Just called SAG (Screen Actors Guild) to get the ball rolling on making the deals with actors all legal and proper. They’ve sent me a form I have to fill in full of questions I have no answers to – but at the bottom is a question that’s scared the living daylights out of me: ‘Do you intend to include any of the following in your production? Minors, Animals, Singers, Puppets, Stunts, Nudity.’

Oh no – the first flaw in my otherwise perfect plan has been revealed. What was I thinking? It appears I’m about to make a film without any puppets in it.

After 3 weeks of sun, rain, crosswinds, storms, flat stages, sprint finishes, brutal climbs and mountain-top finishes the peloton moves out of Etampes on a hot Sunday morning with much fanfare and very little energy.

There’s joy, exuberance and champagne coming from the CSC cars, they have a man in yellow, and nervousness and fear from the Gerolsteiner cars, they’ve had a great Tour but have no sponsor for next year. Along the roadside I see Cadel Evans, the great Aussie hope, taking a pee alone, stone-faced as always. He’s on the podium for sure but once again has come away with nothing – the Nearly Man of Antipodean cycling.

Jens Voigt, locomotive of CSC and my personal hero, comes by to chat with Whitey.

“Jensie! Are you retiring?”
“My kids want a swimming pool and my wife wants a new car so I guess I’m signing up for 2 more years of this crazy shit!”

Everyone laughs and Voigt pushes himself away from the car and pedals up the road.

Why doesn’t everyone race on the final day on the way into Paris? That’s what people want to know. Partly it’s tradition, partly its respect for the race and partly, as David Millar told me the other night, its pure pragmatism: anyone who attacks the yellow jersey will get shut down awful fast.

After the soft breezes of the past days Paris is hot and humid. The domestiques shuttle back to their Team cars for the last time and stuff their shirts with bidons for their fellow riders. There are no longer empty hedgerows where the riders can pee – instead they’re lined up along walls letting it all hang out as they get ready for the final explosive kilometres of the Tour.

The Champs Elysees is crowded and cheering and very bumpy. In a car those bumps are part of the romance of Paris, after 3 weeks on a bike it must be hell . After one circuit they kick me out of the Team car – there are a line of sponsors wanting rides and bottom feeders like me need to make space for the heavy-hitters.

The lead-out trains form up and the sprinters make a final effort – a victory in Paris on these cobbled Elysian Fields could be a career-defining moment.

After 85 hours of pedalling the Tour is over – the wives are kissed and the babies hugged – and the riders form up with their Directeur Sportifs who are riding spare bikes and looking out of place in their civvy clothes and 40-something bodies. Each team sets out on a lap of honor pedalling slowly towards l’Arc de Triomphe.

Garmin DS Jonathan Vaughters is trying to stand on his pedals and keep stationary, the way cyclists do at the lights. He’s having some trouble with the cobbles. He was a previous lieutenant of Lance Armstrong, held the TT record up Ventoux and rode 4 or 5 Tours but famously never made it to Paris. He’s visibly excited – it’s the first time he’s ridden a victory lap on The Champ.

Garmin’s number 5 GC man, Christian Vandevelde, has snagged a stars and stripes from a bystander and wears it proudly over his shoulders. Ryder Hesjedal snags a Canadian one and does the same. Tiny Trent Lowe borrows an Aussie flag on a little stick and Julian Dean finds some Kiwis in the crowd to have his picture taken with.

Christian Prudhomme, CEO of all things TdF shakes everyone’s hands and smiles.

I shout across to one of the ladies from the Slipstream office in another team car: she’s a single Mom of a certain age, has never been to France, and here she is riding a Team Car down the Champs Elysees as the crowds cheer her on.

“Will anyone ever believe you if you tell them this was your first drive into Paris?” She’s visibly moved as we all are.

As I hang out of the side of the Team Car I see Mr. Pony Tail one last time. He’s clearly not happy I’ve slipped past his personal cordon and gained access to a team car for the victory lap – I hope he has a short memory and doesn’t hold grudges: I want to come back next year.

Twenty minutes later the big blue whale of a team bus has gone and the riders have ridden off on their bikes to their hotel. After all these tough weeks on the bike they can’t get seem to get off. Half the team were rookies and they’ve all made it to Paris – their bodies have changed while I’ve watched the ride and they’ve all suffered horribly.

