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Team TIAA-CREF - 2005
Team Journal Entry - August 18, 2005, by Timmy Duggan
The ultimate fan - gone mad
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You really see it all at the big races in Europe. Huge carnivals, goofy looking publicity vehicles, and of course crazy fans. You know the devil guy who runs after the racer with a pitch fork? Well at the Tour de l'Ain, we had a similar character following the race. I'm all about crazy fans, I think they're good for the sport, but this one was a little weird. Or maybe 'scary' is a better word. He was the ultimate chamois sniffer.
The devil guy is paid by a German business to go to the races and get on TV, but this guy I think has other motives. The first time we saw him was a few kilometres from the line on one of the finishing circuits. He was wearing Bouygues Telecom team bike shorts and a French national championship jersey holding a giant flag and yelling "Allez, allez, allez!" into a big megaphone. Normal enough, probably a nice guy and a good bike fan, I thought. I think he must be at a lot of races, because all the riders when we passed him started mumbling a few things about him and waving to him.
The next day we raced by him again after climbing the 18km of the Col de la Columbiere. Again, same shorts, jersey, and megaphone. Then it started getting weird. We sat down for dinner at the race hotel with several other teams that night when he busted into the restaurant greeting everybody with things to autograph. He was still in his cycling shorts and jersey, and it was 9:30 at night. We tried to look engaged in our meal and not make eye contact with him as he made his rounds through the hotel restaurant, and luckily we were spared meeting this obnoxious guy. Not so for the RAGT Semances team. The guy sat down at their table mid-meal with a stack of cards to autograph and a couple of hours of things to talk about.
Then it got weirder.
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After his 'friends' left the table, he stayed behind alone to polish off the leftovers of the race meal. It was race meal food, it wasn't even that good! Yikes. We successfully departed the restaurant without incident, but I think this guy had an eye on our soigneur, Alyssa.
Now it gets really weird. We found out the next morning that he slept in a sleeping bag on the hotel balcony in front of Alyssa's room, still in his bike shorts, with his French national jersey as a pillow. Then after we had vacated our hotel rooms, he took a shower in Alyssa's empty room. I'm not kidding about this. He must be homeless or something. As we were packing our stuff to drive to the start, he was kitted up in the same stinky, I mean really stinky, clothes, and was making the rounds with all the teams staying at the hotel trying to leave. While we were waiting in the parking lot, he opened our van door and quite contrary to Alyssa's wishes gave her a big kiss on the cheek before she slammed the door and sped out of the lot. Oh man, that was gross! He followed everybody out to the race with his flag and megaphone strapped to his backpack. We raced by him again that day on the final climb of the day.
Before I came around the corner and I heard "allez allez allez" on a megaphone I made sure to make my way to the other side of the road to avoid the stink and possibly a kiss. Phew. It was funny, he was right in the middle of a ton of people watching on this climb, but there was like a 20 foot bubble around him where nobody was. It was probably the fact he's been wearing the same pair of cycling shorts for a week straight. I think he's getting old, but that I hope the devil with the pitch fork guy stays in the spotlight as the most popular crazed cycling fan because if this guy takes over we're all in trouble.
