On Monday we spent the evening at the 'Palais des Sports' velodrome to watch the 5th night of the 'Grenoble 6 Day'. The velodrome is an amazing facility, though incredibly outside of this event is shut for the other 359 days of the year. It used to be open in the evenings to local cycle clubs which, in this snowy part of the world, must have been great for winter training. I know I'd be down there like a shot if it ever re-opened its doors.

Despite both of us having ridden the track once many moons ago (http://www.calshot.com/cycle.html), we have never seen the pros in action.

The evening opened with juniors and women and then moved on to the men's' teams. There were some big names present; Gregory Bauge and Kevin Sirea to name a couple as well as Bernard Thevenet in the audience.

The speed and handling was incredible, at times in excess of 65 km/hr, there were moments when I expected the centrifugal force to fling a rider out of the apex and into our laps! The Madison had us in awe and confused in equal measure; so many riders weaving around one another with so much speed it seemed miraculous that there were no crashes. Despite a big screen and commentary, we were still none the wiser as to who was actually winning - it requires some dizzying deep concentration that we could only maintain up to about 11pm - we could have stayed on 'till the early hours, you certainly get value for money with a 7 hour programme each evening.

France is famous for its cheese, between the races on Monday we were subjected to a different kind of French cheese - the cabaret! Think early 1970's badly choreographed Strictly Come Dancing meets Zippos Circus and you may be part the way to imagining how dreadful it was. The 'Paris Follies' were a low-light - topless dancers in this day and age (not so dreadful I hear some of you saying)! Still, it was a new French experience, just a shame that the cycling seemed to take second place for a good part of the evening.

Helyn
(Sorry, no photos of the Paris Follies available!)

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