Mountain biking

I have never seen so much pink my my life. Pink balloons, pink banners, pink bikes and a large proportion of the half million spectators wearing pink. I was lucky enough to be one of the thousand volunteers that helped in the three days that the Giro d'Italia was in Gelderland, and it was a wonderful atmosphere. The perfect weather helped, bringing out more than 100 000 spectators more than expected (despite the Dutch railways deciding on that weekend to do engineering works on the railways leading from the main cities towards Gelderland).  The large number of people meant that on the first couple of days it was difficult to get a good view, but fortunately on the final day I was positioned at the back door of the station, which had a combination of not many people (they all headed up the hill to watch the final ascent) and the course going within centimeters of where I was standing.

Of course, what made it even better was the success of the Dutch cyclists. Tom Dumoulin won the time trial on the first day and to everyone's astonishment managed to hang on to the pink jersey for almost a week afterwards, despite assuring the media beforehand that he was only interested in the time trials.  And Maartin Tjallingii who lives in Arnhem, triumphed on the Posbank coming into Arnhem, in his last Giro, to win the Blue jersey for the best on the 'mountains'. 

All in all it was an unforgettable experience, really quite something.