Blagging La Marmotte

hypster

I did the Marmotte last year with 5 friends a we were reminiscing about the event when one friend joked that we should just go and ride it without entering. He wasn't serious but it started me wondering if many people actually did that? Has anyone here done it or know if it's all that prevalent?

I've done it a couple of times with sportives in this country that were over-subscribed and I wanted to ride them. I didn't take the piss though and take stuff from the feed stations. I carried my own food or bought stuff at shops along the way if I needed it.

stanthomas

I've never noticed any interlopers. And most people have too much respect for the event to think of gate-crashing. You can, after all, ride the route on any other day of the year (snow permitting) - it's even encouraged: http://bike-oisans.com/noesit/!/fiche/la-marmotte-n24-233168 (the "classic" route via the Croix de Fer and to the TdF finish line).

Remember also that certain sections of the route are closed to traffic and you might be prevented from proceeding.

DeVlaeminck

Yes I've known it done but I don't think many do it, when I've ridden pretty much everyone has a number on.

hypster

I must admit I'm usually too preoccupied dragging myself up those climbs to notice if anyone doesn't have a number on! I don't think I would plan to ride unentered but if I were out there when the event was on I might be tempted to ride part of the course, maybe leaving a bit later to avoid the main rush.

wallace_and_gromit

hypster wrote:

...ride part of the course, maybe leaving a bit later to avoid the main rush.

It would be more fun to leave before the elite riders start, just to see what it's like being swept up by an almost pro-speed peloton up the Glandon!

DeVlaeminck

Start several hours before and contest the finish !

gavinbay

We sort of did it a couple of years ago.

I live in Serre all the winter and go out for a couple or months in the Summer.

For the day of the Marmotte we drove up to Lautaret and left the van there, then cycled down to Bourg and bypassed the start an hour or so earlier and then we were caught up on the first climb by the uber fast riders we then continued over and then through the Maurienne and then on up to Galibier where we went back down to Serre and picked the van up the next day.

So only a mini blag (not doing the final climb) - will probably do the same for the Etape as have a few mates coming out to do that.

BenderRodriguez

stanthomas wrote:

I've never noticed any interlopers. And most people have too much respect for the event to think of gate-crashing.

Don't forget that most readers of this forum will be Brits, and from my experience Brits in France have little respect for anything when in France. This seems to be especially true for British immigrants (who like to think of themselves as being not immigrants but something called and 'ex-pat') and those have property if France which they use during the skiing or summer seasons.

A pet peeve of mine is the number of Brits in France who bring cars and other vehicles over to France from the UK, keeping them here more or less permanently but never re-registering them with French plates, swapping the headlights, getting a French Contrôle technique (MOT) certificate and so on. Instead they will keep them on the road illegally, often putting them on a SORN notice in the UK, with no valid VED disc or one months to years out of date (the scrapping of the paper version of the VED disc will play straight into these people's hands) and with no valid French Contrôle technique or insurance vignettes. In the ski season perhaps half of all the cars I see around my way fit this description and one even sees minibuses and so forth used by Brits who offer accommodation out here to (generally illegally) shuttle clients around, which are also kept on UK plates but with no valid VED, CT or insurance stickers and so forth.

Biggest joke is that the people who do this are often exactly the sort of people who would get all indignant and demand that the 'police do something' if they read in their Daily Mails about say, Polish building workers living in the UK doing the same sort of thing. (Not to mention their hostility to immigration in the UK, apparently only a Brit can be an 'ex-pat; gracing their adopted home by their presence!)

gavinbay

BenderRodriguez wrote:

In the ski season perhaps half of all the cars I see around my way fit this description and one even sees minibuses and so forth used by Brits who offer accommodation out here to (generally illegally) shuttle clients around, which are also kept on UK plates but with no valid VED, CT or insurance stickers and so forth.

That's a bit of a Daily Mail exaggeration in itself what you posted!

I don't know "where around my way is" but you have to be an extremely naive Brit to chance doing that with the number of spot checks the dear old Gendarmes like to do, especially on Brits !

And nothing more they like to do is examine, in thorough detail all your documentation.

Ironically the one thing that they don't check on are headlights.

And your post does remind me that when we blagged the Marmotte there were loads of Frenchies doing it as we asked them if it was cool to do.

BenderRodriguez

GavinBay wrote:

I don't know "where around my way is" but you have to be an extremely naive Brit to chance doing that with the number of spot checks the dear old Gendarmes like to do, especially on Brits !

There must be a lot of 'naive' Brits round my way (in the Morzine area), given the number of 'No VED' British plated cars I see around. When we first arrived here we did have the misfortune to go to a few social events with other British immigrants that we met through work, and it was clear that from what they said that a majority of them were running this scam, not least because it meant they could drive around with little respect for the speed limits, whilst it being unlikely that they would be traced if they were 'flashed'. I.e they are far from 'naive'!

In my experience, it is also a 'Daily Mail myth' that the Gendarmes 'target' Brit plated cars. In fact when I asked someone who worked for the local police why they didn't do more to catch all those Brits using illegal vehicles, I was told that the general consensus was that it was best to ignore this issue as doing something to stop it might have an adverse effect on the local tourist trade!

gavinbay

Oh you live near Morzine......

Nuff said

chaffordred

BenderRodriguez wrote:

GavinBay wrote:

I don't know "where around my way is" but you have to be an extremely naive Brit to chance doing that with the number of spot checks the dear old Gendarmes like to do, especially on Brits !

