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          Tour de Lead Graffiti 2012
S T A G E  8 :
          Belfort > Porrentruy / 157.5 km

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In 6 words:
  Do you remember
  your first time.

. . .

Start time today: 5:55 am

Completed: 9:10 pm

Time today: 15 hours : 15 minutes

Time to date: 139 hours : 05 minutes

Runs: 7 (sequence: mountain green [4], rust, red, blue)

Runs to date: 48

370 > 800 pixel wide enlargement

The day's story

Description: There were 7 categorized climbs today so there was no way we weren't going to use that as a major visual element. We did a similar piece last year. using the idea of substituting "V"s for mountain tops. But this year it was the breakaway that survived over the mountains right to the finish and we wanted to it all.

After playing around a bit with various words we came up with "breakaway" treated as two words which would balance the seven mountain Vs. We quickly chose the V from a 7" high sans serif very condensed typeface. The problem, which we also had on stage 3, was that we only had 2 Vs but needed 7. So we printed the mountains over 4 runs. You can also see in the lower left mountain that the right side is rough. It appears that sometime in its life a mouse had eaten away the edge. you can see teeth marks just to the inside of the edge. Hmmm. We started by printing the center one at the bottom to get the poster organized. Then the two on each side of it to get the spacing correct. Then we just did them in pairs to create the top row. It seemed kind of appropriate that if the riders were going to have to do 7 mountains, we should do 7 mountains. At Lead Graffiti we kind of think that way.

A breakaway formed pretty quick and just survived. It was likely important that tomorrow is a 41 km individual time trial and anyone in contention would have to want to save some energy for that. it isn't unlikely that tomorrow could decide who the winner will be in two weeks. We'll wait and see how that works out.

Thibaut Pinot survived a chase group made up of 7 of the top 10 in the General Classification who came within 26 seconds of catching him.

Pinot winning was great for several reasons.

• Pinot did it from a breakaway.
• He is French and it is always good to have one of the French riders win at least one stage of their race. It is good that it came pretty early as there is still time for another couple. We always root for a French rider who is in front if it doesn't conflict with our favorites too much.
• Pinot is the youngest rider in the Tour this year (22 years and 2 months).
• This is his first Tour de France and was his first stage win in the Tour and that is always an exciting moment..

General classification leaders & favorites

Yellow Jersey / Bradley Wiggins: 34h 21' 20''

     Cadel Evans: + 00' 10''

     Vincenzo Nibali: + 00' 16''

Total distance covered: 1575 km

Printing details

Signatures: Ray Nichols, Jill Cypher, and Tray Nichols

Size: 14.75" x 22.5"

Stock: Somerset Textured White 300 gsm

Main typography: 12 line Agency Gothic Outline, 12 line Stymie Bold Condensed

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

Press: Vandercook Universal III

Three of today's photos

Lockup:

     

Art:

     

Scene: