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news
Behind the scenes at the Friends Life Women's Tour with Matrix Vulpine - Stage 1
Today saw the first stage of the first ever Friends Life Women’s Tour of Britain - we’ll be following the action from within the peloton courtesy of the Matrix Vulpine team and photographer Paul Calver who’s embedded with them for the duration. Stage One took the riders on a 93.8Km route from Oundle to Northampton taking in the rolling hills of Northamptonshire.
Every day as soon as the racing is done Paul will upload a gallery of images telling the story of the team’s day. Here’s his stage one gallery. it was a baptism of fire for Matrix Vulpine girls and Harriet Owen in particular as Robin Godden from Vulpine explains:
“After 35km’s Harriet was involved in a crash leaving her with a smashed helmet and a 15km chase back to the peloton. Just as she bridged the gap a mechanical stopped her again. But a quick change of bike and she was on her way.
“The final 30kms were fast as Specialized Lululemon & Rabo Liv could smell a sprint.
Our girls were represented as Jessie rode to 18th with Helen safely in the bunch & Jo, Penny, Mel & Harriet just behind.
‘Stage one was fantastic; great racing and big crowds.
“Bring on Stage 2!”
The size of the crowds, on a day not blessed with great weather was a source of comment afterwards, both stage winner Emma Johansson and World Champion, Marianne Vos were said to be shocked at the size and volume of roadside support. Indeed such was the noise that Lizzie Armistead who led with 500m to go said afterwards that she had been fooled by the size of the crowd in to going too early - she eventually finished 8th after her Boels-Dolmans team had done the bulk of work in chasing down French national champion, Elise Delzenne in the final kilometres
For full news and results from today's stage visit thetour.co.uk and you can find out more about the Matrix Vulpine by visiting their website http://www.onthedrops.cc/team/
road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.
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15 comments
ITV4 Woman's tour
With Ned and Jose Been
Excellent
Awesome race and a great highlights programme. I had wondered why Lizzie went so early, but the crowds volumes are a plausible reason I guess.
Also, I can't help thinking that with a smaller field, the organisers are able to be a bit more flexible with the route - some of those roads I'd be happy to use on a club run or the like, whereas men's races tend to be on nasty A roads that you wouldn't bother with unless you had to. If it ever comes up north (it needs to not be restricted to the current area) I could be tempted to ride the stage on a Sunday morning.
Here's my photo set from Day 1 - bloody hard getting decent shots yesterday due to the sheer volume of people selfishly turning up to watch and getting in my way
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53502257@N06/sets/72157644513454656/
Right - off to Bedford....
I sneak out and watch then just outside of Hinkley today if possible. Let's given them as much support as possible!
Well done Jessie and the team
Wifey's out on Sat, so I'll be turning up at Welwyn
A cracking first stage. ITV4 doing great stuff with limited resources, although that said, I missed on-screen info about km remaining, separation, etc.
Hope to make it down to Bury St Edmund's on Sunday for the finish of stage 5. Guess it'll have to be early to beat the crowds
And Eurosport 2 @ 22:00.
Men's ToB coverage was live last year on tv. At
East the last 2-3 hours were for most if not all of the stages
Bearing in mind that we have to wait a week for brief highlights of Womens World Cup events (broadcast on BBC Red Button), I think that a daily highlights package on a terrestrial TV channel is very good going for the first year. It shows the faith that the broadcasters have in the promoters to get the crowds out & package a good race for the teams. Just think of where cycling on TV was only 5 years ago...
I agree but ITV4 have the rights - highlights in the evening - presumably part of a bigger package including TdF and ToB. Covering an event live is big money (as opposed to quickly editing the tapes afterwards). At the TdF they have two 'copters up at all times relaying the pictures between the bikes and the sat trucks - that's pretty spendy but they can recoup it by selling it across the world - the audience isn't there to justify that investment for this race in the UK (yet) never mind across Europe but hopefully it will come. From memory I can't recall whether the men's ToB was live last year either.
9pm highlights package on ITV4 https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/itv4 from http://prowomenscycling.com/2014/05/04/womens-tour-of-britain-2014-live/
brilliant - thanks for pointing out!
I wish the beeb or any other broadcaster had seen fit to show live footage or at least extended highlights; such a breakthrough event for the calendar and instead we see repeats of the 2013 Giro on Eurosport??
I can see my hand (and camera) in that finish line shot. Cracking day - crowds were a lot bigger than I was expecting.