Jens Voigt's terrible fall. It was very surreal to see him falling like that and being so badly hurt when he just passed us a few minutes ago. After the riders had finished the stage, we left the bar and got in the car to get back to our hostel. We had to get there early so we could start getting ready for the next day, when we would see the start of the Stage 17 of the 2009 Tour de France.

To be continued.....


Written by Marleen