Today, I rode over to the finish of the Grande Boucle Feminine Internationale,
AKA, the Women's Tour de France. It's not an understatement that this
event is way more laid back than the (men's) Tour de France, and 
this experience had nothing in common with my attempt to watch the
final stage of the men's race, see 
http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~ilan/melun.txt

Recall that on that ride, police officials almost literally threw me
off the men's course an hour before the arrival of the publicity
caravan. In comparison, when I got to the barricade at the Porte
Dauphine, I asked the police woman if I could get through, which
seemed to surprise her, and she said that, of course, it would be OK
for me. This allowed me to get onto the race course, about 2 minutes
before the first rider was scheduled to start, and the first thing I
saw was the big 500 meters to go sign and I could have ridden even
closer to the finish, since no one was around. But when I saw the
fencing for the last straightaway, I rode to the other side and
quickly stopped to get my camera out so I could take a picture of Lido
dancer Cynthia Compain starting her ride. She was the first to go,
since she was the "Lanterne Rouge," that is, the last placed rider, at
almost 6 hours behind the race leader. She had about 5 cars and 2
motorcycles with her.  I was tempted to take pictures of the next
couple of riders since they started their ride completely alone.

I moved up to the starting area and was quite surprised at the
equipment choice of many of these early starters. In fact, most of
them did not have aero bars, a necessity except for pure hillclimbs or
in awful weather conditions, and this course was almost completely
flat, and it was also completely sunny and dry out. What made this
even more odd was the fact that these riders were sporting aero
wheels, helmets, and had the aero shoes covers on. I couldn't figure out
an elegant way to find out what could drive people to do this, so I
suppose that this will have to remain one of life's deep mysteries.

A less surprising feature of the race was the almost complete lack of
spectators. There were more people watching the Masters 35, Category
4/5 race at the Burlingame Criterium than there were at the finish of
the Grande Boucle Feminine. One reason might be the lack of
information about the finish, the race web site never even published
the location of the final stage. There were numerous people on the
French Usenet group fr. rec.sport.cyclisme trying to figure this out
without much success. I finally got the info two days ago when I saw
it posted on a big street sign for the sponsor Monoprix, the French
supermarket chain.

The other reason is the distaste which Parisians have for bicycle
racing or any other form of extended physical exertion. The "crowd"
this year was about the same size as the ones I observed at the two
previous editions of the race. My opinion was confirmed by the Anaeli
salesman I spoke to, and who had followed the entire race. He told me
that there had been many more spectators when a previous stage ended
in a tiny village of a few hundred inhabitants.

Anyway, the up side of all of this was that it led to a very low key
event and one could freely ride around the warmup area and watch the
riders preparing. There were the "radical" type women with bleached
hair and tatoos, but this fashion seemed to be on its way out.  I did
note one rather tender moment which brought out the unique nature of
women's racing: I saw the green jersey holder about to start off to
the starting blocks and as she did so, she gave a quick kiss to her
directeur sportif, her rather athletic build making the moment even
more touching. I was trying to imagine Zabel or McEwen kissing their
coach before the final on the Champs Elysees.

I rode by the Mantes la Ville-Lido team area and saw Cynthia Compain
after her race. She looked really big, and by this, I mean overweight
as compared to the other female racers. I had recalled seeing Joanne
Sommariba, the previous winner, two years earlier, and her legs were
extremely skinny with small but very well-defined muscles. I had seen
women with such skinny muscular legs before, Linda Jackson and Rebecca
Twigg, so this was the typical build of the very best female stage
racers. The sprinters have big legs and butts, but relatively skinny
upper bodies. I recall being in Colorado Springs in 1998 for four days
and hanging out watching all the women's track racing, then driving
directly to Chicago and thinking, once I got there, that women in that
city were really busty, but realising that I had simply gotten
habituated to women's cycling physique. 
   Cynthia was over the usual cycling size up top, which is a must
for her night job, I suppose, but she also seemed fat overall,
the roundness of her face probably accentuating this impression.  She had 
strange tan lines on her face, everything above her nose being pale and
below being tan. One can only assume that her makeup will be able to
cover this up during her nightclub performances, in any case, she will
need a lot of that makeup to cover up all the road rash she got from her
numerous crashes. Anyway, I took a good picture of her that I will try
to put on my web site.
   Reading over this last part, I was struck by my own detailed
criticism of Cynthia's appearance. In fact, it is not my practice to
put so much emphasis on physical attributes, but in this case it seems
inevitable, given that her dancing job at the Lido is essentially a
showcase for the aesthetic characteristics of her body. 

