Midway Through The Tour

We’re well into our July morning routine here: turn on the computer, get online, go to the official site for the Tour de France, and read the text update live from the race. Two minutes later, hit reload, and see if there’s anything new. Even if we had a television, the race is being shown on a relatively obscure cable channel, OLN, which isn’t in most standard cable packages.

The next few days will prove decisive. Tomorrow is the first individual time trial, followed by four days in the Pyrenees. The time trial is being seen as a possible showdown between Lance Armstrong, and Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour winner and a formidable time trialist, who’s eager to make up a 2’10” time deficit. Armstrong thinks this is the most important time trial he’s faced in the past five years because the race is so close.

For a lighter look at the world of bicycle racing, see this, from bsag.