10:17 PM CDT on Saturday, July 16, 2005
They were hairy, too, as their matching bright orange bikinis revealed.
And like most everyone else on the road, they were very much in the way.
Not that they cared, of course, sipping what assuredly was something
stronger than cola from their cups.
They yelled something. I stared and continued my car's crawl in first
gear through what had become a phalanx. It was like going through a car
wash, except the big spinning brushes were human beings. One little
girl, apparently being taught how to get into the spirit of Tour
fanaticism, sprayed my car and every other vehicle with water from her
bottle.
And these folks were just getting started. It was still a good two hours
before Austrian Georg Totschnig raced first up Ax-3 Domaines, the final
and steepest Pyrenean ascent in Stage 14. Lance Armstrong hit the finish
line almost a minute behind Totschnig, but retained the yellow jersey
and further distanced himself from second-place Michael Rasmussen of
Denmark.
But how they managed to find a swath up the road and all of its tricky
switchbacks was amazing, even with vehicles plowing the way in front of
them.
Can you imagine what the Cotton Bowl would look like for Texas-OU if
seats weren't assigned, fans were allowed on the field and security was
given the day off? Or what Yankee Stadium would be like with the Red Sox
playing and every fan who wanted to be there not only in the place but
standing down the baselines, on the warning track and, every now and
then, running from base to base with a successful batter, cheering or
jeering him crazily all the way?
That's exactly what the Tour looked like on what was the first of its
three stages in the Pyrenees. The bicycling crazed denizens from Spain's
Basque region were decked out in Oklahoma State orange. They screamed,
often right in riders' ears. They ran alongside them, sometimes in
skivvies or costume, draped in or carrying banners, and almost always
fueled on alcohol in thin air.
And Stage 14's crowd was relatively tame. Lance didn't report being spat
at with curse words and spittle going up Port Pailheres and Ax-3
Domaines.
He'll be lucky if that's the case today up Col de Peyresourde and
Pla-d'Adet. If history repeats itself, the crowd for Stage 15 will be
the deepest and craziest. That also means it will be the most dangerous.
They love this sport here; respect it, too. But as the number of fans
have swelled over the years, especially during the Lance Era, when their
ranks have been fattened with America's curious and stoked with Lance
resentment, they've gone from being mere spectators to participants.
They are threatening to ruin this event, just like they've almost done
the run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. (Although that will be good
for the bulls.)
Lance was pulled down a couple summers ago going up Luz-Ardiden when his
handlebar tangled with a spectator's bag. He rose quickly and, in a
panic, sped off and caught the leaders and won the stage.
Italian Giuseppe Guerini fell off his bike in 1999 after colliding with
a spectator trying to take his picture. Frenchman Laurent Jalabert was
badly hurt when he crashed into a picture-taking gendarme in 1994.
The problem is getting scarier for everybody. Tour cars hit three
children in 2002 and a 7-year-old boy died. Another spectator was killed
in 2000.
Something's got to be done. Lance's team requested more barriers be put
up on some mountain climbs, but Tour bosses refused. They should
reconsider, or start shutting down the mountain earlier to tourists.
"Had an hour and a half to get to the start," Lance said unhappily after
Stage 14.
His boss, Discovery Channel director Johan Bruyneel, said he doesn't
know what can be done without taking the element of human interaction
from the Tour that makes it so different from any other major sporting
event.
"The only thing that could be improved is to discipline the public,"
Bruyneel told Reuters before the Tour set out for the Pyrenees. "It's
always a miracle to go through such crowds without an accident."
Lance remarked that he'd be at a disadvantage today making it up six
mountains without his injured teammate Manuel Beltran, his climbing
specialist.
"That'll be the day we miss him the most," Lance said. "Because you need
bodies."
At this stage, bodyguards would be helpful, too.
AX-3 DOMAINES, France – The higher I drove en route to the ski
resort atop this mountain where the Tour de France was to finish
Saturday, the fewer gendarmes there seemed to be. It was possible, I
suspected, that they'd been overrun on the narrow two-lane road by all
the crazed onlookers, like a trio of guys who looked like they hoped to
make a movie called Three the Lard Way.
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