At first glance the members of the peloton are mostly very handsome and very healthy young men and there’s not an ounce of spare fat between the lot of them.

When you look downwards you notice a number of things: they have huge thighs, their legs are all shaved and deep brown and all of them, but all of them have a frightening array of cuts, bruises, scars and, in George Hincapie’s case, many frightening looking varicous veins.

The other night I filmed Garmin’s sprinter Julian Dean having his daily massage after the race. Julian is a compact, quiet yet warm and friendly man and he hails from New Zealand. The more observant of you may notice that his team kit is black and white with ferns on it and not the usual Garmin Chipotle blue and white. This is because he is the New Zealand National Champion and the rules say that all champs have to wear their national colors at the race. In fact Julian is one of at least three national champs on the Garmin bus.

As Julian lay back and talked the Soigneur massaged his muscles and I was stunned by the array of scars on his body. It quickly came apparent that he is a man of steel…literally. I think he said he has three steel plates in his body and was it a dozen or twenty screws? The laundry list of gashes, crashes, dislocations, sprains, fractures, other wounds and operations he shared with me took up minutes and minutes of tape.

As our conversation wound down I asked Julian what he ‘s got coming up next. “The Olympics in Beijing, I suppose,” he replied casually. Of the eight riders left on the bus at this point at least 2 will be travelling to Beijing and a 3rd would be going if not for previous infractions. Back in Boulder the Garmin team has at least one more Olympic athlete travelling to China.

After all the hard work training on the bike, riding these killer days on the Tour and getting ready for the Olympics I wondered where Julian would go on holiday if he had the chance? “I’d like to travel through South America.”

“Oh yeah? How?”
“On me mountain bike…”

Let us commence, aujord hui, with a statement of the bleedin’ obvious: you cannot compete in, let alone win, the Tour de France without a bike.

Unlike the riders who come in all shapes, weights, heights and sizes the bikes have to obey certain rules: they must all have wheels the same size have seatposts etc at certain angles and they must weigh at least 15 pounds and change (can’t recall the exact weight). The theory is that no rider gets an unfair advantage over another by having a special bike. However the arrival of carbon fibre and all the rest of the other crap available to your average 21st century bike builder means that you could shave about 7 pounds off that minimum weight if you really wanted to. As a consequence many of the bikes here are tricked out with super-sexy gizmos that your average velo don’t have – partly because the engineers need to make the bikes heavier in order to match or exceed that weight requirement.

This team is now called Garmin Chipotle because they have a big new sponsor: Garmin – the people who make GPS devices for your car. And guess what – each rider’s bike sports a big bronze Garmin thingy on the handlebars. (See pic below of David Millar’s bronze thingy…and also his very sexy aerodynamic handlebars) The bronze Garmin thingy not only helps the bike hit the right weight but also tells you all kinds of things your average rider never knew he needed to know:

How far away the next climb is…
Where the wind is blowing from…
What to watch out for ahead…
His power output…
His heart-rate…Etc. Etc.

But the funniest thing is that now the members of the Garmin Chipotle have one extra thing that they cannot afford to forget. And it here’s how Jonathan Vaughters (team uber-boss) put it at the final team meeting before the Tour started:

“We now have a major sponsor, Garmin, producer of the world’s leading GPS systems. So here’s one thing you have to remember. From now on, whatever situation you may find yourself in, don’t ever, ever let me or anyone else hear you say that you’re lost!”

We drove to the top of the Hautacam in Har-V. It’s a beautiful drive with lovely views of the valleys below. Not quite as dramatic as the Alps perhaps but it’s a relentless 15 km climb and there’s only one way up and only one way down..

When you have those magic stickers on your wagon, as we do, you skirt the rest of the day’s course and then jump onto the Tour route for the final hill. This means you see a rider’s eye view of the insanity lining the road – and those beer tents, fires, miles of campers, daft signs and names painted on the road certainly add a flavor which must be missing at any other time of year.

When you reach the top they send you round the back to park high above the finishing line and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by the vehicles and the drivers and entertainers of the publicity caravan – the jolly folk who throw brightlly colored freebies and swag at the fans who line the road. This morning they were brash and smiling as they left from Pau and now here they are, high above the tree-line, sullen and weary, waiting for the road to clear so they can drive back to their hotels and get warm again.

The riders arrive an hour after we do and their faces speak volumes about their abilities in the mountains – some are almost relaxed, if breathless, and ready to talk while others are gaunt, concerned and silent.

Now it’s all done for the day there’s the long drive home and the wonderful news that tomorrow is a day off.

I suppose you think that because I’m at the Tour I’m really clued in about the race. Fat chance.

Over the last days I’ve started to notice the same faces outside Big Garmie and, as we wait like desperate camera and mic weilding vultures for cycling carrion, we chat. After 7 days of keeping my race-confusion under my hat I let slip that I had very little clue about everything that was really going on in the race. Imagine my surprise when many of them nodded their heads with a weary resignation and agreed they shared my situation.

This is where the cold reality of what television has done kicks in. You can be right there beside the road but it’s the TV coverage that gives you a real perspective on what’s going on. One of my fellow Garmie stalkers, an experienced journalist who’s covered the race 9 times, told me she needs to watch the race in the press room on TV to get a proper idea of what’s going on! On occasion she’s even rung up her husband in the States to check a detail.

Well this Garmie-stalker doesn’t have access to the press room or TV (or electricity most nights). Today we shot the start in Toulouse, shot race coverage in 2 spots along the route, shot the end of the race AND got a 1 on 1 interview with David Millar in his hotel room in Pau and I saw it all through the viewfinder. We’ve also driven almost 300km today and had no Phil Ligget, Paul Sherwen or Bob Roll giving us the low-down. I’m amazed to realize that I can’t wait to get home so I can turn on the Tivo and watch the race!

Tonight marks the end of our second week travelling in Har-V. So far we’ve done nearly 3,000km and we decided to celebrate with real food for dinner – perhaps somewhere typically French yet affordable. But in Pau at 9pm on a Sunday night near the ring road that meant that Smudger and I dined at Quick – the French version of McDonalds.

I have been making my own cycling documentary (separate from this one) for the last couple of years about the rider who comes last in the Tour. www.rougefilm.com But you can only be last in the race if you actually reach Paris.

Each day there is a Time Cut. This time cut is a margin of time added to the winning rider’s time. Perhaps on a stage which takes 6 hours for the winner to cross the line that additional margin may be 25 minutes. If you don’t make it home inside that 25 minute cushion you’re out of the race. End of story.

Today one of the Garmin riders failed to make the time cut. Magnus Backstedt (the guy who speaks 5 languages) is a big, lovable, powerful man known for drilling it at the front and leaving lesser men gasping for breath in his wake. Yesterday he was one of those gasping men and for the last 100k he rode alone fighting to stay in the race.

Competitive cycling is about suffering and Maggie suffered nobly yesterday but still crossed the line 4 minutes outside the cut. If he had made it would he have recovered enough to keep on going? He, for one, is as mystified as the rest of us as to where his form has gone.

Last night’s other news was that Manuel (Tricky) Beltran was ejected from the Tour for using EPO, the infamous drug that helps with recovery. After all the months of deprivation, suffering and hard training both men left the Tour today and will watch their team-mates arriving in Paris on TV.

The difference is that one man is looking at a doubtful future and possibly jail-time while the other can hold his head up high knowing that he did his best.