User:Uncle Albert Camus/Sandbox

The Tour de France has visited Britain on three occasions, with drastically contrasting results.

The first visit in 1974 was an unmitigated disaster that baffled aficionados and the uninitiated alike.

The organisers decided to use a by-pass at Plympton in Devon and nowhere else. Instead of showcasing the south of England, the bunch simply rode from one end of a dual carriageway on the outskirts of Plymouth to the other, ad nauseum, until a nondescript Dutch rider called Henrik Poppe won. (1)

This baffling choice of route failed to win many converts and spawned a headline in the [Daily Mirror], “Can 40 million Frenchmen be wrong?”

Two decades later the race returned, but this time the organisers chose a superb route, starting from the stunning backdrop of Dover Castle, then heading up the old roman road Stone Street to Canterbury, through the Weald of Kent to Tunbridge Wells and then into the Ashdown Forest, where the local rider Sean Yates was given a lead by the bunch to visit his family, who hail from Forest Row.

A break by Francisco Cabello of the Kelme team and Castorama's Emmanuel Magnien dominated the stage, with Cabello eventually winning in Brighton, ahead of Flavio Vanzella, who had launched a late counter-attack.

Chris Boardman also broke away on the finishing circuit to come fourth and his attack inspired the watching David Millar, who would become one of the UK’s top professionals.

The following day a stage started and finished in Portsmouth and was one by Nicola Minali, though on the official Tour de France website there is a blank space where his name should be. (Minali was part of the Gewiss-Ballan team alleged to have systematically doped its riders with epo during the 1990s.) (2)

In 2007 the race returned to the UK for its third and most successful visit to date, with an estimated two million people watching on both days.

The prologue time trial in London was won by the World Champion Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, on a spectacular circuit around Hyde Park.

The following day the race returned to Kent, taking a route from Tower Bridge and along the North Kent Riviera to Gillingham, Chatham and Rochester before heading inland to Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and Ashford. The stage was enlivened by an attack from Millar, who felt he had let his fans down with a (relatively) poor display in the London prologue.

He was joined by four companions but the last of these, Stephane Auge, was caught at the top of Farthing Common and the sprint was one by Robbie McEwen who had crashed at the foot of the final climb and produced a superb fight back to regain the field. British hopeful Mark Cavendish also crashed, but was abandoned by his teammates and finished the stage in tears, several minutes back. (3). The day represented “the biggest peace time mobilisation of the population of Kent ever seen” according to Fred Atkins, then the Sports Editor of the Kent Messenger, who was inspired to write the book [“Tour de Kent”] as a result. (4)

(1) http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/tour-de-france-an-alternative-view-of-the-ultimate-road-race-456215.html (2) http://www.skitrax.com/index.php?module=Section&action=viewdetail&item_id=4867 (3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/may/10/mark-cavendish-tour-de-france-interview (4) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tour-Kent-worlds-biggest-England/dp/1859837387