04/27/24
July 02, 2004
The Tour de France: The worlds greatest sporting event starts tomorrow and Lance Armstrong is going for an unprecedented 6th win, although not if the those cheese eating surrender monkeys have anything to do with it! As is traditional, we have a nice juicy drugs scandal to keep us interested. It will be interesting to see how a fit Tyler Hamilton does. There is all sorts of cycling related nonsense here
posted by Fat Buddha to extreme at 04:56 PM - 14 comments
The Tour de France Blog is required reading for cycling junkies, and I'm also enjoying Le Tour Delicieux.
posted by dusted at 06:00 PM on July 02, 2004
I love the tour de france. I'm so fucking pissed off about the David Millar scandal its untrue. At least the fucker has admitted it. His entire fucking team is suspect, though, if you ask me. But then again, thats the problem with cycling at them moment. (I'm very fucking drunk at the moment, so I apologise for any incoherence)
posted by dng at 06:27 PM on July 02, 2004
As long as you're not shitting drunk, that's cool.
posted by billsaysthis at 08:20 PM on July 02, 2004
Fabian Cancellara won the prologue today, the first time he's ever raced in the Tour. That's such an amazing story. Most pro riders dream of winning a Tour stage at some point in an entire career, and he won the first he ever attempted.
posted by dusted at 02:46 PM on July 03, 2004
Yep, Cofidis had the stench of EPO all over it. And Millar really deserves to be kicked hard up the arse by anyone who gets the chance. Lance looked ominously good today. Or rather, ominously pissed-off at the whole 'book' thing. Of course, the prologue doesn't mean much in the GC, but it's all about psychology.
posted by etagloh at 03:39 PM on July 03, 2004
After a crash in today's stage 3 Iban Mayo lost nearly 4 mins in GC. Should the other GC contenders have waited on him (as is often customary) or were they right in putting the hammer down and increasing the gap?
posted by JohnSFO at 12:07 PM on July 06, 2004
what is the GC? (cringes)
posted by garfield at 12:32 PM on July 06, 2004
garfield: General Classsification, meaning the riders trying to win it all, as opposed to those trying to win the points, sprinter or climber jerseys. The history of waiting for a fallen rider is pretty spotty. Even last year, it was debated whether Ullrich waited for Armstrong when he fell. I agree with Frank at the Tour de France blog: the fault lies with the chasing peloton and particularly the Euskaltel-Euskadi team. Perhaps the strangest thing was how long it took for Euskaltel-Euskadi to get a chase going; if that had been Ullrich or Armstrong, their teams would have been strung out 9 strong bringing the leader back or getting smoked trying. I give credit to the leading teams; that was a pretty good group they rode away from, with plenty of strong riders to effect a bridge, if motivated.
posted by dusted at 12:36 PM on July 06, 2004
thanks D.
posted by garfield at 01:02 PM on July 06, 2004
No problem, garfield. How many of you are watching live in the morning? I'm on the west coast, so I can watch about 45 minutes between getting back from my swim and going to work. I wish I had Tivo, but I think I'm just going to bust out the VHS tapes. The live commentary by Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen is excellent, but for some reason OLN feels it's necessary to "expand" the coverage in primetime. They add a bunch of lame commentary from their studio hosts (who are particularly bad), which makes the whole thing feel much less "live." I hate it. I'll buy a Tivo on of these days...
posted by dusted at 02:04 PM on July 06, 2004
Still not sure whether other riders should have "waited" or not - if it had been Lance who crashed and Jan or Tyler took off people would be up in arms. That being said hopefully Mayo (and his team) can gain a bit of time back to make it a more interesting race. I also watch on the west coast and catch all but the last 30 or so mins of the stage before heading to work. Once at work I can get OLN's audio feed over the internet and that's better than nothing :) Agreed that OLN's expanded coverage is a bit cheesy at times but it's still awesome to have such expansive coverage and not rely on three sunday's worth of CBS and their melodramatic music and b&w video montages...
posted by JohnSFO at 02:25 PM on July 06, 2004
...but it's still awesome to have such expansive coverage and not rely on three sunday's worth of CBS and their melodramatic music and b&w video montages... Absolutely.
posted by dusted at 03:06 PM on July 06, 2004
Like 86, I too enjoyed my joblessness during last year's Tour, watching it wall to wall in the mornings. It was lovely. This year is killing me.
posted by chicobangs at 01:38 PM on July 07, 2004
Cheese eating surrender monkeys watching shaven-legged logo monkeys! How very, very French!