This has been one hell of a tough week for pro cycling, Amanda and I (my wife of 5 years) have really been looking forward to watching this years edition of the Tour de France which was left wide open for a new champ after the retirement of Armstrong. I have programmed our tivo for all of the programming on OLN last night and got up early today to watch the prologue time trial. After the doping scandal my wife and I were really disappointed that the big guns would not be racing.
Heck, as a true tour junkie I love and cheer for them all. So as the tour got started today I was in a bit of a funk, I think the rider that got hit the hardest of all has to be Alexandre Vinokourov. Here is a guy who has focused his whole season around the TDF. He has only riden a handful of races and was finally a team captain in his own right. The tour would have been much more exciting with Vino in the race. However because he choose a contract with what looks to be a doping team “Liberty Segurous – Wurth” after the fall out Wurth only had five riders able to ride when they needed six in order to compete. I hope Vino is on the phone with the team director at Discovery Channel… as I write this. I know they also made him an offer last fall.
Back to the prologue coverage, once the race was on this am and the riders were hitting their 32 miles per hours I was screaming just I have for any other tour. This years Tour will be as great as any other tour I have watched over the years, and while the decision to cut some nine riders on the eve of the race was a hard decision but it was the right decision. Just think if Basso, Ullrich, Mancebo or any of the other riders won who were implicated and then it was proven that they had doped that would have been a low spot for the tour (not to even mention the runners up).
This tour is off the a very eliciting start with George Hincapie less than one second away from yellow and in a wonderful spot after the first day of racing. Other Americans such as Landis, Julich and David Z are also right up their in the classification. This years Tour de France will survive and will go on, I hope Basso and Ullrich are able to prove the police report wrong. However for now it is best they are out of the race.
~ Tour Guy
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