Stage 1 - Team Time Trial

Miles from Home - 5509.5 miles

Firsts / Highlights - First pro bike race

Miles Riden - 41.7 miles

Vertical Feet - 329 ft

Route - View Today's Route Here.



My observation about professional bike racers - they ride really really fast.

Bike racing isn't as much about cheering for your home country as some other sports. All of the teams are such a mixture of nationalities that it almost doesn't matter where the team is based. Almost. That said, today was a very good day for the American teams. The 2 American teams finished 1st and 2nd. Third place went to a team from Kazakhstan that has 3 American riders - Chris Horner, Levi Liepheimer and a newcomer named Lance (see picture #1).

Today's stage was the team time trail. No one I have spoken to remembers a team time trial ever being the first stages in a professional race. The obvious question is, "who wears the pink jersey?". Everyone on the winning team has the same GC time, so who is the leader? Since I was not at the awards ceremony after the race today, I still don't know the answer to that question. If you want a refresher what a team time trail or GC is or why anyone would care about wearing a pink shirt, refer to the post I wrote before leaving called Giro d'Italia Primer.

Today's stage was held on the Lido of Venice. An island with no bridges. I'm sure the team and event organizers spent a good deal of time figuring out the logistics for this one. A great image (which I was not able to capture) was a ferry loaded up with at least 25 team cars with 8 bikes on top of each car. It is already a big effort to move all of the stuff from stage to stage, but when you introduce water crossing, it just gets a little more interesting. Our tour group had a private boat take us over. It was big enough for 100 people, but we had 8 (including the guides). My bike had plenty of legroom.

Although I am on a pre-organized trip to address a lot of the complex planning required to follow the race, a certain amount of improvisation is still needed. When we arrived on the island about 4 1/2 hours before the start of the race, the time trial course was already barricaded and there were a number of police at every intersection for the entire length of the course. Since there is only really one road on the Lido, it was important for us to be able to ride the course in order to get to any location other than the starting line. We had found a small town about half way through the course where mid-stage time splits would be measured and the racers passed by on the same road in both directions. On paper, a pretty good viewing spot. Without access to the road, however, the plan was in jeopardy. Our Italian guides spoke to a number of different policemen and kept getting different stories. Eventually, they found one that would let us on the course. All was well. We were riding along the course all dressed out for the event, passing under banners indicating the number of kilometers left to go. It all seemed to be falling into place, for about 3 kilometers. That is when another policeman stepped into the road and held out his arms saying, "it is forbidden". We left the course and rode on a sidewalk for a couple of blocks -- until we found another policeman who allowed us back on the course. This happened at least 4 times. One would say we could not be on the course, one would say we must be on the right, another on the left, and finally that we had to be on the right until 1:00, then switch to the left until another said that we could not be on the course at all again. The "official" looking blue-coated police were very authoritarian and certain of their (contradictory) information. The green-coated officials didn't seem to care much one way of the other. We eventually made it to the location we initially set out to find. We had to cancel our plans to ferry to a second island for free-riding, but at least our viewing location was secure. Apparently you can play mom off against dad until you get the answer you want with the Venice police as long as you're persistent. Police roulette - successful this time.



The entire race was only 20km today. That is very short for a pro ride. I assumed that meant an easy day for the riders, but they actually put in a lot more distance than the race numbers would indicate. Every team rode past our viewing location about 4 times in each direction before the race. They were riding faster than any fast club rides, but probably about 75-85% of race speed. I don't know if they were riding and re-riding the entire course, but they were definitely doing more that a light warm-up. Now that I think about it, perhaps because the team time trial is such a rare event, maybe they were working through their communication and team riding tactics just in time for the race.

Although there are no hills in this area, there was a small rise over a bridge that made for a short viewing distance from our crosswalk. Near the beginning of the warm-up period, I had not seen many teams go by, so I was not calibrated to their speeds. I looked both ways and almost stepping in the road. At the last moment, I thought I saw some motion coming over the rise, so I stepped back. Within about 5 seconds, Team Columbia flew by with Mark Cavendish in the lead position. For those who don't know, Cavendish is the 23 or 24 year old phenom who is considered the fastest human on a bike right now. When it comes to a sprint, he seems to be unbeatable. I think he won 4 stages in the Tour de France last year, which is particularly impressive when you consider his age. If I had stepped into the road and taken out Cavendish, I would have been like the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face and apologized to him for causing so much trouble. Fortunately for both of us, it was a non-event.

I scouted for a while to find a good location to take pictures. I wanted a spot on a curve so you could see the teams fan out and catch more than one face. Then I needed a place that was not terribly backlit. I wanted to be on the out-and-back section of the course so that I could see each team twice. Finally, I wanted to be in one of the barricaded sections to give some perspective for the curve. I found what looked like a good location, which I later confirmed was a good choice. First, I noticed that there was a photographer from the national newspaper next to me. Then, a video crew from New York showed up and dropped a video camera next to me. They were shooting a documentary on Lance that they hope will have theatrical distribution after the Tour de France. The former editor of Winning Magazine was the director of the documentary, who pointed out a guy 5 feet further down who he introduced as the "best cycling photographer in the world". I don't know cycling photographers, but I'll take his word. At any rate, I think I found a pretty decent location. If only I could have had my "real" camera and lenses here...

Although the race was only 20km, viewing it took 11 hours. Left the hotel, road 10 miles to the boat, ferried to the island, rode the time trial course before it was closed, staked out a viewing spot, watched the race, rode back to the boat, ferried back across and rode back to the hotel. Now it is 8:15pm and time for dinner.

I have found that national TV goes to live coverage of the Giro every day from 3:30 - 5:00. They schedule the start time of each stage so that the high drama of each day will fall during that time. I look forward to pulling off to the side of the road at a cafe wherever I happen to be for the next 3 weeks to watch the live coverage. Even when I am not viewing each stage, this will keep things interesting.