There must be a lot of 'naive' Brits round my way (in the Morzine area), given the number of 'No VED' British plated cars I see around. When we first arrived here we did have the misfortune to go to a few social events with other British immigrants that we met through work, and it was clear that from what they said that a majority of them were running this scam, not least because it meant they could drive around with little respect for the speed limits, whilst it being unlikely that they would be traced if they were 'flashed'. I.e they are far from 'naive'!

In my experience, it is also a 'Daily Mail myth' that the Gendarmes 'target' Brit plated cars. In fact when I asked someone who worked for the local police why they didn't do more to catch all those Brits using illegal vehicles, I was told that the general consensus was that it was best to ignore this issue as doing something to stop it might have an adverse effect on the local tourist trade!

To add a bit of balance to the discussion. I was hit and run by a French plated van in Morzine last year. We had minor injuries, but the brand new Merc hire car was a write off. When it came to dealing with the Gendarmes they told me through their translator French drink driving is a big issue in the area and a big part of their culture. The police apologised as the incident happened outside Montriond police station whilst they were playing cards in the garden. They chased after the driver, but unfortunately couldn't catch him. Their main concern was that I wasn't put off by the whole episode and that I would return to the Morzine area.

BenderRodriguez

chaffordred wrote:

I was hit and run by a French plated van in Morzine last year. We had minor injuries, but the brand new Merc hire car was a write off. When it came to dealing with the Gendarmes they told me through their translator French drink driving is a big issue in the area and a big part of their culture. The police apologised as the incident happened outside Montriond police station whilst they were playing cards in the garden. They chased after the driver, but unfortunately couldn't catch him. Their main concern was that I wasn't put off by the whole episode and that I would return to the Morzine area.

The fact that this involved a French-plated van is no guarantee that the driver was French! In some of the villages in Chablais 40% of the property is owned by Brits, and not all of them keep Brit-plated cars on the road. If this was a French driver you were unlucky, given that overall only around 3% of crashes in France see the driver do a runner. In the UK the figure is closer to 15% and in some areas around half of all crashes resulting in death or injury are 'hit and runs'. As I am sure you are aware, in the UK is has almost become the norm for the driver to leave the scene if they run down a cyclist...

As to French drink-driving, I don't think that the problem is any less serious in the UK, if anything it is worse. True enough, over the last decade the number of drink-drive convictions In France has hovered around the 120,000 per year mark, as compared to around 80,000 in the UK. However, the figures for France are based on a lower, 0.5% legal limit and a much, much higher testing rate. For example, in 2000, over 9.2 million breath tests were conducted in France and over 90% of all drivers involved in a crash are tested. See:

http://www.icadtsinternational.com/file ... 02_084.pdf

In contrast, in Great Britain only around 680,000 people are currently being breath tested each year and in some years, such as 2003, the figure has been as low as 534,000. Also, only around half of all UK drivers involved in a crash are breath tested. (Or at least this was the case a few years ago.)

When French-style 'random' testing is done in the UK, generally at Christmas and in the mid summer, typically 4 - 6% of drivers give a positive test or refuse to take one, with the offending rate being highest for younger drivers. Extrapolating from a French-style testing figure of 9.2 million, this could be expected to give at least 370,000 positives annually, and this is at the 0.8 mg level! Around 1.3% of random tests in France produce a positive at the 0.5% level.

Looking at the number of drivers who are found to be over the legal limit after being involved in a crash, once again, taking into account the differences in the permitted level of alcohol and testing frequency, it seems that drink driving is a probably bigger problem in the UK than in France.

For example, In France around 16% of drivers involved in a fatal crash are over the French 0.5 mg limit. In Britain around 17% of drivers involved in a fatal crash are over the UK's (now England and Wales') 0.8 mg limit. However, take into account those drivers involved in a crash who had a blood alcohol level between that of France and the UK and the figure for the UK would be significantly higher. (Taking ACPO's figures, the alcohol-related fatality rate for the UK, including those where the driver was 'impaired' by alcohol - that is having a blood alcohol above the 0.5 mg level but below 0.8 mg - is around 20% of all crashes.)

de_sisti

A woman in our club did just that in 2009; in a respectable 9 hrs, 45 mins (she was camping in Bourg d'Oisans).

fenix

Can't you just ride it any old day of the year ? If you've not entered a ride then I think it's bad form to 'bandit' it.

de_sisti

If it's not going to affect your chances of finishing why worry if someone blags it. You'll have enough
on your plate trying to get round the course (I should know, I've completed it twice ('legally'), in a
very slow time.

stanthomas

De Sisti wrote:

If it's not going to affect your chances of finishing why worry if someone blags it...

While the Marmotte is run by an events company it is made by the riders. If you simply want to gatecrash someone else's party I'd put you in the same category as this tit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29566395.

Whether it makes any difference to my day is something we might debate but more riders on the Glandon certainly doesn't help. The real nuisance has been friends in cars driving alongside their rider taking photographs and generally pretending to be Bjarne Riis.

stanthomas

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19598213#p19598213]BenderRodriguez[/url] wrote:

... from my experience Brits in France have little respect for anything when in France.

True. I have come across almost a lager lout mentality among some English riders - shouting obscenities to each other as they ride thru small villages, making rude remarks about other riders on the assumption that they're all foreigners and don't understand. One reason why I choose to wear a jersey from an obscure Dutch team...