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a tour de france rant with a universal theme

You don’t have to be a fan of the Tour de France to appreciate the refreshingly raw sentiment expressed on this t-shirt. As cyclists, haven’t we all experienced this thought — say, when a motorist cuts us off or when a taxi passenger opens the door into the bike lane?

photo: mystomachisfullofanger.com

“My stomach is full of anger, and I want to take my revenge,” said Andy Schleck of Luxembourg in the midst of the brouhaha that erupted over the Spanish rider Alberto Contador’s supposed breach of Tour etiquette in attacking during Schleck’s chain-drop near the conclusion of Stage 15.

The two cyclists made up well before the three-week, 2,263-mile Tour concluded last Sunday in Paris with Contador landing his third victory and Schleck finishing second. But don’t Schleck’s fighting words and steely gaze deserve to be immortalized in bold graphics on a cool commemorative T-shirt? Sure they do.

Men’s and women’s styles and sizes are available for $19 plus tax and shipping. Five percent of profits go to World Bicycle Relief, a bicycle industry partnership that helps provide disaster assistance and poverty relief through distribution of free bikes to needy individuals.

www.mystomachisfullofanger.com

fan uncovers the secret of tour de france scoring

So I’ve been following the Tour de France and as the riders headed into the Alps for Stages 8 and 9 last week I began to feel that there was something missing.

Knowledge, to be exact. My own.

Chapter and verse: The cover of the Tour de France summary of rules. photo: Le Tour de France

During nightly prime-time TV broadcasts by Versus, the veteran commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin referred fleetingly to numbered red icons that represent climbs on the alpine stages. I know that the rider who accumulates the most points on these hills and passes is awarded the red polka dot jersey as the general best climber. But how do those red markers on the maps translate into points and rankings? I felt frustrated by my cluelessness.

I wondered: Am I alone in a seeming poverty of understanding when it comes to races other than the battle royale for the yellow jersey, which at this writing is being led by Andy Schleck of Luxembourg and Alberto Contador of Spain?

“Hey, do you understand the Tour scoring?” I ask my friend Larry on a morning club ride. “You know, the points riders accumulate for each of the stages?”

“No, not at all,” he replies. “I just care about the yellow jersey.”

Even the A riders who are sitting astride about a million bucks worth of bikes and wheels at the rest stop, cough up a few wobbly stats in response to my query and then — not unkindly — refer me to the official Tour de France website.

So I log onto the Le Tour home page. And here begins my fitful, but ultimately triumphant, quest for the finer points of the red polka dot jersey.

I search the site for the equivalent of Tour de France 101. In my fantasies, it’s a primer for earnest fans who wish to better themselves. But what am I thinking? The creators and curators of this website are French. That brings with it certain…assumptions. Would a nation that has maintained a French Academy as the official authority over its language since 1635 lower itself to Le Tour for Dummies? Non!

Armed with the fundamental understanding that I’m on my own, I drill down. The All About the Race menu tab looks promising, but that turns out to be a route overview. Oh, I see, the scoring must be under History. Well, lots of stats here — Spectators spend an average of 6 hours at the roadside! — but no rules. Mmmmm, I L-O-V-E these vintage photos in the Pictures section.

Wait. Stop. This isn’t what I’m looking for. I navigate to the Historical Guide pdf. Oops, it’s only in French.

(Would somebody be good enough to pass me a musette bag of tortilla chips and guacamole? This search is sapping my energy.)

Finally, I press the Standings tab. There’s a submenu called Rules. Jackpot. It offers a downloadable pdf. I click on the teeny-tiny red type and, Voila!, up pops Regulations of the Race.

My gift to you. Print it out, laminate it and display it ostentatiously on your coffee table. Feel the power.

Article 24, Section C, on page 37 sets out the General best climber ranking. I’m feeling official – so very Madame Insider. Though god knows it took me forever to get here.

Stage 8 route map. photo: Le Tour de France

In descending order of difficulty, the hills and passes are ranked by the Tour from UC (uncategorized) to Cat. 4.  Riders are able to accumulate points toward the red polka dot jersey based on their performance on these climbs. For example, on the most demanding ascent, UC, the first ten finishers are rewarded with points numbering: 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 7, 6 and 5. On the easiest hill, Cat. 4, only the first three riders to finish accumulate a relatively paltry 3, 2 and 1 points. If the final pass of a stage is UC, Cat 1. or Cat 2, then double points are awarded. You follow?

