On a weekend of huge events in the UK - Live Earth, the British Grand Prix and the Wimbledon finals - by far the biggest crowd, estimated at close to one million, gathered on the streets of central London on Saturday afternoon.
Why? To watch 189 men in lycra and pointy helmets, of course!
Yes, the Tour de France was in town.
Now I know the sport is beset by the spectre of drug usage (and, let's be honest, this is nothing new to cycling). Operation Puerto last year robbed us of the chance to see the likes of Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Alexandre Vinokourov - the last a victim of collateral damage as he was unable to compete after five members of his team were banned - compete for Lance Armstrong's vacant crown. And then we have last year's "winner", Floyd Landis, and his ongoing attempts to clear his name; an action which, as ITV's Gary Imlach so aptly put it, means the 2007 Tour finds itself in the unusual position of starting before last year's race has finished.
It is immensely sad. The Tour de France should be celebrated as the ultimate test of man's physical endurance - this year the race covers over 2,200 miles in 23 days, including long stints over the Alps and Pyrenees. To even complete the race, never mind winning it, is an immense physical achievement. And yet even the most optimistic fan is forced to view every rider, every breakaway mountain climb, every dashing sprint finish, with the cynical eye of suspicion.
So, as a fan looking forward to the excitement of seeing Le Tour in London, what can you do? Wallow in suspicion and regret? Or just enjoy the experience?
I - like a million others - chose the latter on Saturday. And I didn't regret it for one minute.
After all, it's not every day Le Tour pitches up on our doorstep. This year marks only the event's third visit to these shores, and the first time the race has ever started in the UK. Saturday's 7.9km prologue time trial carved a scenic route through central London, passing Whitehall, the House of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park before finishing on The Mall.
As a backdrop, it was fantastic.
And as an event, it was pretty good as well. The organisation required to bring central London - literally - to a standstill and to organise and protect a million spectators a week after the most recent terrorist bombings (and on the second anniversary of the 7/7 attacks) was immense, but it seemed to go off without any major hitches.
As I've said, estimates put the assembled crowd at up to one million; as someone who walked halfway round the course to find a decent vantage point, I can testify that there were people crammed two, three or more deep all the way round the course - a combination of the expert, the knowledgeable, the enthusiastic and the just-plain-curious. It all made for an almost carnival atmosphere, and support and appreciation for all the riders, from first to last, was consistent throughout.
Of course, the biggest cheers of all were reserved for the five British riders. Both David Millar and Bradley Wiggins were touted as serious contenders to win the prologue. Sadly, both came up short, with Wiggins finishing fourth and Millar just missing out on the top ten, but that didn't seem to dampen the crowd's mood overly. And when Swiss time trial specialist Fabian Cancellara stormed home to win by 13 seconds, the applause he received from the crowds watching at the finish and on the many big screens around the course was both generous and heartfelt.
From a personal perspective, it was great to see the cyclists close up. I was fortunate enough to (eventually) find a good spot, just over halfway round the course, on a short stretch of straight between two corners at the far end of the Serpentine.
It was a great location, both from a photographic perspective (you can see one of my photos, of the Norwegian sprinter Thor Hushovd, at the top of this blog) and from a technical one. Having never watched a road race live before, I hadn't appreciated how big a difference there was between those riders who were going flat out for a good time, and those who were aiming merely to get round the course because they have bigger fish to fry. The major contenders and the prologue specialists - men like Wiggins, Cancellara, Vinokourov, Andreas Kloden and Dave Zabriskie - all flew past, hugging the inside kerb to save precious inches, pedalling hard, hunched down aerodynamically over the bars. Others, notably sprint ace Robbie McEwen, were clearly doing little more than turning their legs over to save themselves for exertions later in the race, sitting up relatively high in the saddle and happy to stay in the middle or to the outside of the road. I hadn't appreciated before quite how obvious the difference is - far more so than, say, watching two F1 cars of vastly differeing performance on the same lap. Interesting.
Anyway, it was clear that any concerns the London organisation might have had about the size of the crowd or any embarrassing hiccups on the day were completely unfounded. It must surely bode well for the UK's chances of hosting the Tour again some time in the future.
But even if it doesn't return to these shores again in our lifetime, I and hundreds of thousands - make that millions - of others can say: "I've seen the Tour de France".
Roll on the next three weeks. And Vive Le Tour!
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