[bvang]

So there hasn't been an active sports topic in a while and this Saturday, the 4th of July the Tour de France starts again. This time in Monaco.

The main thing the press will be focusing on this tour is the return of Lance Armstrong, who came out of retirement. Will he win again? I highly doubt it, Astana (the Kazach team he's riding for) actually has a main problem. They have other candidates for victory in their team; main one being Alberto Contador who's the favourite to win the Tour this year. They however also have Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden who can't be underestimated either.

There are however other people who have a good shot at winning the thing; from Team Saxo Bank there is the Schleck brothers from Luxembourg. From Cervelo there is Carlo Sastre (funny thing about the Cervelo team is that they aren't officially in cycling to win. They're in it to build the best bike possible), from Rabobank there is Denis Menchov who actually won the last Giro d'Italia and Vuelta d'Espana. He just hasn't won the Tour de France yet, funny though that his main helpers in the mountains are all Dutch. Not exactly a country with mountains to practice on.

With the Tour de France there is each and every year there is also a negative side. The doping and the fight against it. Sad thing is that the first cyclist has already been taken out because of doping. Thomas Dekker who was basically fired from Rabobank last year because the team didn't trust him. He wasn't actually caught using doping back then. The UCI however started retesting old samples with new methods for new types of doping. He tested positive for a urine sample taken in 2007. So in hindsight Rabobank was actually right to fire him and now Silence-Lotto has to deal with the crap surrounding it. The French doping authority has actually announced that they will be using a new developed test to test for a certain substance. They just aren't telling anyone what substance that is (which is quite clever I have to say).

[blueboy]

Lance return again??

I need a bike fix after reading this

[bvang]

Haven't really updated but so far things haven't been that exciting. First atage was won by Fabian Cancellara and the second and third stage my Marc Cavendish. Today was the Team Time Trial which was won by Astana which means that Cancellara is still in the yellow but Lance Armstrong is now second at zero seconds.

[gregair13]

There really has not been a lot of coverage on it. Usually once the race gets closer to the end and America is doing well, only then do sports networks like espn pick up on their coverage.

[Wolverine1980]

I saw about 3 minutes of it to see how Armstrong was doing but tbh I can't watch biking for long...it's just not that exciting.  I will try to watch some more once they get out of the Pyrenees.

[bvang]

Typical that someone who doesn't understand the sport would call the mountain stages boring. We've had full live coverage here, though the Dutch hopes are dwindling a bit, a lot of bad luck. Leading right now is an Italian guy called Rinaldo Nocentini, though he won't last. Second is Alberto Contador and third Lance Armstrong.

[gregair13]

A few years ago, when Lance was in his prime, the networks did a great job covering the mountain stages, which are the best stages to watch.

[bvang]

I was gone for a bit so there was a lack of updates in here.

The Tour is sort of developing as expected, with Alberto Contador leading quite easily. Lance isn't quite there yet, there seems to be more drama about other things. Like with the Astana team, Alexander Vinokourov was banned from cycling for two years but he's being forced back on the Astana team. Result: Johan Bruyneel and Lance Armstrong will be setting up their own new team, based in the USA. It will most likely be a LiveStrong team, his cancer foundation. With all the funding coming from Nike.

[bvang]

Due to all the activity on locloh I completely forgot about this thread.

As most people will know Alberto Contador won in the end.

He also made some dumb comments about Armstrong but it's not like they'll be teammates for much longer.