Adelaide city welcomes men on wheels
January 22, 2008
It
was a brilliant welcome for the TDU riders this year when the Adelaide
City Council put on an early morning city street parade.
An enthusiastic crowd greeted the local and international cyclists with the kind of excitement usually reserved for a winning test team or returning Olympians.
The event brought a little taste of the tour to those office-bound workers who won't be free to watch a stage until the weekend and built a real sense of the event and its elevated international status to the city.
And the race commentators didn't fail to mention that those in the know expected an aggressive attack from team UniSA this year - their performance justifying their special inclusion as a national team in a race normally reserved for professional teams.
Local hero Stuart O'Grady was interviewed and Minister for Tourism Jane Lomax-Smith and Mayor Michael Harbsion took care of the official welcomes.
The parade ended with a vocal Adelaide countdown to herald stage one of the Tour a big bang as the air filled with coloured tickertape.
The Adelaide city welcome added some real colour to an otherwise worker day world.
More pictures of the event can be found in our photo gallery.