Discussion: Le Tour

Are you and other Aussies watching live? The streets look pretty crowded.

Who cares? We're here for the orienteering! Well I am.

"live" in the sense of watching it on local TV. The Tour comes through Kolding (where I am) on Sunday but I'll be gone by then. Agree re: the crowds. Could be a hairy prologue given the rain.

I hadn't realised there were any important orienteering events on in Denmark or Finland on a Friday afternoon tRicky.

I'm pretty sure everyone's schedule goes:
-race
-time off
-race

Definitely don't want to do any training in the meantime! Okay so I'm not training because that would involve unpacking the bike from the box then packing it back up again to transport tomorrow. I guess the WOC participants probably aren't training either having just finished yesterday.

However watching bike racing live where they go past in a flash is dumb so my comment stands.

The one time I saw the Tour live I was in a spot about 1.5km from the finish to see a breakaway that was in the process of being swallowed. Didn't find out who had actually won the stage until I got to Paris that night. Great spectacle though.

The most "entertaining" part of the Tour has been following what has been happening along the roads that will be used for stages 2 and 3.
There are yellow spray-painted bikes lining the ditches all over the place and banners and other signs in round-abouts and road crossings. I knew this was the case in France from watching on TV but I didn´t think the organizers went to such lengths to "fix" the Danish country-side as well.

There are still yellow bikes littering Yorkshire from the Tour several years ago!

Maybe it's a boomer v millennial thing tRicky, but I like to combine orienteering trips with lots of 'living' (see below). You'll probably say that you're 'elite' and I'm not. I never got the chance to run at an elite level in 21, but I'm always deadly serious at WMOCs.

At Scottish 6 Days/WOC in 2015 the trip included a week in Amsterdam (cycling, restaurants, van Gogh), 2 weeks walking in Scottish isles and mountains, one week cycling the SW of Scotland, and one week in Edinburgh for the Fringe festival. The Oz Champs this year will include top Melbourne, Yarra Valley, Mornington and Goldfields restaurants and wineries, Picasso at the National Gallery, maybe a concert, and walks near Bright.

Friday's Tour was a TT, so a bit more interesting for stationary spectators than a bunch race - and correspondingly less interesting for TV. Also some Aussie interest with a couple of contenders for GC.

@simmo, Happy to recommend a few favourite goldfields wineries, if you’re interested. There are some very nice ones very close to the races.

Simmo I was just stirring you up. Of course people can go watch a bike race in their downtime - heck I'm struggling to find things to do here when I'm not orienteering but Puolanka isn't a bustling hive of activity (sadly I think I'll have gone through my three books by the end of the first week). I'm just not really a touristy person. The only 'isles' I'll be seeing around here are in the supermarket.

Also how dare you refer to me as a millenial. I'm Gen X through and through.