It’s been disturbing to learn of the bombs at the Boston Marathon. Some have expressed surprise that a sports event was attacked and others have wondered if it could happen at the Tour de France.
But it has happened before. As the video clip above from 1974 shows, several vehicles were destroyed by plastic explosives planted by GARI, a political group that was active at the time.
In 1987 French police intercepted Basque separatists armed with weapons, explosives and incendiary devices along with a map of the Pyrenees on which the route of one of the Tour stages was highlighted in blue and police believed the race was going to be attacked.
As recently as 2007 two small devices exploded on 25 July on the route of the Tour de France but nobody was harmed.
GARI has vanished and the Basque group ETA has announced a “definitive ceasefire”.
High profile contests and large crowds attract attention, usually for all the right reasons but sadly for negative ones too. The Tour remains a celebration and nobody should be scared to take part in the fun.
Kreuziger launches his winning move in the Amstel Gold Race.
More at http://inrng.com/2013/04/the-moment-the-race-was-won-amstel-gold-race/
In het wiel van Eddy Merckx
“On the wheel of Eddy Merckx” was launched by the Flemish-Brabant Tourist Office, the Rupel Area-Vaartland Tourist Office and the Sportimonium sports museum for the centenary of the Tour of Flanders.
The style reminds me of an early Michel Gondry music video.
You can find cycling routes, history and more at:
The poster for “La Grande Boucle”, a French film due to be released this summer.
The predictable plot features a man in a midlife crisis overcoming challenges to rebuild his life. The story goes that he’s lost his wife, job and more and has only his bike left. He decides to ride the Tour de France one day ahead of the race. At first the project is crazy but people pick up on it, he gets joined by others, crowds applaud him, the media go crazy and even the Tour de France maillot jaune gets jealous of the attention and publicity.
It could turn out to be great… but it looks like what the French call a téléfilm, something that goes straight to TV.
In 1986 Franco-Algerian artist Mahjoub Ben Bella painted 12km of the Paris-Roubaix cobbles. It might be the longest piece of art in the world but there is little trace of the work today, except this photo via local newspaper La Voix du Nord.
