I still don’t know how I made it. That night I calmed myself next to the stove with a bottle of red, my left forearm swollen with carpal tunnel strain from the heavy clutch. It could have been so much worse. I spent the next two years learning to ride the thing properly around the near deserted roads of Picardy.
All of this means that I am fully conversant with the entire gamut of crap motorcycle handling, having passed through all levels of danger and idiocy my very self. I know what good and bad riding looks like. And I duly pass judgement on this regularly while commentating.
Good Bikes carry TV cameramen and photographers satiating our rapacious hunger for images, both moving and still, on all forms of media.
Bad Bikes carry fluff. These are a PR or money-making exercise and are a bloody nuisance. Sure, the head of the local yogurt factory might get a buzz out of riding with the pack. Well, get lost, Mr Milko, you’re in the way!
The recent upsurge in VIP bikes is not just annoying, it’s also dangerous. The riders of these bikes are not at the top of the pecking order in the squadron. So you have a lesser skilled rider coupled with an often rather unwieldy besuited businessman who’s been crammed into waterproof overalls. He’s the jiggling pillion passenger. It makes for an unstable presence around the peloton. And this is bad news. I wouldn’t mind if there were one or two, but there are loads: I counted 12 one day! Add to that the expanded number of press and blogging media now paying for access, and you have a swarm of active vehicles on the course, which is beginning to affect the racing. I get nervous and I know the riders are too; perhaps more so.
The VIP machines at least have the excuse of inexperience. The photo boys do not. And the drive for drama on dedicated cycling blogs and social media means the hunt for an arty, ‘up the nostril shot’, as I call them, finds motorcycles getting closer and closer to riders who don’t have the benefit of leather and body armour in the event of a collision.
‘Get that bike out of there!’ I often exclaim as they get too close.
I know I sound like a campaigner, and viewers are split on this. Some agree while others tell me to shut up and stick to commentating. The fact is, there have been unnecessary accidents and this has finally led to a 30m (100ft) proximity rule being adopted by some races: not mandatory just yet, but that will come.
Even the good bikes get it wrong sometimes. Descending ahead of the riders is difficult because some of the best pro cyclists will be travelling faster than the motorcycles, which are far more cumbersome to handle on a twisty descent than lightweight carbon cycles. And a professional rider desperately trying to make up time on his rivals will take more risks. So filming in front of such riders can actually hamper the racing: the riders keep catching up and are sometimes hampered by those taking pictures.
Filming from behind is even more fraught with danger. We often see riders’ back wheels slip away dramatically in a curve, whether due to an unstable surface, fluid on the road, a puncture, or simply misjudging a curve. A motorcycle who’s following too close could easily run a rider over. This has happened in the past.
Camera bikes are a necessity. Without live action TV pictures, cycling would die as a sport. So getting these shots is always a compromise. If only all cameramen could be Patrice Diallo.
Where there are serfs, there has to be a Duke. And that man is Patrice Diallo: the most accomplished camera motorcyclist there is. The guy is a genius.
Patrice rides like he’s been on a bike since before he could walk. Which is handy because now he can barely walk, having crashed so many times when he was young. His right leg in particular looks like a madman with a cheese grater and a mallet has had some fun with him. Multiple fractures and burns have scarred him badly.
Patrice can’t dance. But a motorcycle, in his hands, does. The finesse displayed by Patrice and his machine is simply remarkable. His ability to control his bike, while accounting for the added load and imbalance of a cameraman with all his kit, is remarkable.
The platform he provides for generating pictures is as stable as they come, even on a highly technical, mixed surface descent. Every cameraman wants to work with Patrice. He is so experienced he knows when and where to go, how to get there and how to get out. It’s almost as if the cameraman just has to press the button because Patrice, with the lines he is taking, has set the shot up for him.
He gets through gaps clinically and safely while telegraphing his moves effectively so the riders also have absolute faith in him. He knows where he’s going, so do they. That level of assurance between cyclist and motorbike rider comes from vast experience and notoriety.
I’ve seen Patrice on site all over the world from the Tour de France to the Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia. He’s the favoured rider of Euromedia, who provide the hardware to France Television and thus Le Tour. More often than from any other ground level source, the pictures filling your screen are taken from Patrice Diallo’s bike.
Don’t go thinking this man is anything like a robot. He is an artist – and sometimes, out of necessity, a clown.
But it’s not just bike-handling that gets the
