Le Tour de France

[faulty_damper]

Prologue:
Lance took second place in the short individual time trial trailing the winner by 2 seconds.

Stage 1:
Lance finished the stage 48th place.  But his position is 3rd overall.

[faulty_damper]

Currently, after Stage 3, Lance Armstrong has dropped down to 4th overall.

Tomorrow is the team time trial in which the entire US Postal team races against the clock.  They were very dominant last year.

[faulty_damper]

And he takes yellow after the Stage 4 team time trial.

[amanfang]

How's Lance doing?

[faulty_damper]

He won yesterday's stage and has been looking good in yellow with a lead of 1:25.  Today is the individual time trial up Alp d'Huez.  I'm don't know how he did yet.

So far, he's looking like he's going to be the first to win 6 Tours and 6 Tours consecutively.  None of his rivals (Jan Ulrich, Hamilton, Heras, et al) have even gotten close which is quite odd.  Ivan Basso is currently second overall which is a surprise.

It's gotten a lot less exciting since Armstrong is probably going to take the overall win.  The rest of the field is looking pretty pathetic.

[faulty_damper]

Okay, Armstrong won todays time trial up Alp d'Huez.


Here's an interesting quote:
"But the Alpe did confirm what many observers already suspected: that the Tour de France is a wholly owned property of one Lance Armstrong (US Postal Service), who delivered his third individual stage win of this year's Tour en route to stamping his total dominance on the event."

[Swan]

It's gotten a lot less exciting since Armstrong is probably going to take the overall win.  The rest of the field is looking pretty pathetic.

I agree.     In fact its been a lot less exciting for the last few years - there's no, "Gee, I wonder who's going to win this year,"  Its "Well, I wonder if Lance will fall off his bike..."  That's about the only way anyone else get get a stab at the yellow.

I wish Jan would just get out of his seat now and then!  Move it buster!  At least give the guy a run for his money!

Did you see all those people up the Alp d'Huez?  I was just waiting for some moron to not get out of the way in time.    I spent most of the night yelling "Get out of the way you idiots!!"

Anyway, I'm holding my breath for Jan to pull something out of his hat to at least get into second position..... Mmmm.  

[Swan]

And Lance takes his sixth.  Will it be a seventh?  Rumour has it this is his last tour - but another rumour suggests that this rumour is just  a publicity stunt to get everyones attention to the fact that he'll have a new sponsor next year.  

[faulty_damper]

Me and some friends were watching one of the mountain stages, the one where Landis was leading up the break group ak tempo, preventing Jan from attacking.  So at the top, Lance pushes Landis over the King of the Mountain line for some KOM points.  But then after that, he asks Landis if he wanted to win a stage.  Darn right get a tootin'!  Lance gets into position to block and off he goes.  So he goes on a finish line break but immediately gets surprised that Klodel breaks away and passes them.  Lance was pissed!  He wanted his teammate to win this stage and took Kloden down at the line.  It was one of the most exciting stage wins just because Lance was going to play domestique for his teammates!  So we were joking around that Lance would change roles as team leader to team domestique helping his teammates win stages.  That would have been funny to watch.