So let’s break it down, using the Stage 8 route map (see above). Serious hills here include two Cat. 1s — one at the finish. Using the Rankings page for reference, I calculate 248 best-climber points at stake on Stage 8. And they are snatched up mostly by the veteran, 30-year-old Frenchman Jerome Pineau of team Quick Step, who accumulates 44 points to hold the red polka dot jersey, which he acquired in Stage 2. [Pineau loses the jersey in Stage 9, but regains it by a 1-point margin during Stage 10.]

Those King of the Mountain climbing points matter in terms of prize money, as well.  I refer you to the chart on page 22. Hungry for more? Then dig into the individual points ranking for the green jersey on page 36.

Listen, I’m not going to sit in front of the TV with a calculator, but when I see the little red polka dot icon on the Le Tour or Versus websites, I feel differently now. In fact, with all this newfound empowerment, I can’t even sustain my crankiness toward the French. So my next question is, “Hey Versus, what’s your excuse for not including Le Tour for Dummies on your website?”

an artist reconnects with her past by viewing the tour de france through a personal lens

For the artist Bijou Le Tord, the Tour de France is more than an epic bicycle race; it is a creative conduit to her childhood in France, and more specifically to her father Jacques, an illustrator and avid cyclist, who died when Ms. Le Tord was 7 years old.

Lac D'Annecy, Bijou Le Tord, 2009

Ms. Le Tord’s captivating new series of photographs of the 2009 Tour entitled Going the Distance: Blurring the Lines Between Art and Sports, currently on view in Amagansett, NY, reflects a personal immersion from a unique point of view: a darkened studio in a village just outside Lyon. Last summer, Ms. Le Tord used four tripod-mounted cameras to capture digital images of the Tour as it unfolded before her, stage by stage, on an old television set. Pixelation gives the resulting archival prints a visual texture that resembles that of a painter’s canvas and aptly amplifies the grit and grace of this grueling sporting spectacle.

Ms. Le Tord, 64, who left France at age 16 and now divides her time between Sag Harbor, NY, and her home country, is best known as the author and water-color illustrator of several popular children’s books about artists who include Claude Monet and Henri Matisse.

Although she is not a cyclist herself and had little command of the Tour’s technical details, Ms. Le Tord found inspiration in cherished memories of riding to school on her brother Yvonne’s handlebars at full tilt along forested roads, and of stories that her mother told about her father’s love of bicycle racing, and of his daily long-distance rides to secure food for the family during wartime.

The artist Bijou Le Tord, Amagansett, NY. photo: velojoy

“I grew up with the Tour,” she says.  “For French children at the time I would say it was the equivalent of what baseball is here.”

“It was just part of the things you lived with,” she says. “At a certain point this just clicked.”

Ms. Le Tord set out to make entirely new and personal images from the TV broadcasts of the Tour using her own camera lenses, selective cropping and digital manipulation. For example, in a work entitled Train, Ms. Le Tord anticipates the acceleration of the peloton, which had been stopped at a rail crossing. Opening the aperture of her lens enabled the artist to capture the blur of the riders after the train’s passing. In another photo, Flag Waving, she focuses in on the vigil of a French fan who stands on a wind-swept plain. Selenium tones lend the patina of a bygone era to several images of racers.

The project took on an even more nuanced dimension as Ms. Le Tord learned that her brother had cancer. After shooting an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 photographs, she says she discovered in her editing process that Lance Armstrong emerged as the series’s unifying character. “I focused on Lance because I thought at the time ‘he’s the one who’s been through [cancer],’ ” Ms. Le Tord says.

The process yielded not only satisfying discoveries about memory, perspective, form and color, but also about the Tour and its remarkable competitors. “I quite like Contador,” she said with a laugh as she mingled recently with friends at an opening reception for her show.

Would she consider attending the Tour to photograph it from a fan’s point of view? It turns out that Ms. Le Tord and her brother had joined the cheering crowds along a leg of the 2008 race.

“You stand there for so long, and then the peloton passes by in an instant — whoosh!” she says. And so for Ms. Le Tord it’s on to the next creative pursuit.

The photo series is on view through July 27 at Sylvester & Company at Home, 154 Main Street, in Amagansett, NY.