Grenoble Day 12 - Le tour spectating in Lyon

Day 12 in Grenoble saw us venturing out to our first stage of le tour for the trip. The stage saw a 191km race from Saint-Pourcain-Sur-Sioule to the city of Lyon. While not expected to cause much of a shake up for the GC, the stage is far from a pure sprint stage with 5 Category 4 climbs and 2 Category 3 climbs along the way making it a likely stage for a breakaway. 

We caught the train from Grenoble to Lyon to watch the finish of the stage which took about 1.5 hours. With Lyon being the 3rd largest city in France by population, we were expecting quite a bit to be happening in the city. To our surprise the city was much more like a ghost town when we first arrived in the morning with most of the city shut. Despite this, our walk to the finishing line of the stage was fairly scenic as we made our way along the river that runs through the city. 

We decided to try and get as close to the finish line as possible and park up a good spot to watch the race from. As a result we managed to get a spot about 350 metres from the finish line which was a fairly good spot to watch the finish from as the leaders fought for position for the final sprint towards the line. It was a long wait in the hot sun but the freebies being handed out and the parade about an hour before the race arrived provided some entertainment while we waited. 

Unfortunately, the day went a little downhill when a local French guy tried to push his way into our spot against the barriers. Upon telling him that there was no room for him, Andrew unfortunately coped an elbow to the mouth for his troubles. After a bit of a heated exchange we managed to settle the situation but it certainly put a bit of a dampener on the mood. 

As expected, the race finished with the breakaway managing to hang on for the win with Orica Greenedge's Michael Albasini just getting pipped at the line. 

Overall it was good to finally get to our first stage for the trip however we were left with a pretty dull first impression of Lyon which was a little unfortunate. Tomorrow we tackle the climb up to Mont St Martin which is meant to be a baby version of the Alpe d'Huez.