It flashes past in 20 seconds but they talk about it for 20 years. It is frightening and fabulous. The figures are like telephone numbers. The possibilities are thrilling. French villages erupt in a carnival of barbecues, banners, cowbells and alpine horns. The roads are white with the names of favoured riders. Every inch of the hills is hugged for hours, the better to scrutinise the pain-wracked features of 200 of the world's fittest young men. Children shriek, arms out, as a mobile Mickey Mouse or a giant Camembert pauses to fling out a cheese or a paper hat. That could be us, around July 11th, 12th and 13th. The scale of it all is mind-boggling - but for a couple of Irish towns in the path of the Tour de France, there is an extra dimension. There's Carrick-on-Suir, hoping to turn its "Kelly Country" status to gold as Carrick-on-Tour; and Enniscorthy, dealt the ace of a stage start in the same year as the 1798 commemorations, hardly knowing what's hit it.
"Nine hundred and fifty million of a television audience? A thousand journalists? Fifty thousand people in town for the day? We'll never get a chance like this again," says Donal Minnock, a tad wearily. Ten years of planning for the bicentenary of an altogether different French invasion, then the Tour de France lands in his lap. The expectation in the air is almost a burden. And Enniscorthy's Town Clerk knows all about thwarted expectation; it's not so long since he was beaten up by a local authority customer who had been thwarted on another matter entirely. But he's held on to his sense of humour, boosted by a soupcon of irreverence.
The plan is that on the morning of Le Grand Depart, 500 pikemen will march to the Duffry Gate and line the barriers on either side of the riders. "They're to galvanise the cyclists and make sure they GO," says Mr Minnock. Up on Vinegar Hill a maroon will be fired: "That's to create a bang and make sure the council chairman waves the flag to make them GO".
And somewhere in the distance, the roar of a cannon will rent the morning air. Yes, it's stirring stuff. "We could actually win this battle - no blood at all," he says dreamily. Just an ocean of porter, with any luck. It may be a first for the Tour de France to be waved off between two pubs - a factor which could be turned to medicinal advantage if foreigners take fright at the pikemen. Negotiations are in train to provide free pints all round.
The committee has had to wrestle with other interesting dilemmas. Though one of the logistical marvels of the Tour de France is its self-sufficiency - it arrives with its own village for each Depart - local assistance is essential for policing, civil defence, emergency services and accommodation as well as other more esoteric requirements. "A ton of ice is wanted for the Village Depart," says Eddie Tobin, a member of the cycling committee. "We're getting that from Kilmore Fisheries. Did you know you can get a ton of ice for £35?" The Village Depart will take up half the GAA pitch. The other half will host a hurling display by the (small) boys of Wexford and some pikemen's pageantry. A Wexford children's choir will be along to sing both national anthems.
Then there's the matter of a band: "And that's money. It's a working day and these are working people. Businesses aren't inclined to let staff off on the Monday, but what they mightn't realise is that access to their workplaces will be gone for most of the morning anyway," says Councillor Michael White, a committee member.
In such uncharted territory, a great deal is unknowable. With unprecedented road closures between Enniscorthy and Cork on the Monday from 7 a.m., and severe restrictions within towns and villages, anyone caught unawares is in for a shock. So while the publicity cavalcade leaves the town at 9 a.m. and the race at 10, let no one imagine he can pootle in at 8.55.
"Nothing and nobody goes down a closed road - not even if you're the Pope," says Michael White. (In fact, some say this is bigger than the Pope - or the numbers that turned out for his visit, anyway). "We have no idea of what it will actually mean to our community. For example, there will be no physical access to the church for Mass-goers on Monday morning. We're giving our town over to a foreign race whose organisers will run the town from Sunday evening till noon on Monday."
Which, by the way, includes a foreign police force - those dapper gendarmes, but minus their weapons, mercifully - who will match our lot one for one, manning the junctions and access points, making sure none of the citizenry falls under a bike or takes the cows for milking against high-speed race cars and giant mechanised strawberries.
As for spectator numbers - who knows? They can't even begin to guess, triggering headaches about such basic requirements as car-parking. 20,000? 60,000? They confidently expect about 50,000 for the 1798 pageantry on June 21st, but the Tour de France . . . ? To maximise tourist potential, a full week of events is planned around the race. This includes concerts by the Wolfe Tones, Stockton's Wing and De Dannan; a French film festival; dog races, a black and white ball. Much hope rests on the non-cycling fraternity, because cycling locally - like cycling countrywide - is not in a healthy state.
