The Tour De France begins a new. I’m pretty psyched, but for Steph its the ugly time of the year when I turn from a reasonably well rounded adult male, into the worst kind of dude…a sports fan.
A couple things about the tour so far:
A close friend came by the house this morning and watched some of today’s stage. Quoth he: “Someone should really publish a primer on what the hell is going on, so I can follow it.”
To which I say:
- Here is the TDF wikipedia entry.
- Here is Velonews’ Tour 101 article
Good places to start.
Next: My uncle, a very, very sharp retired engineer, severely bummed me out on Saturday. I told him I spent the morning watching the tour. His response was ‘Why? Its full of dopers…’
I muttered something about it being a new era, and then changed the subject.
My esprit d’escalier was to cite the stories popping up on the web about professional baseball teams road records being in the shitter this year due to MLB’s stepped up amphetamine testing. I mean cycling supposedly fixed that problem after Tom Simpson’s heart exploded climbing Mount Ventoux in 1967.
Of course, googling for this story right now, I get nothing. Except for this thing about players probably abusing Ritalin and Adderall instead of amphetamines.
Figures.
Anyway, The first two stages, I think, have been very exciting. I’m glad they dumped the prologue, and hope other tours follow suit. Also, I don’t think flat stages make for very good television. But that could just be me and my less then nuanced understanding of the sport.
This is only the third tour that I have seriously followed.
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