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Well, let’s be honest. Stage 3 was BORING until the last five miles when a split occured with 27 riders in the lead group. This is why I recommend watching the last 20 minutes! It’s always the best part on these flat stages. Lance made it but a lot of other GCs did not, namely Contador. The professionals say the weather had a lot to do with the way things played out, and even I (untrained eye and all) could tell they were working hard and being blown all over the road. Team Columbia HTC really stepped up and made the finish exciting. Only two sprinters, Cavendish and Hushvod, made it into the lead group but Cavendish won easily once he turned on the juice. But why does he have to be so cocky? He made a sign of holding a phone up to his ear as he crossed the finish. Whatever.

Tuesday’s Stage 4 is the team time trial.  Again, it’s a race against the clock, but with all nine team members on the road, riding FAST, it should be exciting. I predict team Astana will take the lead with Columbia coming in second, followed by Saxo Bank. Stay tuned!

Yesterday’s stage 2 ended with the sprint finish we all expected. Cavendish, the self-proclaimed fastest man on two wheels, pulled ahead at the end for an impressive race to the finish. Tyler Farrar came in second but watch for him in every sprint as he HAS beaten Cavendish before. The overall standings for the top ten remain the same as the sprinters were not placed very high after the time trial.

Today’s stage 3 is well underway but with another long, flat finish it looks like it will be another sprinter’s race. I’m rooting for Farrar but think Cavendish will win again if they catch the break-a-way.

Do not be put off by today’s individual time trial. This race against the clock sets the stage and establishes a sort of ranking as things get started. When everyone rides together there is a lot more excitement: bike crashes, break-a-ways, doping scandals, etc. Spoiler Alert: Lance started off strong but ended up in 10th place with his teammate Contador taking second and Fabian Cancellara coming in first. There has been a lot of speculation as to who the leader of team Astana will be: Armstrong vs. Contador but I think it is clear after today, the team should support Contador.

The sports commentator gang is back and in fine form. The Brits: Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggett are known for their flowery English descriptions of the riders and the action. The Americans: Bob Roll and Craig Hummer speak plainly but cannot pronounce French.

Tomorrow’s stage 2 will be more exciting than today, but if you are pressed for time tune in to the last 8-10 minutes for the final rush to the finish line!

One day to the start of Le Tour de France and it looks like QuickStep’s Boonen will get to race after all. Despite a positive drug test for cocaine, and the ASO decision to NOT let him ride in the tour, his appeal was granted. The Court of Arbitration for Sport of the French Olympic Committee (whoever THEY are) has decided he is in. So, the lesson is, if you break the rules but are very important to your team and your sponsors, it will be overlooked n’est ce pas? Remember last year’s theme song for Le Tour? Apparently, Boonen did not get the anti-drug message. 

The up side is, the tour will be more competitive with Boonen in the race and I’m all for that. The more competitors there are, hopefully, less coverage for Mr. I’m-retired-wait-no-I’m-not! Either way, Vive Le Tour!!!

Live coverage begins Saturday, July 4th 8:30 Eastern time on Versus. But DO NOT enter the Cervelo play to win sweepstakes. I’ve had my eye on that bike since  2003! Le vélo est à moi!

[note: this started as a response to charlie's tour de france post, but got a little too long for the comments thread.]

if you think that’s bad, just wait ’til 2012, when gene doping will be in full flower just in time for london.

“It is possible to introduce genes into people and change the DNA of some of their cells, genes that affect the way muscles function or the way that they heal after injury,” he said.

Although gene doping is probably still in its infancy, as techniques become more sophisticated naturally occurring hormones could be boosted or altered to enhance performance.

“In mice and in monkeys and in other tests that have been done, the animals have shown increased amount of blood production,” Dr Friedmann said. “Those mice have in fact become much stronger and much more muscular.”

…and we’re still at least a decade away from developing a test that will be able to detect it. some think it’s already going on in beijing this summer:

Dr Peter Larkins is a former head doctor for Australia’s athletics team and past president of Sports Medicine Australia.

“I think it is happening now,” he says of gene doping.

“I can’t believe that 10 years after gene therapy has been proven and we have mice that grow muscles twice the size of normal mice and mice that are called marathon mice because they run all day, I can’t believe the scientists who have been unethical enough to help athletes cheat for the last 30 years aren’t giving that technology to some people.

” Associate Professor Bob Stewart, a drugs-in-sport expert from Victoria University, is also pessimistic.

“We just have to accept the fact that athletes and biochemists are a jump ahead of the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) testers,” he says.

“accept facts”??! sounds like surrender talk to me!

seriously, though. the puritans and drug warriors and self-deluded nostalgia mongers who run professional sports (yes, the olympics are a pro outfit) have an extremely simple choice to make: either figure out a way to remove big money from the equation, or deal with the fact that athletes as a group are going to continue doing whatever is required of them to stay competitive. it’s unreasonable — hell, it’s unfair — to expect otherwise from people whose livelihood is competition.

and please, no lectures about sportsmanship and unfair advantages from the olympian sector, when the IOC already sanctions huge technological and economic advantages for certain competitors. why is it that the larger, developed nations always seem to do best in the medal count, anyway? is it because we’re naturally superior, or could it be that our teams enjoy superior training facilities and equipment, better coaches and staff, larger and more competitive recruiting pools, and more all-around institutional support?

