Hi Tom,
I just bought the last used one on Amazon. I will watch it, then resell it for what it cost me here if someone else is interested in seeing it. Let me know! Thanks,
John Proch La Grange, Texas
________________________________ From: Tom Sanders <tom@orderandchaos.com> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Sent: Fri, December 18, 2009 12:05:10 PM Subject: [CR] Detour De France: Wonderful Cycling Film
Recently there was a $10,000 Repro Eddy Merckx on E-Bay that caused a great deal of comment in the off list conversations that sometimes abound. It turned out that the bike had been built by one John Trevorrow. We all wondered "Who the heck is that?" Looking into it a bit I found that he is an Aussie bike shop owner, a former Olympian and four time Australian champion. He had raced in Europe as a Pro and the concensus was that if not for his hard drinking and smoking he could have been one of the greats. He was once photographed smudging his cigarette butt out on the stem of his bike at the start of the Giro D'Italia and was then dubbed "the Smoking Kangaroo". He also has covered twelve Tour De France races as a journalist. Pretty deep credentials.
At any rate, the film Detour De France is a fun documentary about the Australian journalism team that covered the 2005 Tour and mostly centered on Trevorrow, who is quite a character. Not just a tour film, this gets into the high jinx shenanigans that accompany the race, from the Bacchanalian breakfasts to the little back alleys between the busses and the racers relaxing and cutting up a bit. This was a really eventful Tour, the tenth anniversary of the death of Fabio Casarte on the Tour, the same time in this race the Australian Women's Cycling Team was wiped out in a tragic accident in Germany killing one and putting two others into critical condition , and the film hits it all. The high points and the low points. It is very funny in places and sobering in others. It also has more than a bit of nudity and suggestive language in it. Not a PG-13 film.
It can be had from Amazon. When I unpacked mine, the Amazon Seller had included a book by Samuel Abt about the Tour titled Breakaway. I was delighted! This may be the most fun of all the documentaries on bike racing, that I've seen. Highly Recommended