Hi all,
Anyone following the tour at the moment?With no real favourite and rumours going round about Vinokourov and other top riders, it's hard to tell who is going to carry the jersey through onto the Champs Elysees!What's your guess?
Cheers,Shay

Ola Shay

Well I can tell you that I certainly am watching the Tour the France.. Of course for the Rabobank group (the orange guys from Holland) but also because the Young Guy Thomas Dekker who has it's debute in the tour (8th place in the first time run) comes from my village. Basically the whole village is watching the tour here.
I watch it every year though. Hope it gets more interesting now the Doping hopefully is out of the tour.

Hey Robert,
Dekker is certainly a force to be reckoned with in the future.From the other Dutch riders, i hope to see Boogerd come through, he doesn't have a real chance of getting the jersey but he can be a handful in the climbs.
I'll be following the tour a lot closer than usual this year.
My father inlaw is one of the head mechanics by the german team, T-Mobile and a family friend of ours is the sports director Allan Peiper, an ex rider.
After work i've been helping him out with putting stickers on the wheels and glueing the tubeless tires to the rims.So much for the highest paid/sponsored cycling team in the world !

A pic of my father in law (in the middle) at the service course in Bonn,Germany.


I'll take some pics tom. of some of the time trial bikes and what i've been helping my father inlaw with.
Cheers,
Shay

I have always been amazed by the endurance of these guys.
I get out of breath just watching the recaps on the sports channel.
Hopefully this year it will end without the usual drug test controversies, and accusations.

I've been watching it for about three years now, but this year, I won't be watching it on TV because our cable line is broken. I follow it on the Internet, though.

I would like to see Vino come through. He really tries hard, and since he was barred by his teammates' involvement in Operation Puerto, he should have some real incentive to give it his best (as if he needs any motivation)! And of course Leipheimer is a big favorite here in the US as well.

It's day four and there are two Brits in the top 5 - go Bradley and David

I had a tough choice on Sunday - watch the tour through my home town, or an Airshow with 8 spits, and 5 Mustangs - and if Bolero2 had gone according to plan a P-38 Lightning - so the Airshow won, and i missed the tour.

Andy

LOVE IT - DVR tapes every minute Vs. puts on the air.
I'd love to see Levi L. do well, don't know if he has a team strong enough to get him to the end on top. We'll see - I'm rooting for him. George is a home town favorite that I hope can pull out of his 'Right hand Man' syndrom. He was Lance's right hand man for so long that it's hard for him to be the leader for three weeks.


As always the first week is drama filled and fun to watch for great finishes.

Anybody still watching Le Tour?

No, and I miss it. We had a lightning strike last Tuesday that took out our DirecTV and they can't come fix it until August 1. So I'm missing all of the end of it.

I even tried to tell them I was missing the Tour and they didn't seem to care.

What a mess!
Vinokurov gets booted by the tour officials and his team pulls ot.
Overall leader Rasmussen gets the boot from his own team aparently for missing drug tests in the spring, despite coming up clean throughout the tour itself.

I feel that missing an out of competion test, let alone missing four means that they have something to hide. Kick out the cheats and make the race clean.

Andy

I am sooo dissapointed in the whole mess.

Is there anyone left riding?
The current state of professional sports just amazes me...


Shaun