drawing the line at drugs seems pitifully arbitrary, especially when the pace of development in the doping sciences is so fast that we can’t even agree on a stable universal definition of what “doping” is in the first place, or in some cases, as charlie notes, how to differentiate between doping and legitimate sports medicine. besides, as long as prohibition prevails and doping happens underground, the aforementioned institutional & economic disparities mean that only the most technologically disadvantaged dopers — the ones who can only afford treatments that the piss police have already figured out how to catch — will get caught.

it seems obvious that the hardline anti-doping stance is more ideological than anything else. but don’t take my word for it: ask WADA chair Dr. Gary Wadler why cannabis is also a no-no:

“Specifically, three criteria are used when considering whether or not a drug should be on the Prohibited List: (a) Does the drug or method have the potential of enhancing performance? (b) Does its abuse represent an actual or potential risk to an athlete’s health? And/or (c) does its use violate the spirit of sport? To be even considered for addition to the Prohibited List, the drug or method under consideration must fulfill at least two of the three aforementioned criteria.

The use of marijuana… is considered to represent a risk to the athlete’s health and its use violates the spirit of sport.”

that is to say, “drugs are bad, m’kay?”

So another person gets popped for EPO use in Le Tour.  Eporon, Mi(r)cera… It all seems to be advertised on the web by the same companies willing to sell Vi@gr@ via email. (Who buys this stuff to keep the spammers spamming? Someone must be!) Obviously the stuff is out there, and it sounds like the number of products won’t be decreasing any time soon.

I found an interesting tech. doc. on how it works, including info on CERA. Trilife has a small debate on testing Age Groupers  triathletes for it. The effects of altitude on hypoxia seem to cause a similar, potentially “unfair,” advantage. Heck, if the only argument is that it means the athlete isn’t naturally maintaining their level of fitness, then most of the Tour should go as they monitor and artificially adjust hematocrit all the time. I’d sure like to see who’s on the list of the “20 riders (that) had abnormal blood test results before the race“.

i’m just back from vacation, and still recovering from two weeks more-or-less off the grid. (apparently there were horrific tornadoes all over the plains, and by the way, hillary clinton said what about RFK??!) blissfully ignorant of the ongoing end-of-the-world proceedings, i just happened to be in fort collins, colorado last week in time to see the first wave of Fat Tire cans roll off the line…

 i’ll admit it. the beer snob in me still squirms a little at the notion of beer in cans. the whole thing has had an unfortunate whiff of hipster slumming and consumable machismo about it, in light of the recent boho craze for ‘blue collar’ brews – which is to say, flavorless domestic piss embraced either for cheap irony value, as an all-too-sincere display of class pretension, or one as a screen for the other. “fuck yeah,” canned beer seems to say, “you want PBR with a retro pulltab, ’cause you don’t give a shit about their bourgeois hedonist yuppie microbrew values, braw.” it seems to be wearing a custom-distressed trucker hat and a Grain Belt t-shirt as it says this, and in the background there’s a TV playing the Hardee’s commercial about how only faggots bake biscuits.

but that’s unfair. in all truth, i can’t think of any reason why you couldn’t put perfectly good beer in cans if you did it right, apart from a little increased sensitivity to storage conditions. and there are very strong points to be made for canning over bottling in terms of energy consumption and green business practices. the downside, they told us at new belgium the other day, is that it’s a laborious process: they can only fill 55 cans per minute, as opposed to 300 bottles, which translates to higher production costs and a more expensive product. hopefully that changes, though, as their operation scales up and beer people warm up to the idea of cans.

for my part, i like most of new belgium’s offerings pretty well, though i’ve had mixed feelings about NB as a brewing institution, particularly with regard to its newfound ubiquity. living in colorado a couple of years ago, it was a little eerie how virtually every single bar and restaurant in the region had their stuff on tap — if you had hot water and cold water, you probably also had Fat Tire. and it was astonishing how quickly NB products saturated iowa’s beer market when the floodgates opened this year. can-related snobbery aside, a company growing this fast is always inherently suspicious. is this another flying dog we have on our hands, ripe for acquisition and pimping out by the coorses and annheuser-busches of the world? or another sierra nevada, respectable but lacking ambition, content to coast on historic pedigree and an otherwise worthy status as a reliable go-to beer?

that’s yet to be seen, but after doing the brewery tour in fort collins i actually have a pretty favorable view of the corporate culture there. yes, there’s a touch of cockeyed hippie optimism and hive-mind that vaguely recalls the dharma initiative, but they seem to know what they’re doing and their hearts are in the right place. it’s an employee-owned company, running a surprisingly small-scale facility. they talk a good environmental and labor game, and they seem to be serious about two-wheel advocacy. they were incredibly generous in the level of access to the brewery they extend to tours, and in serving up copious samples — both free, incidentally. all of which is a longwinded way of saying that if new belgium wants to pioneer the canning of quality beers, i wish them success.

This morning’s news out of the UK

“Government should invest 10% of its transport budget on cycling and walking initiatives, according to a coalition of health, transport and leisure groups.

The 70 organisations are calling on all UK governments and local authorities to help fight obesity by “taking action on active travel”. The groups launched a campaign yesterday for more cycle routes, better enforced traffic laws and 20mph speed limits to be enforced in residential areas.”

got me thinking about a few bikes I saw yesterday, the xtracycle

and Surly’s Big Dummy frameset. One feature of the S.U.B. is reconfigurability. For example, an off-the-grid smoothie making tool called the “Fender Blender”

also available in floor model: