Tour de France

Wow.

I understand that the vast majority of people don't pay much attention to pro cycling, but thanks to people like Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond, Americans are pretty familiar with the biggest race on the cycling calendar. And since I don't expect that most of my friends are following le Tour, here's an update:

So far this has been a very exciting race. With that Lance guy retired and the 2 pre-race favorites booted due to doping suspicions, the competition was a real tossup. It took until the Alps before American Floyd Landis emerged as the clear favorite for the win.

What has happened the last couple days is nothing short of amazing. Floyd Landis had a bad day yesterday. On the final climb of the day, people started to attack and Floyd just couldn't hang. He bonked. Big time. By the end of the day, Landis had gone from 1st to 11th place, 8:06 away from the lead. The chances of another American spoiling France's parade by winning their race were looking slim.

What a difference a day makes. Floyd attacked on the first climb of the today's stage and managed to win the stage by riding alone the for 80 miles. Not only did he get a stage win, he catapulted himself up to 3rd place, and is now within striking distance of taking the win once again. Let me repeat that again. This morning he was 8:06 out of first place. Tonight he's 0:31 out of first place. That's un-f'ing believable. That's historic. That's the sign of a true champion. I haven't been much of a Landis supporter (I think it's the porn star mustache he was sporting earlier this year), but I'm a convert. The race is far from over, but Landis is an excellent time trialer and he could easily take back 30 seconds on Saturday's TT. I can't wait to watch it.


And that's why this could be the best Tour de France ever (even better than LeMond's 8 second win over Laurent Fignon in '89).