A Tour de France First: HD

The 2007 Tour de France kicked off on Saturday from London, England — and Stage One, which ended in Canterbury, has already featured some high drama.

 

London mayor Ken Livingstone wrote about the course of the race prior to the Grand Depart, and the standings so far can be found here. But race fans have no doubt already heard about Robbie McEwan’s incredible comeback from a crash early in the race. As one fan writes:

McEwen crashes 20km from the finish line and is out of the race due to the furious pace being set at the front of the peleton by teams such as Quick-Step, Milram, Credit Agricole and Lampre. He is somehow brought back into the peleton with just a few kilometers remaining by his teammates despite the best efforts of the sprinter teams to make sure he stays out of contention. He then works his way through the entire Tour de France field in the space of a couple of miles and, despite all the exertions and a wrist injury, appears in the last 200 metres to blow all the other sprinters away. One of the most historic non-mountain stage wins in the Tour de France.

Here’s the video on YouTube:

Fans outside of England wouldn’t know about McEwan’s comeback without satcom, of course, and this year marks the first time that le tour is being broadcast in HD, thanks to a suite of satcom services being provided by Globecast:

GlobeCast will supply French broadcaster France Televisions and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) with satellite and microwave transmissions to provide complete HD coverage of the race. GlobeCast will be deploying up to eight SNG (satellite news gathering) and mobile microwave units at each stage of the race, supported by 30 technical professionals. That includes coverage of the race’s start in London, England–a first for the Tour–where GlobeCast recently launched a full-service broadcast and playout center.

GlobeCast mobile units stationed at various points along the course will transmit footage shot via motorcycle and helicopter by SFP (Société Française de Production) back to France Televisions’ production trucks at the finish line. GlobeCast will provide unilateral satellite contribution feeds to the channel’s master control room in Paris, and its mobile units will distribute the official world feed of the Tour de France to rights holders throughout the world on behalf of the EBU.

The overall communications solution provided to the Tour by France Telecom, which now markets all its services under the Orange brand, includes 1,500 temporary telephone lines to be deployed every day in the technical and press areas; high-speed Internet access in those areas; an upgraded mobile network over the entire course to ensure optimum coverage, mostly in 3G or 3G+; and a team of 50 technicians. The team will be mobilized around the clock, with support from 330 regional colleagues at each stage, and will handle the transport, assembly, operation and supervision of the necessary infrastructures and systems for five specific areas: stage finish line, organization headquarters, intermediate points, press room and stage departure village.

If you want to see the excitement of the tour in even higher definition than HD (or at least on a bigger screen), be sure to check out Wired to Win, an IMAX film about the Tour de France that  is now making its way to select cities.