For me there is a quick meal and 2 hours packing in a smelly RV parked on the edge of the Place de la Concorde. It’s been an extraordinary journey – we’ve driven nearly 4,000 miles and shot over 85 hours of film – but right now all I want to do is go home and hug my girl who I love so much …and ride my bike.

Postcript:
My comment from Stage 3 about Carlos Sastre (“Tiny, doesn’t look like much of a threat.”) has proven to be wildly inaccurate – he wins the 95th Tour de France. Months later Christian VandeVelde is promoted from 5th to 4th after another rider is sacked for taking drugs. When I get home to LA the folk at Garmin kindly send me one of their GPS units. It is vastly superior to the device that we had in France though I do miss Geraldine’s voice and her constant advice to make a 180 degree turn: “Prenez un demi-tour avec prudence.”

YouTube
Want to go behind the scenes with Har-V & Co? Check out this short video filmed in glorious Handicam: Adventures with Har-V & Geraldine

With thanks to:
Magnus Backstedt, Jon Cassat, Sloane Cooper, Nick Davis, Julian Dean, Doug Ellis, Tom Ennis, Graeme Fife, Bonnie Ford, Eric Fostvedt, Will Frischkorn, Lucas Gilman, Inaki Goiburu, Ryder Hesjedal, Paul Kimmage, Allen Lim, Trent Lowe, Lionel Marie, Martijn Maaskant,David Millar, Lindsey Miller, Alyssa Morahan, Danny Pate, Marya Pongrace, Neal Rogers, Beth Seliga, Joachin Schoonaker, David Smadja, Prentice Steffen, Brandi Thomas, Christian VandeVelde, Jonathan Vaughters, Matt White Kris Withington & everyone at Team Slipstream Garmin Chipotle.

A note about the pictures:
Except where otherwise noted all pictures in this diary are copyright Nigel Dick 2008. The pictures were taken with a Blackberry. I apologise there are not more pictures of the Tour itself but I was paid to shoot the Tour – not take snaps of it!

The final Time Trial day of this year’s Tour started for David Millar at 8am with my camera in his face and a massive swig of water. Breakfast followed – an impressive selection of bowls of cereals.

Back in his room Millar selected an unwashed racing kit and downed more water chased by handfuls of mineral supplements. Minutes later his elegant six foot three frame was bent over the bike he famously threw over a fence at the Giro d’Italia (see YouTube) as his legs pounded out imaginary kilometres as his bike was clipped into a home trainer and wasn’t going anywhere.

The team were staying in an inexpensive hotel – part of a complex that included acres of parking space and concrete, a large supermarket and a McDonalds – and round the back of one of the buildings, the kind of place where a homeless man might seek shelter from the rain, he faced a wall under an overhang as his legs spun faster and faster. Soon a circle of bystanders appeared as a large puddle of perspiration collected under his bike: he wasn’t sweating bullets but golfballs. 3 more bidons of water went down the hatch as his legs spun at a speed and frequency that suggested an athlete of extaordinary strength and stamina. The work-out continued for 40 minutes and I wondered later why he would expend such a huge amount of energy on such an important morning: “To remove the stiffness from yesterday’s racing,” he explained bored with a question he was tired of answering.

He showered, lay on his bed, drank a large bottle of Vittel laced with sugar and pushed his legs into huge inflatable tubes connected to a pump designed to squeeze all the blood back to his heart sooner and thereby aid recovery.

At 1045 he was back in the dining room eating a plate of plain pasta with 2 fried eggs and drinking more water.

Noon: In the small town of Cerilly 300k south of Paris, Millar sat outside the team bus reading l’Equipe – fluent in French and Spanish Millar is a well-read and deeply thoughtful, eloquent man. He then moved inside the team bus and shifted languidly from one seat to another playing and supping with another bottle of water filled with sugar gel and munching on a power bar – I realised that if I’d spent the morning drinking and eating the way he had I would, by this time, be physically sick.

“Going to put my skin suit on now,” he announced, “this is the worst part of the day.” The skin suit is a one-piece outfit made from hi-tech fabric that aids the passage of wind over the athelete’s body and, as Millar is the current British TT champion, his is all in white with a horizontal red and blue stripe. He grunted and groaned as he contorted his body to slip inside the skin tight layer. Now Millar bent over like a patient at the proctologist’s while the soigneur pinned his racing number to his back – all those thousands of dollars in the wind-tunnel to get the right position on the bike and that special fabric and now he was having a small sail safety-pinned to his arse.

1pm: Millar is bent over sweating again warming-up on another trainer outside the bus. Fans watch in awe as the wheels spin faster and faster and all we can hear is an impressive whooshing sound as the spokes slice through the air. He’s chugging more water, listening to techno music and focused on some spot below him deep inside the earth and trying not to think of the hour of torture he’s about to put himself through. As Millar continues to pedal the team doctor pulls a special vest from the ice chest and throws it on Millar’s back. There’s some carefully thought-out medical reason for this and the whole crowd shudders as they watch Millar’s body twist with the shock as his core temperature drops fast.

1358: Millar is in the starting gate on his aerodynamically designed TT bike with its Union Jack wheels and an aerodynamic bottle filled up to a roughly etched half-way mark.

“Daviide Millarrrre, specialiste du contre la montre!” Says the man with the mic and he’s off.

For the next 53km I watch from the team car as Millar’s frame slams out a tempo that is just unbelievable. Even on these flat roads the car has trouble keeping up. JV talks to Millar through the radio unit in his space-age TT helmet: “Keep your head down, follow the white line, don’t break on this corner, come on, David, full gas! Full gas!”

Like a complex toy David is guided along the course by JV who rode it himself two days previously noting every bump and twist and turn. “Second drink point coming up, then 5k of false flat. Full gas, David, c’mon, full gas!”

Millar cranks it out and at one point nearly hurtles off the road; there’s a collective gasp and then nervous chuckling inside the car.

En route Millar sets new split-times all along the course and overtakes not one but two of the men ahead of him. As he hurtles over the finish line 65 minutes after he started he’s set a new fastest time but current world TT champion Fabian Cancellara is right behind him and almost immediately he’s demoted to second.

Minutes later he’s drinking water again, buckets of it, and patiently dealing with the press geeks. “How do you feel David? A good ride?”

He looks into the far distance the way he does. “I feel like shit actually, the last 2 weeks have been hard. My main job today was to set times for Christian and let him know what the course was like.”

In the end Millar comes 5th in the stage at an average speed of 49 kph.

Later I find him hidden behind the trailer relaxing. Some fans discover him too. They have a big box of beer with them.

“Fancy a drink David?”
“Yeah, love one.”

Postscript: CVV is racing for his top 5 slot at the Tour. When he arrives I have to get in there and get his reaction but Mr. Pony Tail is on my case. I hover at the back of the shute waiting for my moment, trying to keep hidden. When CVV finally arrives I dodge, sprint and slide through the crowd to the front of Christian’s wheel. I am on my knees and looking up at Christian and the mics, faces and cameras of my fellow Tour-hounds who have pushed forward to interview him. As my heart pounds I have to hold this shot steady…it’s possibly the best shot of the whole 3 weeks. Then a hand reaches through the legs and grabs the viewfinder of my camera – it’s Mr. Freakin’ Pony-Tail and he’s going to break my $7,500 camera if I don’t let him have his way. Next his other hand is on my collar and he’s dragging me away. I shout at him, “I’m on his team!” which is kind of accurate. Everyone stops. Christian and all the press turn and stare for a second. Clearly this kind of behavior is not acceptable at the Tour.

I slink off, hurt. Mr. Pony Tail has won.

 

I have attracted the personal attention of my very own TdF security guy – and not in a good way. At the end of every day’s race only people with bibs are allowed in the 100metres immediately after the finish line. I am making a film about the Garmin Chipotle team and one of their guys, Christian VandeVelde, is in 5th. When Christian gets to the finish line every day he’s surrounded by media folk and it’s my job to get in there and record what he has to say. If I don’t get that shot then most of my day has been wasted. So for the last two weeks, bib or no bib, I’ve managed to infiltrate this hallowed zone unnoticed and got right up close with CVV at the finish.

But the honeymoon period is over and a man with a pony-tail hair do that only a Frenchman could get away with has now identified me as an interloper: someone without the magic bib. For the last few days Mr. Pony Tail has made it his job to chuck me out whenever he sees me. Today’s ejection was delivered with a forceful push and extra bile and disdain. “You! Go away! Go very far away!”

