MONDAY JULY 9TH
PROLOGUE
LONDON 7.9 km
THE big day is finally here!
After weeks of talking about it and planning, tonight we rode the first stage
of the Tour de France at the end of an incredibly busy few days for us all.
Our first real Tour exposure came last Sunday when we all rode the Cyclo
Sportif that traced the course of stage one of the Tour from London to
Canterbury, a ride of about 120 miles which attracted around 5,000 cyclists of
all standards.
Team Thomas had a great turn-out that day, along with all sorts of friends,
including The Fireflies, a group of cyclists with whom I've become friendly over
the past year and who do a great job for leukaemia fund raising.
I guess our most high-profile guest rider that day was my old Crystal Palace
pal Ian Wright who, as you probably know from all the great media he has helped
attract, has pledged to ride the first week of the Tour with us.
Now, Wrightie being Wrightie, I don't think he has done any training for the
past six weeks despite, like all of us, being the proud owner of a
state-of-the-art Trek bike. I think he muttered something about having spent all
his life training and not needing to do it now.
To prove the point, he turned in an heroic performance last Sunday, with the
help of Dave Grainger from our Tour team. Dave rode most of the second half of
the course with Wrightie, keeping his spirits up and encouraging him all the way
to the finish line in a little over nine hours not a bad effort at all
considering the lack of training.
I think the experience gave Wrightie a new-found respect for what the Tour
was all about and he has obviously become an absolute cycling nut judging by all
the questions he was asking the boys as we dodged the traffic around central
London tonight, retracing the steps that the pros did in the prologue on
Saturday.
And, in return, I know all the guys on Team Thomas have a new-found respect
for Wrightie after the guts he showed in keeping going last weekend.
But the real Tour weekend kicked off on Friday when I'm honoured to say we
were invited to be part of the Official Team Presentation in Trafalgar Square.
All the Tour guys came along and we formed part of a sort of introductory
ceremony and it was a memorable evening with maybe as many as half a million
people crammed into the square.
People said afterwards how good we all looked in our official Tour kit
courtesy of our sponsors Impsport who have done an absolutely incredible job in
kitting us out and we certainly got the first big cheer of the night before the
proper big guns came on.
Compared to how we approached riding the Tour two years ago, it shows how
much recognition the charity now has, for us to be asked to form part of the
Tour's opening ceremony and, bearing in mind the this whole exercise is about
raising the Foundation's profile, I could not have been happier.
I know Becky, our tireless manager, was stood in the crowd wearing our
t-shirts and she was approached by a lot of people wishing us luck and saying
they had read the book and supported us in other ways. Stuff like that makes all
of this worthwhile.
There was also a ton of media for us to do over Friday and Saturday, the
likes of GMTV, Sky, BBC News 24, Eurosport & others I can't even remembers.
And just seeing the Tour in all its glory on Saturday was a firm reminder of
just why I have fallen in love with this great sport over the past few years. It
was magnificent, a sight nobody who was there will ever forget and there may
well have been over a million people on the streets watching Fabian Cancellara
win Saturday's prologue it certainly seemed like twice that number.
So, that brought us around to our own attempts to beat Mr Cancellara although
the only way I could see us breaking nine minutes was if we timed our prologue
ride so all the lights were green!
As it was, we all gathered in our Knightsbridge hotel during the afternoon
thanks to the Thistle Hotel in Kensington Park for their sponsorship, by the way
and, after we had been joined by a few more guest riders around 8pm we were off
on the start of our adventure.
Along with Wrightie was his great pal and a former opponent of mine from our
playing days Mitchell Thomas. A dear old friend, Gino Gonzalez, came with us, as
did Dr Jamie Cavanagh (apologies if I spelled that incorrectly Jamie!) which
gave us a good-sized group of 11 riders.
The traffic wasn't too bad at that time and we breezed around the circuit
with the minimum of fuss, clocking up just over 10 miles, or 16km, by the time
we had ridden to the start and finish from the hotel. We had a fair bit of
bobbing and weaving to do but it just showed our intent to do what we did two
years ago and cover every mile that the pros do.
So one stage and 7.9 kilometres down let's hope it's all going to be this
straightforward and painless.
Something tells me it won't be.
