I know many of you who post on this forum have gone to watch a grand tour live. I'll be getting my first chance to do that this September while my girlfriend and I are in Spain.
I plan on catching a couple of stages while they are in and around the Granada area. Stage 15 ends in Granada and there is a Cat 1 climb over the Alto de Monachil about 20 km from the end of the stage I thought might be a good place to spectate from and get some excellent photos.
I was hoping a few of you might be able to shed some light on the logistics for a stage of a grand tour. I've hear the TdF is nuts but both the Giro & Vuelta provide some great opportunities to get close to the racing and interact with the riders. Some of the questions I had were...
-How early do you need to arrive at the mountain top to get a spot (would early that morning be sufficient? -Can you drive up there or would the roads be closed many hours in advance? -If you can drive up early in the morning, how long after the last riders have passed before you can follow them back into town on that road? -Would it be better to just wait in the city at the finish line? -Is it easy to get autographs by hanging out near the team buses or are all the riders well sequestered? -For getting autographs, is it better to go at the end of a stage or before they start one? -After stage 15 the riders have a rest day. Do rest days present any opportunities to speak with/get photos of the riders?
Any information or tips anyone can provide to help me make the most of this experience would be much appreciated. I'd be happy to share the pictures I get when I'm back.
I'm posting on this thread again to bump it back up to the top, in an attempt (possibly vain) to get some responses. I searched the forum for a while with minimal success in getting answers to my questons.
Has anyone been to a mountain stage of the Giro or the Vuelta? Any tips would be appreciated!
Or even if anyone could recommend a good resource to research this before I get over there. 😕
I'm posting on this thread again to bump it back up to the top, in an attempt (possibly vain) to get some responses. I searched the forum for a while with minimal success in getting answers to my questons.
Has anyone been to a mountain stage of the Giro or the Vuelta? Any tips would be appreciated!
Or even if anyone could recommend a good resource to research this before I get over there. 😕
I've been to stages of the Giro and the Tour, and seen the Vuelta when it passed through Barcelona. I imagine the Vuelta will be more like the Giro in that there will be crowds but they will be lesser. Definitely watch the race on a mountain, preferably the last mountain of the day's stage and look for the steepest part. That way you get the riders coming past you at slow speeds, and in smaller groups so you get to see more than a stage finish where the bunch zips by at 50kph. From my experience you should be able to drive up a climb even a few hours before the race passes through. We went to the Mortirolo on race day last year and wandered up the climb an hour before the race was due, no problems. (Obviously we rode the climb the day before, and that hurt!) I've been on Alpe D'Huez on race day and that is altogether different. The road is shut to cars (but not bikes/walkers) way before the race goes through and the crowds are huge so finding a spot is tough. The Vuelta should be easier though. As soon as the race has all gone through you can then go down the mountain, although you will be in the crowd going down so it might get a little congested. Hope this helps?
-Is it easy to get autographs by hanging out near the team buses or are all the riders well sequestered? -For getting autographs, is it better to go at the end of a stage or before they start one? -After stage 15 the riders have a rest day. Do rest days present any opportunities to speak with/get photos of the riders?
Any information or tips anyone can provide to help me make the most of this experience would be much appreciated. I'd be happy to share the pictures I get when I'm back.
Cheers, Pad
The best experience I had at a race was at the TdF in 1987. It was the 4th stage I think from Pfozheim to Strasbourg and we were at the finish. Only problem was we got there late, didn't really know where we were going and ended up about 100m's behind the finish line. We didn't get to see any of the race, but we were perfectly positioned to meet the riders afterwards. We just walked up to Stephen Roche to say hello and ended up chatting to him for about 5 minutes. He grew up just down the road from me, so we had a great chat and he even told a French tv crew to wait because he wasn't finished talking to me! We then met Paul Kimmage as well and we wandered freely around among the riders and team cars for about half an hour and got to check out all the bikes. The riders were pretty cool about letting me up close to the bikes. Only regret was I couldn't find Sean Kelly among the crowd, but still a great experience.
