the tour de france

Today the Tour de France starts with it’s opening Prologue with the first stage starting tomorrow.  If, for some unfortunate reason, you don’t know what The Tour is, simply stated it’s a race up and all around France and some surrounding areas.   They just happen to cover over 2,200 miles.  And if you haven’t seen a map of France, it is not a flat country.  Did I mention they do it all from July 7th to July 29th?  Yeah, 22 days and something like 1 day off.  Some equate it to doing a marathon every single day for 20 days straight.  Sounds like fun.
The tour (and cycling in general) is going to have a bit of a monkey on it’s back it seems for awhile.  Now that the celebrity champ Lance Armstrong is out of the picture and the gloom of doping alligations are riddled throughout the sport, I’m not sure when the sport will overcome it.  Or maybe it won’t matter.  Maybe this is something that most sports have to embrace(not condone, just accept that doping is here to stay) and figure out better ways of catching and punishing athletes.  It’s unfortunate that it is even an issue, however I do know fellow cyclists and fans that it really isn’t an issue.  They enjoy the sport for what it is.

You’ll be able to keep up with the race at letour.fr (be sure to click on the “english language” button) and at versus.com.

(p.s. This post was made using an iPhone)