Hi all,
The official presentation of PBP2007 by the Audax Club Parisien took place this afternoon in Paris. I took some notes for you guys, and here are the points which I think are the most interesting, and mostly the stuff that have changed from the last edition:
- The total length is 1228 km. The route for the return is changed in some places compared to the 2003 edition.
- The rules for the allowed bicycles have changed. Basically they changed it so that rollerblades could not enter, which was not the case before!
- The 80h start is at 8pm on the 20th of august, the 90h start at 9:30pm and the 85h start at 5am on the 21st of august.
- The controles will be done through a codebar on the route card.
- The registration will take place between june 11th and july 14th and will be possible through the internet. There will also be an insurance for cancellation (if you're sick or whatever) if you want.
- The lights have to be seen at 150 m from the back and 100 m from the front.
- There will be no prologue this year.
- Professional cycling team jerseys are forbidden.
- There will be a car pacing at 25 km/h for the 14 km inside St Quentin
- The maximum allowed average speed has been reduced from 30 km/h to 28 km/h.
- The registration fee gives you among other things the official jersey, the meal on monday night and possibility of car parking for the duration of the ride.
I will add a few pictures of the meeting later. If you have questions I can try to answer but otherwise if you want more details you need to go to the official PBP website:
www.paris-brest-paris.org
There was also the results of all the events organized by the Audax Club Parisiens, which includes the Brevets de Randonneurs Mondiaux (BRM) and Randonneurs 5000 (the president of Randonneurs Mondiaux was here, too). More than 16,000 BRM have been ridden this year. The US have the highest number of BRM participations (a total of 3901 cyclists rode Brevets), followed by France (2215), Japan (1439), Australia (1302), Canada (1014), Italy (1001) and the UK (863). More than 4.6 billion kilometers were ridden in Brevets in 2006! The latests countries that organize brevets are Singapore, Jamaica, Hungary and China.
As for the Randonneurs 5000, 43 cyclists got it this year, including 16 from US, 10 from France, 6 from Canada, 3 from Spain and 3 from the UK.