news

          Tour de Lead Graffiti 2012
S T A G E  9 : individual time trial
          Arc-et-Senans > Besançon / 41.5 km

the project | clamshell | title page | descriptions | colophon | postcards | composite

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

2011 edition | 2013 edition (coming)

In 4 words:
  A to B. Fast.

. . .

Start time today: 5:51 am

Completed: 7:43 pm

Time today: 13 hours : 52 minutes

Time to date: 152 hours : 57 minutes

Runs: 4 (sequence: yellow, light orange, handrolled red & orange, dark yellow)

Runs to date: 52

370 > 800 pixel wide enlargement

The day's story

Description: Today was the first of two time trials and always causes some change amongst the leaders. Last year Cadel Evans sealed his victory in the Tour by his performance on the next-to-the-last-day time trial.

The riders leave the start house in evenly spaced increments based on their current standing in the General Classification, so Bradley Wiggins, currently in the Yellow Jersey, goes last. This gives him an advantage in that he knows how fast his closest rivals are doing.

You must ride alone without assistance except from your support car who must always be behind the rider. The photography motorcycles can only ride behing the riders. If a rider catches the rider in front of them they cannot ride in the other's slipstream. Doing this can get you disqualified from the Tour. The helicopters must stay far enough away from the riders to avoid any impact from the downdraft.

Tony Martin had put down a very fast time fairly that stood for a couple of hours and he even had a flat tire along the way. Then 4-time individual time trial world champion, Fabian Cancellara, put down a time that took more than a minute off the best time. Cancellara has won a number of Tour time trials over the past several years. Then we were down to the final few.

Chris Froome of Sky Procycling, a newcomer to the Tour and the winner of the first mountain stage this year, knocked a surprising 22 seconds off Cancellara's time. Two people later Bradley Wiggins knocked off another 35 seconds off that.

The announcers often said that Wiggins was on fire so that gave us our color scheme. At lunch we decided we would parallel the three times. We played with the idea of doing the first six finishers, but things would start to get crowded. There is a complexity, even from doing only three, that can get away from you pretty quickly.

Wiggins time of 51:17 translates into something like 48 km per hour or about 29 miles an hour over the 25-mile course. Try riding a bike 29 miles an hour even with a pretty decent downhill and then imagine 'averaging' that over that distance.

We wanted to do something in a generally straight line (A - B), but with a bit of something to is. The type was too long to put in one line so we added a zig and a zag to the middle. It was quite fun figuring out how to get things to come out even. Wiggins was the winner and we had to use that crushed G so we handrolled again to hide it. We went back and did the fourth run to add "Sky Procycling" in there as we have been saying the team name for all stage winners. This time #1 and #2 was from the same team. We suspect that doesn't happen very often.

Yep, they were on fire.

General classification leaders & favorites

Yellow Jersey / Bradley Wiggins: 39:09:20

     Cadel Evans: + 01:53
     Christopher Froome: + 02:07
     Vincenzo Nibali: + 2:23

Printing details

Signatures: Ray Nichols, Jill Cypher, 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; Caslon Italic in metal.

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:

     

Abstraction:

     

Scene: