I had wanted to provide regular updates on our Forum each evening, however after a promising start with this idea, things fell apart somewhat. Wireless internet access was available at all our hotels and early in the week this access was either free or very cheap. The further south we progressed brought higher internet charges (just like the beer prices really) and I decided that it was simply too expensive to continue the exercise.
I knew that the Irish lads who provided
the timing clocks for the last two years were not
on the race this time and I was wondering who was
going to be doing that job. Someone on the race had seen a couple of
timing displays with the name Seiko on; could it be that Roger or one
of his men would be joining me? The answer is a
definite 'no'. The clocks were, indeed from HS
Sports, but they had just hired a couple of boxes
from Roger. Pictured below left is the evidence
when the clocks went up on Day 1 at Castle Douglas.
Below right is a picture of both displays the following
day in Liverpool. Although they looked very smart
on the gantry, the whole thing was pretty much
a pointless exercise, as one clock just showed
time of day whilst the other had race time. I have
always maintained that gantry clocks are mainly for
decdoration, but at least you would expect race
time on one and time gaps on the other.
The time
was set by one of the usual finish crew. That is,
apart from the last day at the showpiece finale
on the Mall. They forgot to start the race time clock so it just showed
a nice prominent zero for the whole stage! Wouldn't
happen with professionals in charge, would it? Liverpool was a job and a half.
We had been warned that the council were very keen
on health and safety (quite rightly), but a bit
of overkill crept in somewhere along the line.
When I drove in to the finish area to unload my
kit there were more orange-jacketed safety people
about than there were race staff. After unloading,
I needed to move the van into a nearby side street,
and I wasn't allowed to move until there were two
safety inspectors guiding me. Apparently this was
because I might drive over a pedestrian! And so
on to Sheffield for the usual finish outside the
Town Hall in Pinstone Street. This stage has been
so popular in the past that spectators started
arriving very early. I spotted this character (right)
in a window overlooking the finishing line, and
I believe he had stayed on from last year because
he enjoyed it so much. I should mention here that
I was assisted this year by an old friend from
Le Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia. In 2001, Kannan
helped me for three weeks over there and this was
his first visit to the UK. He came over at his
own expense and I have to say that it was a real
pleasure working with him once again. I mention
this now because the good people of Sheffield had
heard that Kannan was on his way, and had decided
to erect a statue of him outside the Town hall
to celebrate his visit (left)! This seems like a
good point to mention our team. I have worked with
Seamus Shortall many times over the years, including
all Tours of Britain. Seamus, from Dublin, has
written the RapidResults program which I consider
to be the best cycling results program in use today.
Not only coming up with a quick and accurate result
for each stage plus overall general classification,
Seamus has developed a complete service which prints
and distributes those results to all officials
and teams direct to their hotels. Seamus was assisted
this year by Sharon, also over from Malaysia where
she has worked on Le Tour de Langkawi. I hadn't
met Sharon before, but have to say she was a pleasure
to work with. ...and then there was Kannan.
Here's all of us (below) in a variety of poses.
A smaller team than
last year as we had no Irish timing guys with us.
So how did we work together? As far as photofinish
is concerned, Kannan was the main man on the button.
I sat upstairs in the results/commentators vehicle
in front of the laptop. Next to me was a large screen monitor which
duplicated my own display, and in front of this was Chief Judge Trevor
Hughes. Connected directly into our network was Seamus, and I gave him
read/write access to the Lynx folder. [The write access enabled him
to send me a new lynx.ppl file each day]. Between us Trevor and I began
to identify riders as soon as the data came in. Sitting more or less
alongside was Seamus, and after the first half dozen or so had been
judged, he called a halt. I then saved the untitled(x).lif which Seamus
imported over the network into RapidResults. Trevor and Seamus then
checked the calculations were correct. This more or less meant that he
had sufficient information to print an initial
communique for the commentators and presentation
team so that the next part of the procedings could take place. Sharon
was responsible at this stage for the distribution. Only after this
was done did we continue with the judging. I mentioned to Seamus on
a couple of occasions that I felt that this year we had worked more
quickly and efficiently than we had ever done before. I think he agreed. I
left Kannan to switch the cameras off and pack
things away down below. It's important that this
is done as soon as possible after the last rider has come in because
the heavy mob will soon be scrambling up the towers and there is a risk
of equipment damage. When all my kit was stowed away Kannan then switched
to helping Seamus and Sharon with the completion of the results service. Talking
of the heavy gang, ever wondered how things are set up? Here's a couple
of the crew setting up the towers and gantry at Canterbury
(right). David
knows my feelings about the awful T-Mobile banners
which affect my camera positions, and they trouble
him as well. We usually had our daily moan about the situation. At Canterbury
on Saturday, David said he was determined to get
a better camera position for the showpiece finale
the following day. "I'm going
to cut a f*****g hole in that banner tomorrow" was the polite
phrase. "I'm not hearing this David", said I. Following day, see below left.
Two of the guys cutting a hole in a banner! Later
on I saw David with a big smile on his face and
asked how he managed it. Apparently he just approached
the T-Mobile marketing manager and told her that they wanted to cut
a hole in her banner. The reply was "Great,
go ahead".
Now, can you imagine the response if we were to
do the same? The finished product, complete with
TV camera can be seen above right. Now that the subject
of television has been brought up (wonder who did
that?), I had a surprise when I arrived at the
Mall for the final day. BBC Grandstand were transmitting live during
the afternoon, and it had been decided that the commentary team would
be sharing our little room at the top. We suspected
that this would make life difficult for us because
there was little enough room as it was. Sure enough,
as the picture below shows, they really blocked
off our way in and out. Left to right, David Kenyon,
Hugh Porter and Chris Boardman. Time for a few pictures
from the race which I want to squeeze in somewhere.
Now what on earth was Kannan up to in Canterbury?
Well, early in the race he gave me a tip which
I had never even considered before. All straight in finishes
can be a little fraught, and this race in particular is a definite
cure for constipation. Kannan suggested waving a race number in
front of the cameras to check that they
were clearly visible. We didn't have a proper rider's
number so we printed one. It worked a treat. He followed this up by
walking across the line holding the number against his hip. Absolutely
marvellous - you do come in handy sometimes Kannan!
Take a look in the Gallery for a Lynx pic of Kannan's
arm. Thanks to Kannan I am almost fluent in Malay
(and if you believe that you will believe anything!).
During the race it was Malaysian Independence Day
so he taught me to say "Happy Independence
Day". I was reluctant to try it out on any of our
Malaysian visitors because I thought he had taught
me to swear, but when I eventually did try it out
all was well. So Kannan my friend, if you read this
I would like to say "Terima kasih" for
all your help during the Tour. This year's
And finally...... |
Now then, on to something which really tickled me. I've waited three years for
this! The TV production manager was a guy called
David Kenyon, and both Bob and I have known him for many years as he's always
involved with televised cycling. At the start of
every Tour he
always comes up to ask for any close finishes to
be put onto a CD so that they can use the images
later. Whenever possible he likes to position one
of their cameras close to ours and this becomes the TV version of photofinish. 
