Le Tour de France
Posted by salvo on July 7th, 2005
Well, its that time again, for me to bask in the glow of one of my all-time hero’s – Lance Armstrong. I love the Tour of France and this is the third time I am watching it. The first time, I took three weeks leave to watch it at home and it was awesome. Lance Armstrong is my hero, and I have been wearing yellow for about a year and a bit already 
Well, Stage 1 was awesome, with Lance stamping his mark on the race early already, with him catching Jan Ulrich who started a minute before him on the course. I must say I am surprised at Lance’s speed, as he has not finished a race in 1st position this year at all so far. He finished down lower than 100 places a few months ago and I remember thinking that at this rate, maybe this is the best time for him to retire.
But low and behold, he smashed Jan Ulrich and caught him a minute ahead of him – his challenger for 2005.
When Lance was asked what he thought of Jan Ulrich this year, he replied “Jan is my favourite for 2006″. Jan did manage to crash into his team car the day before Stage 1 though, so maybe that had something to do with it, although Jan denies it.
Well, it was a little surprise to me when he took the Yellow jersey after Stage 4, but it was a pity as as the current Yellow Jersey at the beginning of that stage, Dave Zubrisky, fell within a kilometer of the end, while in the middle of Team CSC in the “ttt” (team time trial).
Building on from that Lance refused to wear the Yellow at the beginning of Stage 5, as that was the tradition, but the race officials soon put an end to that, and they threatened to disqualify Lance unless he wore it – well, guess what, he wore it.
Stage 5 was an awesome stage. The rider that could have won it was Christophe Mengin. He escaped from the peloton after about 40km, and managed to stay away and crashed about 10 seconds in front of the peloton at the final corner of the race, with he flag in sight, which was such a pity as he had such a good ride to that point.
Well, that’s 5 out of 21 stages done, with some exciting riding starting on Sunday, with the first of the serious mountain stages coming up and I want to see how Lance does in these stages, as he is a phenomenal rider over mountains.
I must just admit to a certain amount of sadness that he is retiring from the Tour de France at the end of this race and I wish I could see morte of him to come in the future.