Steve: Developing on the Edge - Tour de France -Galibier and Alpe d'Huez

Steve: Developing on the Edge

Thoughts on development, Web-services, technology and mountains.

24Jul
Thu2008

Tour de France -Galibier and Alpe d'Huez

For the past few years, I've found that even though HDD Video Recorders let you build up a backlog of Tour de France coverage you can watch later, by the time you get round to it news gets out. Not just news of who won, but often the fact that they got disqualified for drug abuse later. I'd be better off getting out the old VHS VCR and playing back recordings of the early nineties, where there was no test for EPO for the cyclists to fail.

So far this year I've been avoiding most TdF news, though people keep emailing me with "isn't it great about Mark Cavendish, now with X stage wins"...so no surprises there -though I've been avoiding determining which stages he has one, so they will still be a surprise. Incidentally, anyone in the UK and a copy of Silverlight installed on an XP VMware image (or indeed, a real machine), can watch the hour long Paul-and-Phil on ITV4 broadcasts.. If US/Canada folk can get these, they get a commentary without the football commentator interrupting with ignorant comments whenever they can.

What I have also managed to do is catch live the second Alpine Stage -Lauteret, Galibier, Telegraphe, Croix de Fer and Alpe d'Huez. I have done the first 3 of these passes, and it is good to see them again. What is more, the time zone differences were such that I got to watch this after the snorkeling round the coral reefs, while a storm that is related to the rain hitting the indian west coast battered our windows:

Tour de France -Galibiier and Alpe d'Huez

I caught the Galibier and telegraphe work and the Croix de Fer approach, then popped out for dinner, coming back for the final 21 hairpins of the Alpe d'Huez. And, without spoiling the result for anyone -what an excellent stage! I hope the winner stays in yellow to the end of the tour, as they have earned it!

PS: doesn't the Alpe d'Huez resort look butt-ugly from above. It reminds me of Avoriaz or La Plagne, and they suck too. I know the ski resort encourages the bike ride for summer trade, but if they want winter visitors, shouldn't they pay the helicopters not to show what the town actually looks like? Far better off skiing La Meije, IMO

Posted by steve at 14:52

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	versusreply to this thread On 24 July 2008 at 17: 06 Simon Fell commented: The live coverage on versus is much better than their prime time show, ignore the first 15 minutes of blather, the rest is 99.9% phil & paul, and for the mountain stages, has been pretty much the entire stage.
	Great stagereply to this thread On 25 July 2008 at 06: 29 hughw commented: And yes, Sastre will make a deserving winner if he can hold on Saturday. Agree w/ Simon, record the morning live broadcasts... much more racing. I did the Galibier years ago. Both ways... warm and sunny on the west side, cold and rainy on the east. Going up was hard but going down was almost harder... you could smell my brakes burning all the way down...