Saturday, July 02, 2005

Vive Le Tour!

Le TourYay! Le Tour de France begins today! Here's the entire course for the 3-week race.

Today's stage is a 19km time trial. 11.8 miles. Let's see, how fast could a normal human ride that course? Riding at 20 mph (32 kph) it would take any of us mortals about 35 minutes to complete the course. The Tour riders will do it in considerably less (top times will be ~20 min or 35 mph).

A few of my buddies on the TRI-DRS list have set up Fantasy Leagues along with me:
Bob Mina - Team Whodat
Todd Dole - Mr. Todd's Wild Ride
Chris Baucom - Tricyclist
Cathy Morgan - Lance Plus 8
Andrew Murdock - Mutton Cadet
Lee Crumbaugh - Gotta Ride
Mark Seale - MarkS
Michelle White - Michelle's Boys
Nancy Toby - Nancy Toby

What's your prediction for this stage? Lance has two choices: Go out hard, win the stage, and put his decisive stamp on his 7th and final winning Tour; or hang back and let someone else wear the Maillot Jaune for the beginning of the Tour. What will it be? He will be the last starter, so we'll have to wait for everyone to go before we witness his decision. You can bet Jan Ullrich will be killing himself to win the stage!



I won't give away any results right now, but you HAVE to watch this one! I was laughing out loud at the spanking that was delivered on international TV!

3 comments:

Chris said...

I, too, didn't want to post anything about today's results. But it's nice knowing that someone else out there knows! What an awesome way to start out the tour! :)

Tracy said...

Definitely cool, it's exciting to get caught up in it all!

Dr. Iron TriFeist :) said...

Lance is a strategist, always has been. He's not going to go for the yellow jersey on the first day. Everyone already knows he's the guy to beat. Why throw gasoline on the fire?