The Tour Heats Up

Today was the team time trial in the Tour de France. The US Postal Service team won the stage, putting their leader Lance Armstrong in a commanding position in the overall standings. This year’s Tour hits mountains early: the first stage in the Alps is Saturday. It wouldn’t surprise me if Armstrong took the overall lead then and kept it for the rest of the Tour.

But anything can happen, as Sunday’s massive pileup in the last kilometer of the stage shows. Tyler Hamilton, one of the Tour riders to be keeping an online diary, unfortunately got caught in the pileup and fractured his collarbone in two places. Amazingly, he is continuing with the race, and today writes that there’s no telling how long he’ll be able to continue, but he at least made his goal following the crash of being able to help out with the team time trial.