I also got a good picture of Cynthia's boyfriend and cycling mentor,
Jean-Louis Vigneron, the unclearly employed guy who got her into
cycling and who started the chain of events that led to her
participation in the Grande Boucle.

I also saw that Emma James was about, she could easily be identified
by her Australian team time trial bike. I had really enjoyed her diary
on the Cycling News web site,
http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2002/diaries/emmajames/?id=default
and which was one of the few ways to get details about the race, along
with the Kimberly Bruckner and Dede Demet diaries on the Velo News
website. I saw that she was preparing to go for a sightseeing ride in
Paris, and I recalled that she had written in her diary that she was
rather disappointed not to have ridden on the Champs Elysees after her
team introduction at the Lido four days before the start of the
race. Since I had thought at the time that her coach's assertion about
the dangers of Parisian riding was totally ludicrous (though one can
understand his reluctance to let one of his star riders take chances
right before the start of the biggest race of the year), I thought it
might be a good idea to give her a guided tour. She seemed to agree,
since it's not clear how to go about visiting a big city you're not
familiar with.  So, we started off by going around the Arc de
Triomphe, which was kind of a baptism of fire, since the traffic is
rather sketch around this huge traffic circle with a dozen boulevards
going off in every direction, then down the Champs Elysees. I somehow
managed to include most of the city landmarks, like Notre Dame and the
Eiffel Tower, but could only provide minimal comments, since I've
never had too much interest tourist attractions, except for the fact
that the Eiffel tower has the names of 32 mathematicians engraved on
it. One interesting part of the visit was Paris Plage, in which the
freeway on the right bank of the Seine was closed to traffic and
converted into a typical seaside strand, complete with palm trees,
sand, roller skating ramps.

Anyway, it looks like I managed to fulfill the role of Tour Guide, and
maybe I could start looking into that as a career option when my
research contract runs out. For me, the ride was very satisfying after
months of riding alone fighting with errant cyclists and roller skaters
for limited bike lane space. I was also impressed by her insistance on
speaking French, a language in which she is perfectly fluent.

I thought it would be nice to take a picture of us for posterity, and
in a rather strange turn of events, it was Jean-Louis Vigneron, the
Cynthia guy, who was the closest person around and who volunteered to
take the picture (that's because Cynthia and Emma are on the same
team).  I could not believe what happened next, as he took the picture
and put the camera down immediately after pressing on the shutter,
which probably totally ruined the shot. To make things worse, that was
my last picture on that roll of film, so there was no second take! I
was thinking that this guy must be an idiot about everything, not just
cycling, but who knows, maybe he had figured out who I was and was
getting me back for all the things I wrote about Cynthia and him on
various newsgroups.

I then decided to check out the vendors, one of them being a
manufacturer of jerseys for cycling and roller skating named Anaeli,
http://www.anaeli.com/shop/sommaire.htm 
They had a pretty good selection, and I got a jersey they make for the
Rollerblade World Team
http://www.teamrollerblade.com/speed/worldteam/worldteam.html 
which has the Road Runner on the front and back.  I'm planning now on
wearing it so I can blow by people and go "beep, beep!"  I also had a
pretty good discussion with the rep, who filled me in on some more
Cynthia and Jean-Louis tidbits that he had gleaned from two weeks of
following the race. He was likewise impressed by my knowledge of
American bike racing, for example, that I not only knew about the
existence of Midwestern State University, where one of his cycling
friends was going to college, but that I had actually been there
physically, on the occasion of the 1994 Collegiate Road Nationals. I
confirmed his suspicion that Wichita Falls was a real dump and pointed
out that there were even fewer spectators for the criterium than had
shown up for the finale of the Grande Boucle.

After I got my jersey, I rode by the podium just as the Bielorus
anthem was being played in honour of the overall winner Zinaida
Stahurskaia. I then started to make tracks to go home, since the
nice sunny afternoon was just about to turn into a massive
thunderstorm. Some team mechanic asked me if I need water and handed
me a full bottle.  I drank some, thankful that I didn't need to pass
any drug tests in the near future, and once again went down the Champs
Elysees, this time with swirling winds and threatening rain drops, but
got back to my house before the deluge. 

-ilan