R E C E N T L Y Bad news from a black coast: Part Two By Moritz Thomsen Part Two of Moritz Thomsen's unpublished memoir (07/15/98) Bad news from a black coast By Moritz Thomsen Moritz Thomsen in Ecuador: Exclusive excerpts from his unpublished memoir (07/14/98) The saddest gringo: Moritz Thomsen in exile By Pat Joseph An unforgettable encounter with the legendary writer shortly before his death (07/14/98) Dancing in the streets By Ethan Zindler Dancing in the streets -- Paris celebrates the World Cup (07/13/98) Wimbledon's grand finale By Simon Worrall From Jack Nicholson to knicker shots, behind the scenes at the All England Club (07/13/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives		t o u r . e n .. I R L A N D E The Tour de France, the world's largest annual sporting event, begins with three days of pomp and pedaling -- in Ireland. - - - - - - - - - BY DAVID MOORE DUBLIN, Ireland --The preparations begin early, crowds gather and the excitement mounts. Suddenly there's a flash of color, a burst of noise, and then it's gone again, leaving people slightly unsure of what they've just seen. So it is that cyclists fly by as you watch from the side of the road, and so it is that the Tour de France leaves Ireland after three memorable days. It might seem as if a bike race with 189 cyclists (none of them Irish) might cause only minimal disruption and raise little interest in a country growing increasingly used to an influx of foreign visitors. But the Tour de France is both an engrossing sporting event and a spectacle of huge proportions. The Tour is the largest annual sporting event in the world, with a global TV audience of around 950 million people. This year its start coincided with the climax of the soccer World Cup in Paris, and even the sports-mad French pondered the wisdom of hosting both events in the same country simultaneously. To give the race some added sparkle, and after persistent and persuasive campaigning from the Irish, the Tour started last week in Dublin. It was the biggest event to happen there since 1979, when the pope said Mass in Dublin's Phoenix Park for over a million people. The scale of the Tour operation is breathtaking. The entourage comprises 5,000 people, 3,000 vehicles and three helicopters. The TV crews following the event arranged their own transport to and from mainland Europe -- ARD from Germany rented an Aleutian 80 transport plane (the largest of its kind in the world), while the French channel Antenne 2 acquired a ship. The race even brought its own police force -- 50 French gendarmes checked their guns at the door, but rode around on their motorbikes with impressive hauteur and cool sunglasses. The center of Dublin was closed to traffic from midnight Friday until 5 p.m. Sunday (setting up Car Exclusion Zones on behalf of bicycles, met with wry approval from the more regular cyclists in this hugely congested city -- no chance of this being permanent, I suppose?). Similar measures were taken all along the route, as the race wove its way through Wicklow on Sunday and through the south of the country on Monday, heading for Cork. That this mammoth force came at all is a testament to the Tour's regard for history. Ireland produced two of the best cyclists of recent times in Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly. In 1987, Roche won the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the world championship, a feat not since repeated, while Kelly rode in 14 Tours de France, winning the green jersey competition (for the most consistent daily finisher) a record four times. Both men are held in high esteem in France, and were involved in the campaign to bring the Tour to Ireland. The Irish government, knowing a perfect marketing opportunity when it saw one, also came up with more than $3 million of funding. Local government authorities found money to resurface roads on the route, while countless committees worked for months on arranging events to coincide with the race. However, since the heady days of Roche and Kelly, Ireland's enthusiasm for cycling has waned, and as a sporting event the Tour can be difficult to understand. This is partly practical. Each day the cyclists ride well over 100 miles, traveling at speeds of around 25 mph. As a spectator on the route, you see a flash of brightly colored Lycra and the group is gone. As befits a race devised by a newspaper, the Tour as a sport can only be understood by access to the media. Helicopters follow the cyclists, and motorbikes weave among them carrying cameramen. While a member of the crowd at a baseball or soccer game might not get the best view of the action, he or she would at least know the score. With the Tour de France, you can only appreciate the day's racing by watching it on television. And even then, it can be difficult to follow. The race lasts for three weeks, with a stage almost every day, and the man who has taken the least time overall to cover the course wins. This sounds simple enough, but behind this lies a great deal of complexity involving team tactics, specialization and obscure vocabulary. There are 20 teams of nine riders, and each team contains perhaps one rider who has the best chance to win the race overall and claim the famous yellow jersey. A well-balanced team would also have a sprinter (capable of winning when the whole group, or peloton, is together at the finish of a stage) and a climber (capable of cycling up steep mountain passes as if they were flat Dutch lanes, and fearlessly coming down them at speeds of more than 50 mph). Teams also have a number of lesser riders, known as domestiques, whose job is to support the team stars in whatever way they can -- to the point of handing over their bike if it comes to that. Add in time-trialing (stages where all the cyclists ride individually against the clock) and the complex art of breakaways, where members of different teams work together to escape from the main group before fighting it out among themselves for the stage win, and it's an enthralling sport, but one that's very difficult for the novice to appreciate. Especially if the novice is standing on the side of a road as all this blurs by. So why would you bother? Because, as Ireland saw, the Tour as a spectacle is unique and often beautiful. N E X T+P A G E | Are those bikes or fighter planes? - - - - - - - - - - - - AP PHOTO/PETER DEJONG Top: Overall leader Chris Boardman of England, center, rides in the middle of the pack during the second stage of the Tour de France cycling race between Enniscorthy and Cork, Ireland, Monday, July 13, 1998.