Mike and Lili go to the Big Race!

Last week Israel was host to the opening of the “Giro”, Italy’s answer to the Tour de France.  The Giro has adopted a practice (marketing genius!) of starting the race in another country for the first three stages, before returning to Italy where the race concludes several weeks later.  This was the first time that the Giro organizers chose a country outside Europe, and the people of Israel were thrilled.  The time trials were in Jerusalem on Friday, followed by two long stages: the first, 167 km, from Haifa to Tel Aviv on Saturday, and the next, 229 km, on Sunday down through the desert to Eilat.

This was exciting, and since neither Mike nor I have ever seen anything of a big bike race, I consulted everything I could find on the internet to see when it might be passing by our neighbourhood. And notwithstanding Israel’s reputation as a high-tech powerhouse, the information that we were able to track down in English was unenlightening to say the least, but I took comfort in subsequently finding that the Hebrew speakers seemed no better informed. Maybe Italy handled all of that.

Now, in retrospect, I feel pretty stupid for not figuring out the likely time of the pass-through, but at the time, I just looked at the diagram that had what looked like “times” on it, and planned to be on Ibn Gvirol (a 7 minute walk from out house) at around 4:40. When we arrived, officials were still letting people cross the street, which was closed to traffic of course, so we took up a prime spot and waited.

Sure enough, soon afterwards, one of the police officers pulled up on a motorbike and gave instructions to the yellow jacketed volunteers (who had NO clue when anything would happen), and they closed the barriers. We felt pretty smug for having arrived just in time, and for having found a prime viewing spot!.

And we waited, and waited.  People who wanted to cross the street were told to wait, and numerous arguments ensued since it was obvious looking down the road that other crossings were letting people through, and that nothing was about to happen.

Time passed. More police/officials showed up on motorbikes and more people crossed the street. More spectators came and started to speculate on when the big moment would arrive.  We were getting on 45 minutes of waiting, and then some sponsor cars went by… their passengers waving merrily and enjoying the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd.  At that point we were happy to have anything to cheer.  And we waited…and waited…and waited some more.   More sponsor cars…more police…more nothing…and we waited.

It reminded me of going fishing with my Dad…lots of waiting in  the eternal hope that something would happen…any little sign was important, and an indication that the big fish, or even a little one, would bite any minute now. The race organizers sent out enough teases that we all thought something was about to occur, and we all stayed…and stayed…and stayed.

Finally at around 6:00, close to an hour and a half after we arrived, the serious cars came by, with equipment, spare bikes on top; also police on motorbikes, press, security types etc.  At this point, only the anarchic tried to cross the street…and of course there were a few of those…there always are…they just leapt over the barriers.

So here is the thing…I now realize that nothing really important happens until the  surveillance helicopter shows up! And finally it did.  At this point, I noticed that there was a little girl behind me who couldn’t see anything. I looked down and motioned her forward in front of me, and when I looked up the peloton went whizzing by.  It took seconds. The crowd barely had time to cheer!  And that was it…90 minutes of waiting…about 9 seconds of the race…if that.   Mike said that he now had a good answer to those who complain that baseball is too much wait time for too little action…clearly those folks have never gone to a bike race.

The cyclists who got the most cheering were those poor laggards that were well behind the clump (pardon me…peloton) of faster riders.  You could see them visibly embarrassed by the attention.  But the enthusiastic crowd just wanted to show their appreciation and had not had enough time to to do that for the front runners. This might be the only sport where the losers get the most applause.

So there you go. Our first, and certainly our last, bicycle race. I am sticking to TV from here on in.