Photographer reflects on experiences documenting the Tour de France

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Pete Goding has been photographing the Tour de France for 20 years – here he gives an insight into what it’s been like to document this year’s race Twenty Tours de France. It seems faintly ridiculous when I write it down. My first was the year Lance Armstrong’s carefully constructed empire was beginning to wobble. I photographed him circling the Champs-Élysées with a film SLR, blissfully unaware that neither film cameras nor Armstrong’s reputation would age particularly well. Today I’m back where it all began, sitting outside a cafe a stone’s throw from Place de la Concorde nursing a café crème while Paris carries on entirely oblivious. A couple laugh over breakfast. Someone walks an exceptionally pampered poodle. A waiter in a waistcoat unsuccessfully attempts to persuade two tourists that vodka is an acceptable accompaniment to a croissant. In a few hours the world’s biggest bike race will thunder through these streets. Right now, it’s just another Sunday morning. Continue reading...