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          Tour de Lead Graffiti 2011
S T A G E  8 :
          Aigurande - Super-Besse Sancy / 189 km

the project | clamshell | title page | descriptive page | colophon | postcards | overprint

stages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Rest | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | Rest | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

2012 edition | 2013 edition (coming)

In 7 words:
breakaway finally survives, but chicken reigns supreme

. . .

Size: 14.75" x 22.5"

Stock: Somerset Textured White 300 gsm

Runs: 6 - orange (3 runs), green, dark blue, & grey

Main typography: Clarendon Outline, Clarendon (wood), Champleve (metal)

Production notes: handset wood & metal type. The stage / signature block was preprinted using photopolymer plates.

Press: Vandercook Universal III

Completed: 7:20 pm, July 9, 2011

Signatures: Ray Nichols, Jill Cypher, Tray Nichols, & Bill Roberts

. . .

Description: "Cluck cluck" sums it up. Chickens. Alberto Contador should have said being behind by 1'42" was "Wrong." Cadel Evans should have said, "Everyone move back." Andy Schleck needed to erase the past.

Did any of them do any of that? Nope. Everyone just saddled up side-by-side and rode to avoid making any mistakes. Nothing impressive on the first mountain stage of this year's tour which they had to be dreaming about for the last week.

So, the main part of this poster deals with the three of them together. It actually gave us a chance to mess around with readability (or the lack of it) which we love to do. You might ask why the solid C. We only have two of the outline Cs and between the three names we need 3. We had already decided to do the "cluck cluck' thing so that kind of worked in so we overlapped the chicken issue with one of the solids. It is at the bottom to get it away from Costa who was decidedly not chicken.

Rui Alberto Costa of Movistar Team was the hero. He was in a breakaway that lasted 183 km and finally showed that a breakaway can succeed. That should get the juices flowing in some of those other riders. The nice thing about this is that we will notice Costa and Movistar a lot more in this race and will be rooting for them more from this point forward. And we like their outfits a lot. We used Movistar's colors on Costa's name, but it looks nicer on their shirts with more of the dark blue showing.

It might be worth mentioning that we were really also excited about American Tejay Van Garderen of HTC - Highroad (Mark Cavendish's team) who rode with the breakaway for all but the last couple kilometers. Tejay just didn't have the legs to finish it off, but we'll be noticing him after this stage. Tejay got the day's prize for 'most aggressive rider' and will also wear the best climber jersey on Stage 9. Nice across the board.

The lack of bravery gave us a chance to play a bit with readability by overlaying the names of the three of the main contenders for the Yellow Jersey. Maybe tomorrow will bring some fireworks. Alexandre Vinokourov of Pro Team Astana gave it a shot on the final climb. It didn't gain him anything, but he gave it a shot at least.

Joining with us for the day was longtime letterpress friend, Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press.

The people we are watching maintained the same times relative to each other as the peloton finished as a group.

Thor Hushovd in 1st place - 00'00"
Cadel Evans in 2nd place - 00'01"
Andy Schleck in 6th place - 00'12"
Alberto Contador in 20th place - 01'42"

Thor Hushovd has seriously raised his game, coming in 16th place yesterday, but matching the times of the other contenders. He will continue for another day to look good in the Yellow Jersey and will wear it on Stage 9 with a collective time of 33h 06'28".

Our effort to this point is 115h 30'28" with the total number of runs standing at 43.