The Fastest City Tour Ever - with Tour de France by Kakapo2
One of my adventures in Berlin I will always remember is the visit of the Tour de France in 1987, to honour the city?s 750th anniversary. I was there as a reporter and made my first experience in an accompanying car, racing through the city like mad. I covered many Tours in later years but only once it was that crazy. That was when I travelled with Team Telekom?s former sports director Walter Godefroot, right within the peloton, picking up crashed riders, handing out drinks and food for others, racing with one wheel on the road and the other one on the grass verge. Nobody was buckled up, so they could get out of the car fast in the case of emergency LOL You need good nerves at the start but you get used to it during the stage?
Then back in Berlin I was the co-pilot of a photographer of Spiegel magazine, and in the ?Car of the Year? we paced around the city?s monuments and attractions ? and you can take this literally. When we once drove 90 km/h the policemen of the Garde Républicaine forced us to accelerate, claiming we were too slow right in front of the peloton. Allez, allez! You should know that my driver?s goal was to be the last car in front of the riders, and in Grunewald he succeeded to get our car between seven escapees and the peloton by a brief escape behind some bushes, and overtaking them before Wannsee, stop again in Schöneberg and drive over the finish line right behind the peloton, ahead of the team cars? ;-) And, of course, he also enjoyed to overtake other cars and motorbikes on the left and on the right, and all this heavily promoted by the police LOL
The prologue took place on Kurfürstendamm. The second stage was a team time trial. Then, after a day off, the Tour continued in the south of Germany, rolling from Stuttgart to Karlsruhe, and then into France. Irishman Stephen Roche won the Tour.I think this first stage of the tour was the fastest city tour I have ever made, past all important monuments of West-Berlin. Most lively I remember circling around Siegessäule (Victory Column) at a speed that nearly made me dizzy in the car LOL (Somehow like being thrown around in a hairpin curve on a bobsleigh track...)
