Once again, I was excited to hear that you wanted to go watch another bike race, which made it back-to-back weekends. This weekend London was hosting the preview of the 2012 Olympic cycling road race course. The headline teams from the Tour de France would not be here since this race would be performed by country teams instead, but a good amount of the professional well known cyclists attended. The most notable was Great Britain's, Mark Cavendish (the Manx Missle himself), who is the green jersey sprint champion from the Tour de France.
The course started down the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace and finished there as well. We ended up meeting the Blossoms near the 500m sign before the finish line to witness the incredible speed in the final sprint, which can get up to 50mph.....yes, that is incredibly fast for a top speed not going down a hill.
This was our view along the side boards as the sprinters would come down Kensington High Street and around Hyde Park Corner towards Buckingham Palace.
Coltan was kind enough to be our eyes and ears for the action coming around the corner. This event was pretty special as I was able to watch it with Kate and the Blossom family. I rode in the Little 500 bike race at Indiana University with Sam Blossom, which made this a great day for us to spend together.
Here comes the pace car and all of the motorcycles....the cyclists can't be too far behind.
Let the action begin as you can see the break away group snaking down the road trying to gain position for the final 500 meters.
You can see the green helmet of Mark Cavendish on the inside panel of the boards in great position.
Coltan continued to cheer them on by blowing his whistle and banging on the side boards. What a great fan!!! Sam, you look like your ears might be ringing right now...haha.
The American hopeful, Tyler Farrar, got caught up in a crash prior to coming around the corner so he was unable to challenge Cavendish for the gold.
Look at all of these bikes......that's A LOT of high end machinery sitting up there.
I think the main peloton decided to sit up and enjoy the rest of the ride in as they had already done their work to set up their sprinters for a chance to win. This was still a great shot.
As expected, Mark Cavendish pulled away at the end and ended up taking the gold. There is always a lot of pressure for him to perform as he is known as the best sprinter in the world, and may go down as the best sprinter in history by the time his career is over.
This concluded our day, but gave us a great preview of what we'll be able to watch on TV next August.
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