Today the 99th Edition of the biggest cycling event in the world, the Tour de France, will start with a 7 km long prologue in Luxemburg.
As I have no idea about the popularity of the Tour around here (we don't have that many members from traditional cycling countries IIRC, at least, there aren't that many people from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium etc. around here), let's just first see who's going to follow it with more than an average interest. [img]smile.gif[/img]
And who do you think will win? Armstrong again? [img]smile.gif[/img]

I love the tour [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] . Yeah probably Lance, Lance is great [img]smile.gif[/img] . Hopefully Stuey O'Grady will get his act together and get the green jersey. Although I think he ought to train harder and get going on those mountains! Just a bit of stamina and endurance training should do it I think ;) . And I think another Aussie boy hmm Cadel Evans? did good in the Tour of Italy, I think he should do okay too [img]smile.gif[/img] .

LOL as an aside, I read today that Robbie McEwen named his son Ewan :rolleyes: :D

Cadel Evans did great during the Giro d'Italia (except for 15 minutes of pure disaster :( ), but I don't see him on the list of participants for this edition of the Tour, unfortunately. :( But I think he's definitely a person to watch out for in the upcoming years. [img]smile.gif[/img]
As for O'Grady, I even selected him for an online Tourmanager game... For some reason, he's *always* around to show himself in stages, even though he doesn't win that often. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Other Aussies in this edition of the Tour are Bradley McGee, Baden Cooke and the earlier mentioned Robbie McEwen. Only 4 this time, but let's hope they can pull something off. ;)

And Ewan McEwen? Is this another chapter in the "how to traumatize your child at birth" category? [img]graemlins/uhoh1.gif[/img]

[ 07-06-2002, 02:57 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

Oh really? Poo. I think he was in it last year :(

Yeah O'Grady's great! Last year he did very well, wore the yellow jersey for quite a number of days, and his team won the team time trial. But he does always seem to get pipped in sprint finishes :(

I think Cadel Evans's team isn't in the Tour - I seem to recall some talk of him possibly switching teams to compete, but I guess it sounds like that never came to fruition. O'Grady is cleary our best (OZ) hope then for any sort of honours, but McEwan has won a stage before - the final one in Paris a couple of years ago. It will be interesting to be in France to see what sort of hysteria Le Tour excites.

Erm... Not completely true, as he's a member of the Mapei team, one of the best ranked teams in the world actually. His team is definitely going to be in the tour. I haven't heard about him planning on switching teams, but it is possible Mapei didn't want to take him along to the Tour this year (maybe too young, too inexperienced, so to spare him after the difficult Giro he rode? Who knows...) and that he wanted to change teams in order to be able to start anyways... But like I said, I haven't heard anything about Evans' plans. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 07-06-2002, 06:52 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

I used to have great respect for these guys, but not anymore. This sport is being dominated by dope. Sure, you still have training to do, but stick a needle with whatever it is they're using nowadays in my butt, and i'll climb that Alpe D'huez like a rocket. They should rename it, Tour de Epo is more apropriate ! :D

Yeah l look forward to "dope de france" and it will be nice to se who that have taking most dope" cool! :D

[ 07-06-2002, 07:18 AM: Message edited by: Megabot ]

Sigh... In that case we might as well ban *any* sport in the world in which the pressure is high and lots of money is made. The only reason that cycling has so many doping cases, is because inspections are more thorough than in *any* other sport. I don't believe in clean sports, whether it's cycling, swimming, football or even chess for that matter.
But just as long as people know what they're doing to themselves and operate within the accepted rules concerning doping, it's fine with me. Heck, even a simple coughing-mixture or one cup of coffee too much could lead to being caught for doping usage... But do those racing cyclists really intent to use an extra cup of coffee to crush all of their opponents? :rolleyes: And there's also the way of achieving improvement, of course. There's a difference between going on stage in the Rocky Mountains and taking EPO, but they *both* have the same effect - a higher production of red blood-corpuscles. Does that mean that training in the Rocky Mountains is also drug abuse? Of course not... I draw the line with EPO though, which is both dangerous and immoral ("the easy way out").
It's the eternal question, whether a means is considered to be a legal means of preperation or doping. In fact, last thing I heard was that they were going to scrap all non-dangerous and relatively "normal" products off the official doping lists.

Ahhh - the 'Torture de France'

They have already cought the first (drugs) offender (last weekend) :(

I'll still watch to see how CSC-Tiscali is doing.