Yesterday’s early start turned into a late finish for me as it was my Wednesday to keep the grandbrats while their folks went league bowling. They missed last week’s league because my son was in Vegas bowing in the High Roller tournament, so he and the wife had games to make up for their team. Consequently it was eleven friggin’ thirty in the pm when they finally showed up to get the wee ones. The grandson dumped the can of toys I keep for him and we spent the last half hour of the visit separating the “dood duys” from the “bad duys.” I wanted to see if the dood duys could beat the bad duys in a pretend bicycle race but he had other plans.
Now I know that professional athletes like the TdF cyclists don’t schedule babytending during the Tour, but they can’t possibly go three weeks without something interrupting their plans in the evening. I wonder if they ever feel like I did this morning which was to just roll over in bed. But I didn’t, I soldiered on and did what I said I would do, which is get up, watch the race, and write a blog about it. It seems like such a little thing compared to climbing onto a bike and riding a hundred miles or so up and down the rolling hills of France. Committment comes in all sizes though and doing this every day gives me more respect for the riders. If they ride, I’ll write.
Today’s stage, then, was probably more exciting than I saw it (because of the aforementioned late night.) On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t. The riders appeared to be taking it fairly easy, resting up for the big mountain stages coming up. Heck, there wasn’t even a crash in the peloton, and I believe this is the first day of this year’s Tour that there wasn’t. Cows running into the road ahead of the peloton was the big excitement of the day.
A breakaway of three riders, David Moncoutie of Team Cofidis, Juan Antonia Flecha of Fassa Bortolo and Egoi Martinez of Euskaltel Euskadi held a nice lead on the peloton. Moncoutie dropped the two Spanish riders about 25 kilometers from the finish to win the stage. This gives Cofidis two stage wins in this year’s Tour. The two breakaway riders finished two minutes seventeen seconds behind with the rest of the peloton trailing in almost six minutes and over after Moncoutie. There was no change in the GC.
As predicted yesterday Matthias Kessler of T Mobile did not start today due to his injuries. Magnus Backstedt of Alessio-Bianchi retired during the race. There are seven teams left intact, and Jan Ullrich is the first of the top riders to lose a teammate in this year’s Tour.
Now it’s time for the “Things You Don’t Hear on OLN-TV” section of the blog, or as I like to call it, “Meow Corner.”
Scuttlebut over at Velo News says that Axel Merckz was plenty ticked at Richard Virenque after yesterday’s stage. Merckz said Virenque made a deal with him when they got off together in the breakaway. Merckz was to let Virenque take the KoM points, and Virenque was to allow Merckz the stage win. Virenque didn’t deny it, but claimed that Merckz got dropped. Merckz claimed Virenque attacked. I don’t know what the real story is, but c’mon, Axel. It WAS Bastille Day and Richard Virenque IS the darling of the French housewives. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
It seems that Greg Le Mond had sour grapes for breakfast. His reasoning that Lance is doping appears to be based on his own recovery from his hunting accident in 1987.
Today’s Tune to the Tour contest word is “Lead Out”.
The CKS/bl Tridiot Rating was calculated by taking the number of minutes I should have slept yesterday, but didn’t, multiplied by the number of times I complained that I didn’t get enough sleep, divided by the number of bad duys as designated by my grandson for 107.142857%, plus the 5% penalty for a final CKS/bl Tridiot Rating of 112.142857%
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