The Tour de France begins Saturday

No Lance No Floyd
George Hincapie is probably the best bet the Americans have

Anybody care?

 

Honestly, I feel a certain ennui about the event this year.

 

Actually it's Levi Leipheimer, but I guess that's proof that nobody scares.

 

I should have said I'm rooting for George

 

I was going to start a TDF thread and wasn't sure of the response it would get. (we got five pages out of a women's golf thread over on the Journalism page, so we should be ok).

For Americans, don't forget about David Zabriskie--He and Leipheimer both ride for Discovery.

For the overall, how about last year's runner up, Oscar Pereiro? I also like Alexandre Vinokurov from Kazakhstan, I think he would've been right there at the end last year if basically his whole team wasn't disqualified.

I hope it will be a clean tour, like 19 of the 21 teams have signed the UCI's anti-doping pledge. And say what you will, cycling has a much tougher drug policy than MLB, NFL or whatever. Those guys are checked right at the end of a stage. That's analogous to checking Barroid after he steps on home plate after hitting a home run.

The prologue is in London this year. Should be a cool race.

 

Zabriskie rides for Team CSC and is not a threat for the GC. Only Leipheimer can legitimately be considered a GC threat this year.

And EVERY cyclist has signed the pledge, which to me means very little at this point.

I'll watch and read coverage most days. I don't expect it to be a popular sport. I expect it to be a niche sport like it always has been and always will be.

 

My bad, did a quick check at a website and it had Zabriskie on Dicovery. I didn't think that was right, but didn't check any further. I would think that at some point, the sport has to clean itself up.

 

The sport is dirty, plain and simple. It's probably cleaner, though, than the NFL and MLB because it has an actual anti-doping program and when someone is busted, it's publicized because it happens where lab workers are more than happy to leak info and test results. That'd never happen in America where players unions work very hard to protect the athletes and, in the opinion of some, prevent anti-doping programs from having any power.

Once they figured out what EPO was and how to identify it, the sport started getting cleaner slowly. We're two or three years at least, though, from getting the sport to the point it is respected as a clean sport.

 

ZZzzzzzzzzzz

And no, I don't live in Utah.

 

I'll watch, if only because Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are a great sportscasting duo.

 

me too they are the best TV Crew on VS! Better than any football crew or baseball tv or radio

 

This is the biggest event on Versus!