Tour De France – Stage 16 – Beyond Horizon Media

Stage 16. We made it.

Stage 16 was an 22k individual time trial from Passy to Combloux in the shadow of Mont Blanc. There were three goals for today: 1) shoot some of the early riders at a location that had Mont Blanc as the backdrop, 2) shoot Neilson Powless and MVDP at the top of the Cat 2 Cote de Domancy climb, and 3) shoot the finish starting with Wout van Aert. At the end of the day, it was a 2.5/3. Mistimed the logistics by a few minutes, and missed Wout by a tiny bit. Not a terrible start to my TDF.

I wrote about the helicopters at the Dauphine, and the Tour upped that a level. It was hard to tell, but there were at least four helicopters circling the relatively small race course. You could always tell when a bigger name rider was about to come by, because the number of TV motor bikes, VIP cars, and low flying helicopters would rapidly increase. Pretty interesting to see unfold.

This Soudal – Quickstep rider was followed by one TV moto. That was chill compared to the entourage behind the leaders.

My biggest concern with missing Wout’s finish was whether it meant missing the storyline of the day. Luckily for me that turned out to not be the case. In a tight general classification battle between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, only 10 seconds separated them coming into the stage. The big question looming over the race is whether one would blow the GC battle to shreds. Jonas did just that putting 1:38 into Tadej (who still managed the second fastest TT of the bunch).