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I’m DC RAINMAKER…
I swim, bike and run. Then, I come here and write about my adventures. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time. If you’re new around these parts, here’s the long version of my story.
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Danish television (DR) hit the nail on the head as to how much uphill this is going to be… after 25 minutes of Tour de France (DR have exemplary TDF coverage) interspersed with more or less unrelated clips of earliere tours, the anchor begins talking about Le Course, announces a feature and then apologises for being out of time and consequently unable to show the feature.
Nice to see that we can rely on our favourite sports gadgeteer to cover it! Thumbs up!
Here in the US, NBCSports was showing a rerun of TdF Stage 20, the time trial, rather than La Course. I think they may have put it on one of their other networks, but it would have made sense to put it on before the coverage of the Tour itself started.
They showed La Course on Universal Sports in the US, which was pretty cool.
Not tour related but an amazing ladies tri result this weekend. Daniela Ryf won the Zurich womens olympic distance tri on Saturday and then went on to win the women ironman race on the Sunday!
link to ironman.com
She doesn’t have it up yet, but Mariane Vos (winner of La Course) generally posts her rides/races on Strava. If it shows up in the next day or so, I’ll put the link up here.
Whatever happended to link to media1.roseversand.de ?
Thanks for posting this, I didn’t get to see any of La Course in the US. Women’s racing is always exciting, especially their ‘cross events. Wish they had aired it over here.
I’d greatly encourage you to check out Hlaf The Road (if you haven’t already), which is available on iTunes. It’s a great documentary about women’s pro cycling and the discrepancies you highlighted. Such a shame they didn’t even create any merchandise, talk about missed opportunity.
Thank you for the photo-documentary of ‘La Course’. Main stream media on both sides of the Atlantic don’t appear to realize that 50% of their viewers are not men.
Thanks for this excellent article, Ray, and the top-notch photos that really give you a sense of the day. I would have loved to be there! For those who’d like to watch (most of) the race, the second half was aired live on francetvsport. You can find the video here: link to francetvsport.fr (Or here’s a direct link: link to francetvsport.fr If you’re in the US, you’ll need to first download a VPN app or you’ll get a message that the video doesn’t exist. TunnelBear worked great for me for watching the Tour de France live from France and the women’s Giro d’Italia (daily recaps from Italy). It’s easy to use and you can download it free here: link to tunnelbear.com The commentary is in French, of course, and some of the stupid comments by the 2 male commentators made me wince a few times but the female commentator (former professional cyclist for the Futuroscope/Poitou-Charentes team) is good. It’s too bad that you have to work so hard to watch women’s cycling but interest is growing, so hopefully that will change. Vive “La Course by le Tour de France” (And let’s hope they come up with a better name…)
It is accessible within free VPN too. Thanks!
Excellent photo documentary Ray with some interesting snippets of information about how it appeared to be held. The coverage of La Course for the US was only done by Universal Sports Network. Here in the UK we were lucky enough to get a specific show from ITV broadcast just before Stage 21, but then there has been attempts by British TV (namely ITV and Eurosport) to provide more coverage of women’s cycle races over the past year. The inaugural Women’s Tour held in England in May this year (won by Vos too) was excellent, very well organised and better than La Course IMHO with many hundreds of people lining the streets for that alone (it wasn’t bolted onto any other race as a sideshow). There were highlights every night too. The Giro Rosa also surpassed La Course in terms of length as a tour, although lacked any TV coverage beyond highlights on Italian TV. But I guess it’s a start and maybe eventually they will have another Tour de France for women as they used to – I believe the final stage used to also finish on the Champs-Élysées before the men’s race back in the 1980s.
Thanks for this coverage of La Course. I am a long time cycling fan and was very disappionted in the lack of coverage here in the US. NBC gave a tiny interview (along with comments about her looks) of Shelley Olds. My service provider DirecTV carries the channel La Couse was on, Universal, but for unknown reasons had coverage blocked.
There is a long way to go for equality in women’s cycling.
In contrast to some of the comments posted above, here in the UK it was broadcast live on the ITV4 network. Good, concise commentary with feed-in by experienced female pro cyclist Rochelle Gilmore. It was a great race and deserved a wider audience-as indeed all female cycle racing does. Shame that merchandising opportunities were missed and riders areas so far from spectators. I really hope the UCI take this forward and help develop and promote a wonderful example of sport.
Great pictures Ray, BTW.
Great photos! Especially the last one, and several others.
Thank you so much for posting and sharing. I echo the sentiment of others – I had hoped for better coverage here in the U.S. I would have been willing to pay to watch it.
DSTV in South Africa has dedicated HD channel for the Tour, the showed the entire women’s race
My comment is still “awaiting moderation” , maybe because of links I added, so I’m reposting it here without the links. You can Google the sites if you want to find them:
Thanks for this excellent article, Ray, and the top-notch photos that really give you a sense of the day. I would have loved to be there! For those who’d like to watch (most of) the race, the second half was aired live on francetvsport. If you’re in the US, you’ll need to first download a VPN app or you’ll get a message that the video doesn’t exist. TunnelBear worked great for me for watching the Tour de France live from France and the women’s Giro d’Italia (daily recaps from Italy). It’s easy to use and you can download it free. The commentary is in French, of course, and some of the stupid comments by the 2 male commentators made me wince a few times but the female commentator (former professional cyclist for the Poitou-Charentes/Futuroscope team) is good. It’s too bad that you have to work so hard to watch women’s cycling but interest is growing, so hopefully that will change. Vive “La Course by le Tour de France” (And let’s hope they come up with a better name…)
You mentioned that at least one of the team cars was driven by a man (“he swapped the wheel quickly and gave her a push”). Were there any female drivers or mechanics?
I’m honestly not sure, I didn’t look to closely in the cars. The only reason I noted this one was that he was visible outside in the photo changing the wheel.
The warmup area, second photo from the top. There’s a woman in a wedding gown. Maybe you needed a wedding invitation to get into that area!
Nah, that’s just Paris Sunday style! It’s how we roll to bike races here…
As I scrolled down the pics, I notice that the police motorcyclist may have been all women… and then you commented exactly the same. Too bad the VIP areas weren’t filled with women VIPs… I always like your photo documentaries. I feel like I was “there”…
Marianne has posted her race on Strava now: link to strava.com You can also see the final few Ks from her perspective here: link to youtube.com The cobbles are a bit scary to watch!
Very cool. And also answers the speed question – which is that they peak out each lap about half-way down the Champs. Interesting.
Also of interest; according to that Strava activity, she’s using the Pioneer power meter. I don’t suppose you were able to confirm that Ray?
I can’t quite seem to find a good clean photo (either of mine, or from anyone else) where her foot isn’t blocking the drive side spider. If riding stock Pioneer, it’d be neon green if the older version, and firetruck red if the newer version. Though, both can be swapped out with custom plates – which means all bets are off there.
Great story and good pics. Perhaps of interest is the movie taken by Marianne Vos during the race and final sprint. Unfortunately, it’s a web site in Dutch, but the movie is without spoken word ;). link to m.nieuwsblad.be
Some history about La Course — check out link to halftheroad.com
link to facebook.com
Thanks for sharing the great photos and wonderful commentary! You captured so much that we couldn’t see on TV (luckily we were able to get Universal Sports to see the race itself.) Good insights, too.
In Australia SBS (national multicultural broadcaster) show La Course in full including interviews with several Australian post race. Due to time differences it was on about 9.00 pm on the Sunday night. Great to see Marianne Vos win the first La Course.
Thanks for the coverage! Great photos!