The route of the men's Olympic road race was 273 km (170 miles) long. It ended with a couple of laps around a circuit in Paris, just before going to the finish line at the Eiffel Tower. We chose to go to Place Pigalle so that we could see the racers go by without buying tickets. (You can find Place Pigalle in the inset in the lower right of the map above.)

We had to get to the route early in order to beat the crowd, so we had some time to kill after we got there and staked out our position along the barricades. The Moulin Rouge was only a few hundred feet away, so I got a photo of it.

This video (link) shows our location on the barricade. It was taken about 2 hours before the racers arrived. We learned after we got there, and as is obvious from the video, Place Pigalle is a red light district. The videos I took are PG-13, but, just so you know, if you show them to your kids, you might get some questions.

The route made a turn half a block from the Moulin Rouge. I took a video (link) of the crowd at the turn.

The House of Orange-Nassau is the reigning house of the Netherlands, so the people dressed in orange in the videos are Dutch. There was a group of them across the barricade from us. The racers representing the Netherlands are also in orange tops. Normally the racers don't acknowledge the fans, but it was nice to see the Dutch riders acknowledge the Dutch fans with a smile or a wave.

By the time they reached us, the racers had already been racing over 5 hours. The winner, Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel, crossed the finish line in 6 hours, 19 minutes, so his average speed was 43 kph, or 27 mph. Try doing that on your next bike ride!