Tour De France comes to Aberystwyth

Friday 30 June, 2006
Tour De France comes to Aberystwyth
The Tour De France, one the toughest events on the sporting calendar, is coming to the University of Wales, Aberystwyth for 10 days in July and staff at the University's Sports Centre are inviting people to take part.

Featuring 22 teams of 9 riders, 21 stages and 3,600 kilometres of racing over the first three weeks of July, the actual Tour De France visits every corner of France, climbs some of the highest roads in the Alps and the Pyrenees, before finishing on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. This year's event starts on Saturday 1 July with a prologue time trial in the city of Strasbourg.

Recreation Officer Darren Hathaway has created a mini Tour De France featuring 10 stages from this year’s event which have been programmed into the University’s Wellness key system presetting distances and levels to the bikes relating to the tour. Each programmed stage reflects the stage of the day with intensity levels varying according to the steepness of the climbs on the actual stage.

Riders on stage 15, which ends on the most famous of all alpine climbs, L’Alpe D’Huez, will find themselves tackling a computerised version of the actual climb. However, they will not have to ride all 187 kilometres as each stage is divided by 10 for the Aberystwyth tour.

For the winners, teams and individuals, the spoils will also follow Le Tour’s traditions with the famous Maillot Jaune (Yellow Jersey) awarded to the overall winner, and the Green Jersey, which goes to rider with the best time trial times rather than the best sprinter in the Aberystwyth version, and the Polka Dot Jersey which goes to the best ‘grimpeur’ or the King of the Mountains. Prizes have been sponsored by Cambrian Tyres and Summit Cycles from Aberystwyth and Technogym UK Ltd.

The competition takes place in the University’s Sports Centre which offers the latest state-of-the-art fitness equipment and software. Representing an investment of over £200,000 over the past three years, the Centre now boasts 50 pieces of fitness equipment all supported by the latest Technogym “Wellness System” fitness and software packages. This provides users with their very own “pocket physical training instructor” giving them direction, evaluation, progression and data to get the very best results from the workouts.

The stages for the 2006 Tour De France (Aberystwyth version) are:
July 10th       Prologue        7.1km          Strasbourg *
July 11th       Stages 1       18.4km          Strasbourg - Strasbourg
July 12th       Stages 4       20.7km          Huy – Saint Quetin
July 13th       Stages 7       5.2km           Saint Gregoire – Rennes *
July 14th       Stages 9       16.9km          Bordeaux - Dax
July 17th       Stages 11      20.6km          Tarbes -Val D’Aran / Pla De Beret ^
July 18th       Stages 14      18.5km          Montelimat – Gap ^
July 19th       Stages 15      18.7km          Gap – Alpe D’Huez ^
July 20th       Stages 19      5.7km           Le Creusot – Montceau Les Mines **
July 21st       Stages 20      15.4km          Sceaux / Antony - Paris
* Individual Time Trials
** Team Time Trials
^ King of the Mountains Stages     

Anyone wishing to take part in the event should contact Darren Hathaway on 01970 621521 or by e-mail dnh@aber.ac.uk . Entry Fees are £10 for members of the University’s Club Sporty memberships and £20 for non members, this includes £5 deposit for the electronic key required to operate the Wellness System. Full details of the event are available on-line at www.aber.ac.uk/sportscentre/  .