Wannabe Bike Girl

It’s almost that time of year — though I’m not sure how the tour will measure up to the Giro — and I am excited. I have not decided if I’m going to root for Lance. After all, I do have favorites (Vino, Sylvain Chavanel) and there are some riders who won’t be racing (Bas Giling, Christian Werner, etc) or who have been left off for various reasons (Matthew Wilson). But, all of that aside, I really can’t wait for the tour to start.

I don’t have any predictions or really anything exciting to add. I hope the tour isn’t marred with the same crap as last year (not that OLN would cover it this year, either), but I am exciting for live coverage. I miss it.

As for what’s been going on? I’ve been reading the SI article about Lance and I’m not sure what to think, so I’ll leave my comments until I finish it. Racing wise? Ullrich seems to be in good form and I expect Basso will have recovered from whatever happened to him during the Giro. Gerolsteiner won the PT team time trial, and though their DS doesn’t expect much (is he just all talk?) I think that they might be a force, especially working for Levi (or maybe in spite of that). As for T-Mobile? Again, I worry they’re going to be top-heavy again. In addition to Klodi and Ullrich, Vino is in both top form and healthy. I missed him last year, though I bet not many did.

FDJ? Well, we all know what I think of their decision to leave Matt out. I think it’ll hurt them, but maybe Brad and Baden will prove me wrong. And hopefully Phil and Thomas can make up for the lacking Aussie. It’ll be weird for me to not look for Matt, just as looking for Sylvain becomes more complicated now that he’s on Cofidis and not BLB (the former BLB, I should say, BT is it now). I’m ready, though. Bring it on, man.

Also, one plug. For those of you who are more athletic than I (and it doesn’t take much), you should all go register to win the chance to blog from the Tour. If they didn’t have the ‘you must be able to ride the roads of France on a bike’ rule, I would be all over that. But I am out of shape and therefore cannot, so I pass along my good luck to those of you who do enter. And maybe one day I’ll be blogging from the tour, though not on a bike, I expect. Also check out the race to the tour blog.

I think I should probably go off and set up the TdF ‘05 blog right about now.

Music: wimbledon on espn2

I can’t decide how I want to react to the news that Matt will probably not be riding the tour. My first reaction is irritation, but it makes sense. He’s not French and the tour is the Tour de France and not the tour of Australia or whatever. And, of course the French officials want there to be more French riders. But that brings up the problem that most of the French riders aren’t, well, better than Matt. He should be riding, not them. Like, I get that they want more French cyclists, but more isn’t going to mean that Lance (or whoever) won’t win the tour. Nor will it make up for the fact that Richard retired. So they can try, but they’ll fail.

They should have just left the tour alone. When people start messing with things, you end up with shit like the Pro Tour and that is just, well, not good. I mean, yay for having PT teams riding in all the GTs, but the points system is just insane and the races picked make little sense sometimes.

And, seriously, maybe the TdF could invite more French teams to race or, you know, the French could start breeding better cyclists. BAH.

I had no idea I would get so worked up about Matt not riding in the tour.

EDIT: Turns out that it’s not the tour that wants more French riders, just FDJ. Which sort of invalidates my post, but not quite because there have been complaints. But still, it’s irritating.

Music: French Open