The Tour de France, the world's greatest cycling race, began its 89th outing on 6 July 2002 in Luxembourg (which is not in France). Previous Tours have also commenced in countries that are not France, for example Germany and that other close neighbour, Ireland. (?)

The official ceremony and presentation of the teams took place on Friday 5th July, in the recently extended Piscine Olympique, now renamed Le Coque. (Who said the French had no sense of humour?).

Saturday 6th July

During the time trial Prologue, each of the 189 fittest backsides on the planet set off at 1 minute intervals to complete a course of some 6.5km round the varied streets and avenues of Luxembourg City. As this city is built on not 1 but 2 river valleys, the streets are VERY steep. And the road surface changes frequently from tarmac to cobbles. And there are some sharp hairpins on the roads back up the sides of the valley. All of which makes for quite an exciting cycle race!

The start and finish of the prologue was at the City end of the "Red Bridge", one of Luxembourg's main traffic conduits, with the result that road traffic in and around Luxembourg for the whole weekend was comletely cut off. Even the buses stopped running. The best way to get around was on foot or - rather fittingly - by bike.

The weather on the day of the prologue was rather unpromising, even extending to light occassional showers. But this did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd (it is contractually compulsory to include this sentence in any report of a sporting event) lining the sides of the course.

The first rider set off at 16.00, and the local lad - Benoit Joachim - began at 21 minutes past. The cheers from the crowd were extra loud as he made his way down the precarious slope of the Montee de Clausen, and he gave a special "local boy" smile back to them as he turned the sharp corner onto the Allee Pierre de Mansfield, just before spectacularly falling off. The crowd gasped - his team car screeched to a halt behind him and rushed to his assistance, but he was up and cycling again within seconds. Luckily this corner is the location of the Britannia pub, so stunned spectators were easily able to find something to soothe their jagged nerves.

The sun came out, the afternoon wore on with its regular parade of French Gendarme motorbike, Luxembourg police motorbike, cyclist, team car, passing each and every minute. The riders were in reverse seed order, so the times began to be bettered, although Jalabert's time of 9mins 10 seconds stood for quite a while. Then the last rider was on the starting blocks. Lance Armstrong, winner of the previous 3 Tour de France's, powered around the course, including taking the Montee de Clausen at breathtaking speed, to tremendous applause and cheers from the crowd. He knocked a full 2 seconds of the previous best time to take the first yellow jersey.

Sunday 7th July

The day dawned dry and sunny. Crowds thronged the stands at the Red Bridge to get a view of Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg cutting the ribbon to start the first stage of the race. The 197km stage covered most of the "comapct and bijou" Grand Duchy, including picturesque passages through forests, along the banks of the River Moselle, and by the stunning chateau of Vianden. The riders chose to bunch close together, and even though a small posse formed in front of the main group, there was no clear lead group coming up to the finish line. The bunching did give rise to a few spills, but with no serious injury. The final hill up the cote d'Eich saw relatively unknown (but in this researcher's opinion incredibly cute) Swiss rider Rubens Bertogliati squeeze into first position.

Monday 8 July

And they're off again! This time to the South of Luxembourg City, before heading East (hey guys France is the other way!!!) towards Saarbrucken in Germany. Still a lot of bunching going on, resulting in some tumbles (including Benoit Joachim AGAIN!) but aside from that a fairly uneventful stage, won by cycling world champion Oscar Freire of Spain.

Handing over to next correspondent. Have they reached France yet?