The night before Stage 17 to l’Alpe d’Huez we found ourselves outside a hotel in Gap imaginatively titled Gapotel.

In the cold evening light the mechanics and soigneurs were downloading the gear from their trucks that they would need high up on the mountain the next day as the truck and team bus would not be able to make it to the top of the Alpe. They squeezed everything they could inside the team cars and went to bed as did we.

After 5 hours sleep we awoke and went to buy coffee before our long drive North. The door of the hotel was ajar as the dawn light crept into the empty lobby. In the breakfast room a rumpled man dressed all in white like a baker was filling coffee pots and cutting baguettes.

To the left of the coffee pots leant up against some tables and chairs and completely unguarded I noticed a bunch of bikes.

Thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of Garmin velos were lying behind the coffee, not so much as a bike lock in sight, and anyone could have walked in off the street and pinched one!

L’Alpe d’Huez is the Lords, the Wrigley Field, the Wimbledon, the Monaco Grand Prix of cycling. There are certainly bigger and nastier mountains but ‘the Alpe’ is the one we all want to ride up.

Bourg d’Oisans is a small picturesque Alpine town in a long winding valley with massive rock walls climbing steeply upwards on both sides. You leave the centre of town, pass the Casino supermarket on your left, go across the roundabout towards the swimming pool and then start climbing and climbing and climbing.

Alpe d’Huez is known for its 21 virages (bends) and they say up to half a million fans line the 14km climb in a good year. The road up the mountain is spectacular whether you ride it or just go in the car, but what struck me the most this year was not the views but how ugly the village at the top is. Just another collection of rather garish resort buildings made for processing human beings so that they enter excited at one end and are ejected from the other, tired and cash-free.

I’d now like to share with you my thoughts on the last great mountain-top finish on this year’s Tour but, as I was waiting at the finish surrounded by other, better equipped newshounds (they have earpieces and producers telling them what’s happening) who blocked my view of the TV monitors I have no opinions of my own.

What I can reveal is that at the Club Med hotel after the race Michael Douglas, Mr. Zeta Jones himself, was introduced to Whitey, Lionel and other members of the team. I was allowed to film the event for posterity and slyly rolled tape as they all shook hands in the lobby and then repaired to the bar downstairs.

As Mr. ZJ and his entourage arrived down below a frisson of whispers and glances accompanied his journey to a quiet spot in the corner. He sat, and then, like he was the king, everyone else sat. And as I watched through my viewfinder I noticed he was alone and no-one dared talk to him, so he did what we all do at such times – he pulled out his Blackberry and sent the wife an e-mail.

Tuesday morning found me quivering with excitement for I had been promised a seat in Car #1. I was going to be right there in the thick of the action, camera in hand on a mountain stage, and I was ready to rock. JV, team owner,ex-rider and all around good-guy, took one look at my camera and quite small camera bag – filled with spare tapes, batteries, headphones etc – and said harshly, “What’s that? Do you need that?” They were the first nasty words I have ever heard JV utter.

When I looked at my space in car #1 I had a new perspective on JV’s concern: in the backseat along with Kris the mechanic, his toolbox, a dozen bidons, a couple of boxes of food and 2 expensive wheels was a very small piece of real estate which was going to be my operating platform for the next 5 hours.

Minutes later we were racing along the flat Italian roads behind the peloton and I was getting some excellent shots of the back of our driver Matty White’s head. Whitey, as many call him, is as Australian as a box of marsupials and is the Garmin Directeur Sportif who, despite his casual day-at-Bondi-Beach look, has proven himself to be an excellent tactician; like most in his position he’s an ex rider.

In one of the vehicles at the front of the car convoy is a faceless man who narrates the Tour’s own radio station and speaks in flawless French and English. Suddenly amongst the ceaseless tour radio chatter we heard him say, “Garmin rider punctured, stopping on the right.”

Kris the mechanic leapt from the car as Trent Lowe’s small figure, standing forlornly by a roundabout with a wheel in his hand, hove into view. Seconds later Lowe was back in action and pedalling like a maniac while JV was looking backwards egging him on as the road suddenly went upwards and Lowe lost contact with the peloton. “Heck of a time to flat,” said Whitey as an elaborate ballet took place in which Car #1 overtook other cars in the convoy to resume its correct place and, with assistance from other team cars, dragged Lowe along behind it. They say the race referees turn a blind eye to this tactic but clearly Car #1 had comitted some Tour crime as one of the comissaires (mounted on the back of a moto and wearing a red helmet) roared up and gave Whitey a telling-off in French.

JV was not pleased with the censure and a furious exchange took place between the team-owner and the moto-mounted commisaire. As they yelled at each other the commisaire pointed at me and told me to turn the camera off.

If the ascent of the first major climb of the day, la Lombarde Pass, was attractive, scenic and impossibly perfect the descent on the other side made any ride at a Hollywood theme park look like a long relaxing bath in warm, milky cotton wool.

At each hairpin bend Car#1 lurched while 2 of its wheels spun uselessly in the air and the other pair quivered nervously at the edge of a vertiginous drop; I could feel the car’s suspension groan underneath me . On the same bend, barely inches away, a motorcycle was taking the inside line while its passenger blithely checked his camera or talked on his microphone. At one corner a moto whizzed past with the passenger standing up, camera held in front of him. Commisaires over-took us, fans cheered and screamed. Meanwhile the cyclists descended with such elan we couldn’t keep up. Backmarkers would overtake us furiously swapping race information or quickly snacking on energy bars, stoking the engine for the next mountain that lay ahead.

Whitey was obviously loving it, JV was looking ashen and Kris the mechanic was checking his cell phone.

As we crossed back into France another mountain lay ahead – the massive La Bonette Resteford Pass.

Whereas the first hill of the day had been wooded and charming, like a steeply sided backdrop for a Bilbo Baggins / Lord of the Rings follow-up, the Bonette was a vast beast with a massive and ugly topping that would frighten any mortal – even on a sunny afternoon like this one.

Half-way up we came across our lead man Christian VandeVelde, separated from the yellow jersey group. A cold cloud of disappointment descended on the car as Whitey modified his earlier plan, whereby a rider waited ahead to help Christian over the top, to a rescue operation to bring Christian back into contention.

Back behind the driver’s seat my emotions were at odds. The bike fan in me wanted the rider to overcome, the film-maker in me was feasting on the drama. But most of all I was gutted that Christian, a man I have come to like and respect a lot, was losing time.

From where I sat I could only see the man’s butt as he cranked away, dragging himself up the climb limiting his losses.

As we reached the peak Christian escaped from view and was gone. His descent was so rapid that, despite falling from his bike and losing another 2minutes, we never saw him again till the race was done.

As I climbed from Car#1 at the race’s end I asked JV if all days in the team car were that scary and dramatic. “On a scale of 1 to 10? I’d say it was a nine and a half.”

Whitey’s Aussie reflection was a touch more pragmatic. “Where else can you drive like that on public roads?!” He chuckled and went in search of some food.

I often tell a joke about the difference between heaven and hell which defines, in cliches, the difference between English, French, German and Italian people. If I needed another illustration for a part of my joke I got it on Sunday as we raced from France into Italy with the Tour.

At the end of every stage in France, as we reach our destination, the sides of the roads are littered with the cars of all the eager fans trying to get to the race. Most of the parking is illegal and random but at least you can get by and reach L’Arrivee.

So, sunday afternoon – we’ve crossed the border into Italy and we’re racing to get to the end of the stage and suddenly the road is filled with cars parked randomly on both sides of the small feeder road just like France…but, unlike France, they we’re also parked in the right lane and the left lane and all the vehicles in both lanes pointed at the course. The road was completely blocked. We’d been driving hard for hours and we had to get to the end of the race, I wasn’t going to give up that easily.

David, intrepid co-pilote, set out to see what he could do. A Carabinieri appeared with an impressive hat, a Peter Sellers moustache, a whistle and a small plastic bat which he began to wave furiously at all the abandoned Fiats and Alfas. I half expected Sophia Loren to emerge from the crowd at any second.

Just like in the movies David and the Italian cop magically parted the red sea – but as we reached the road junction ahead we heard the helicopters coming, we had missed our chance to get to the end of the race for the second day running.

The difference between heaven and hell? In heaven the Italians organise the parties, in hell they run the trains…