Membership of the Slaney Cycling Club has fallen from about 140 in the Kelly/Roche golden age to 15. Eddie Tobin, its president, looks resigned: "A lot of people want to get on saddles, though not necessarily with a club. But that's OK. I'm just happy to see people on bikes."
To Eddie - whose day job is with a printing company - the Tour is the realisation of a lifelong fantasy. "I'm in cycling since I was 13 and to even think of putting a hand out to touch the Tour de France, whether as a competitor or spectator - that was a dream. But to be able to help stage it in my own home town, it's . . . " - pause, as words fail him - "it's better than a dream". Meanwhile, though, it's back to the commercial expectation. "Cork has its airport, so has Dublin. Enniscorthy has nothing but the N11. It's a one-shot shot from a helicopter. That's our opportunity," says Michael White.
But if Enniscorthy has little - apart from the N11, Vinegar Hill, serious unemployment and raw memories of the Coca-Cola factory being hijacked by Ballina - Carrick-on-Suir has even less. In a strangely poignant way, Carrick-on-Suir's only tangible Tiger is Sean Kelly. In recognition of this, they have bucked a culture where individuals have to die to have a place named after them. So, while Sean Kelly is still fit and well, it is possible to drive past the million pound Sean Kelly Centre and into Sean Kelly Square, where everyone in town is full of star-struck reports about the "wine cellar like Fort Knox" beneath the "massive" Duncan Stewart-designed house that Sean Kelly is building out the Dungarvan road. As well as being the cyclist's cyclist, the fourth best rider of all time, he is the quintessential local hero, with a place in the town's heart and soul that is difficult to overestimate; as likely to be seen emerging from Michael Hearn's hardware shop with smudges of plaster on his nose as sipping wine at international events with sporting and political legends.
"In the mid-1980s, when unemployment was running at 20 to 25 per cent, Carrick became an icon of the poverty-stricken town," says Michael Hearn, who is also a bike race promoter and Munster Express contributor. "But every headline about emigration or a factory closure here was countered by another about the man from Carrick-on-Suir conquering something, somewhere in the world. When times were lean, it was Sean Kelly that kept heads up and brave smiles on the banks of the Suir." It is Kelly for whom the Tour will pitch up in Carrick-on-Tour.
And it was Kelly for whom the Tour boss, Jean-Marie Leblanc, agreed to come to Carrick to quell the local tantrums when the West Gate was deemed "trop petit" by Tour organisers - a decision which would have banished the race to the outskirts. "It took two months, but he came himself," says Kelly, with his customary unflappability. "The Tour de France had a lot of problems the year it started in Holland. Riders are like young racehorses in the first few days; they all think they're going to win the Tour de France, so you get a lot of pushing and bunching to get in the first 30 or so and there were a lot of crashes that year - big ones. So the organisers were ultra-cautious this year."
The upshot, however, is that the town centre will go to the ball, conditional on a few alterations, and the Tour de France will stream through Sean Kelly Square after all - the cavalcade at around 11 a.m. and the race around noon.
Meanwhile, the local committee - hard at work since August - has demonstrated its sense of occasion by appointing a paid Tour festival administrator in Paul Kelly (no relation). A packed, week-long festival is planned, drawing on every club, sport and musical tradition; plus treasure hunts, drama, French cooking exhibitions, poetry readings, cot-boat races, marching bands, balloon flights, vintage cars and fireworks. The Army will provide a big military display. The South Tipperary Arts Centre is working with the community to transform shop windows. And Tony Kehoe, a local publican as well as the last PD councillor left standing in three counties, is selling commemorative polo shirts, inscribed with his name and the legend, "the contrariest man of Le Tour". "At £11, I'm giving them away," he insists, contrarily.
As the excitement builds, the local hero himself continues to fly in and out on various missions involving his PR work for Sram, the local bike components factory and for the Tour itself, while working on his new home on a magnificent elevated site in the shadow of the Comeraghs. He is quick to praise those responsible for getting the Tour to Ireland: to the cyclists like Earley, Roche and Kimmage; to the Government for its £2 million sponsorship; to l'Evenement - the McQuaid/Rushton partnership - which put in years of hard graft to get it here; to the Societe du Tour for risking a Tour start on an island. Will he miss being in the bunch himself? "No". Just a tiny bit? "Well, the first year, it was a little bit of a shock to the system. That's your lifestyle for 10 months of the year, so when you come down from that - from the entourage, the press, the hype, the colour - it is a shock. It's hard, too, to build down from such a high standard of fitness." And now? "This year," he says, a grin lighting up his still lean, tanned face, "I'll be having my glass of wine while the lads are struggling up the Wicklow Gap. Been there, done that. You have to be able to recognise when it's time to go . . . and then go."
