Austinite Lance Armstrong is in yellow. His Discovery team won the time trial today and now Lance is in first place in the Tour de France. Long-time Lance team mate, George Hincapie is in second place. In fact, five of the top 10 riders thus far in the tour are from the Discovery team.
However, given that there are 16 more stages, with the dreaded mountain stages more than a week away, chances are that Lance will give up the jersey. The thing is, the current overall leader gets to wear the yellow. This early in the race there could be a different rider in yellow every few days. In previous years Lance has let other riders and teams wear the yellow, if he doesn't see that rider as an overall threat. For example, if there is a sprinter who gains time on flat courses, like what are usually at the start, Lance is fine with that because he knows once they reach the mountain stages these sprinters will lose their legs, so to speak.
Next July will be so weird. The Tour and Lance have captured both mine and Doug's attention for the past several years. Every day of the Tour, I check the Internet several times while I'm at work, waiting for the results. I doubt that without Lance, the Tour will seem so exciting.
1 comment:
I'm all for Lance Armstrong competing in the Tour de France. He's a good guy who's had a lot of struggles in the world. He deserves to be in first and he especially deserves to win if he puts forth the effort.
But I'm starting to feel a little bit of "Unthinking Eurocentrism" here (I don't remember if you took Dr. Wiell or not). In this case, it should be more like "Unthinking America-centrism." If I have any beef with this whole Lance Armstrong business, it's this:
Yesterday, I was listening to the radio and I heard an ad where this guy called Armstrong's publicist and left a message. The thing that struck a chord with me was the idea that Armstrong was upsetting a whole bunch of European guys. Now, I don't think it was Armstrong's intention, but I think that theres a "We're (US) number one" attitude going on. It's like "The US is kicking ass so nothing else matters." Of course, we might see it as just plain old pride and fun. But I also know for a fact that a lot of people elsewhere aren't too keen on Armstrong, especially sicne he's dominated the last couple of Tours. Maybe the Europeans are being elitist, but then some of us Yanks may be raucously rattling our "We're #1" foam sabres more than what's healthy. I'm wondering if we know how to be humble (though we know Lance is).
Then again, Argentina hand us our asses in Basketball during the last olympics.
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