Tour de France 



Currently, Nancy's favorite sport is bicycle racing and she loves to watch the Tour de France. She got hooked last year when she was laid off and nursing Caroline in the early morning. Nancy and I had a great time watching the race this year. First of all, thank goodness for a DVR that can make the three to five hour stages manageable by skipping through commercials. Although Lance Armstrong is an amazing athlete with a great uplifting story, the Tour is long enough and complex enough to enjoy on many levels even while Lance is dominating the overall standings.

Nancy enjoys cheering on her favorite rider, Jan Ullrich a German who has won the Tour once and finished the five times in second place and finished this year in third. Maybe with Lance gone next year, he can win the Tour for the first time since 1997. My favorite rider this year was the young Dane, Michael Rasmussen, who won stage nine and won the polka-dot King of the Mountains jersey this year. Michael was on track to finish on the podium in third place but he had a disastrous penultimate time trial stage where he crashed, had four bike changes, and then on an unfamiliar bike, crashed again into a ditch on a descent. His overall standings dropped to seventh place. As usual, the Tour was a great spectacle with beautiful scenery, hard core athleticism, and great sportsmanship. And the crashes are better than NASCAR. 

Posted: Mon - July 25, 2005 at 10:12 PM          

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