Gironingen

[gerbie]

Yesterday I went to Groningen to see the start of the Giro D'Italia, the cycling tour of Italy. This year it started in the Netherlands. It was a great day; there was four of us, all cycling fans, probably even addicts come to think of it. In the morning we walked around town, at the Vismarkt all the teams had their coaches/vans, the mechanics preparing the cycles for the cyclists. We already had seen Cipollini doing a test ride of the local circuit. We saw Sorensen and some other lesser gods there. During the warming up several of the riders came past the point we had chosen to see the start. The prologue, a 6.5km time trial took all afternoon. It was brilliant to see them all go by one after each other. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to have the starting order, so we had to gamble who was due to come past. After seeing the first one from each team, we set of for a walk past the route. We stopped a few times on different points, ended at 800m from the finish line, where we saw the last 50-ish go past, including all favourites. It was such a great day. Brilliant atmosphere, no trouble at all, good sports. Beats football any day!