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Here's my late wrap of Paris-Nice. Wow. That was the best bike racing I have ever seen in a week from so many riders.

In case there were doubts, forget about them. Contador left everyone without leaving the saddle at first, distancing F. Schleck and L.L. Sanchez by :58 and taking a commanding lead in the Yellow Jersey GC (overall) competition. Thanks to...

http://www.letour.fr/2009/PNC/LIVE/fr/600/classement/

...for great results quickly and beautifully posted, pasted here for your edification and for further promotion of their event.

Christian Vande Velde (USA) of Garmin-Slipstream put in quite a strong and exciting performance today in the Paris-Nice! A second day in a row of real effort and dramatic action down to the finish. Vande Velde flew along damp and curvy mountain roads and blasted through village twists and turns and left the chasers arcing wider than they hoped through the tight rolling streets of the finish. 

Here's some video without commentary that shows some of the final chase...worth watching...

I only saw a half hour or a bit more of the third stage of the eight-stage (seven plus short prologue), but it was some of the most fun I've had watching cycling this year. It was a bit mucky out and the roads were less than optimal, and the entourage was more like that of Tour de Georgia or Tour of California. Quaint, compared with Le Tour de France. That alone was fun.

If you want to read some funny comments and real observation (including why we need to be careful and caring when on skates), check out this little piece observing life in heaven, or hell, depending whether you love the little wheels. We need not be a nuisance of course, and plenty of other wheeled and non-wheeled folk are, but remember, we are a minority and thus often must meet a higher standard, or at least it helps if we do! As for the scooters (which I notice in parks parents are less likely to make kids wear a helmet when using!)....

Well the Tour de France route for 2009 has come out, and there's some new old stuff, like the Team Time Trial is back. Some say this makes Lance Armstrong more likely to show up, some say less, and he seems to want some assurances from the organizers about respectful treatment or some such.

Meanwhile Contador sounded welcoming at first, but lately perhaps less so, and Vino's name has surfaced as well. Nothing solid here from me...just some impressions.

Good stuff from Velonews about Team Garmin-Chipotle and how Dr. Allen Lim improved performance and recovery by keeping the riders cool:

The team believes dealing with heat is more than just an issue of comfort.

OK it's not too important, but I'm always fascinated by any mention of the inline skating police in Paris. This seems a not so wonderful way to catch criminals, so I guess their duty is limited to situations where they're just a helpful resource. Only in movies where the thiefs run straight down a sidewalk or road conveniently would the skates be that great for the chase. However, being included in any honor guard that includes motorbikes and firefighters is pretty nice. We're on a thin schedule of reinforcement, we skaters!

If you get a few minutes, please take a look at some bicycling, touring and vintage bike photos of Italy from Dale Brown at Cycles de Oro. There are lots of nice photos of the buildings, streets, people, and of course, classic bikes of Italy! Thanks for sharing, Dale! You're making us really jealous of your time in Italia. I just wish I could hear the narration that goes with this slideshow, because I know Dale has tons of great stories.

Good vibes all around from London, England and the UK from hosting the Tour de France, or so it seems. I thought it was interesting and fun, and especially since the weather was so great for those days. The English really came out to look and seemed to be enthusiastic. I'm glad they're not piling on as there are enough piles to go around already. Mo' bettah testin' throughout the ranks I say and careful living for the riders it seems. It's a job many of us would gladly take!

As timv has noted, David Millar can spin a yarn nicely in his TdF Diaries. As a doper who had done his time, he's uniquely qualified to share several perspectives. And he was there for his own "Say it ain't so, Joe" moment when Vino's non-negative was first announced. I'll leave most of the piece for you to read on the Bicycling site, but here's a brief sample of that moment:

During the rest day, I've been speed-reading through various reports and blog entries for the first nine days of this year's Tour. My favorite story so far comes from David Millar's Stage 5 diary account of rookie British sprinter Mark Cavendish on his first-ever hilly TdF stage:

Just a quick note to say that on today's stage of the Tour de France, some inline skaters made the video coverage and were even commented upon favorably by Phil Liggett (and maybe by Paul Sherwen too).

The first view was of the solo race leader with a solo skater in a low race position making good time on a road parallel to the TdF course.

The second view a few minutes later was of four skaters on the parallel road, behind the full peloton, with fields of sunflowers in the foreground and between the two roads.

For those who don't have cable television but do have high-speed internet, here are some links that may (or may not) work for you to watch some worldwide television. Currently, of course, this is of interest because of the Tour de France. Look below for some links to the live data for GPS (location), power, heartrate and more. It's amazing to watch the video as the riders pass through a town and make a turn and to see this happen on the Google map while viewing HRM data.

This is a nod of thanks and memorial to the poor souls who either perished, or lived through the nightmare of the pivotal battle to liberate France at D-Day on 6th June 1944.

An article in my homecounty's newspaper, the Dorset Echo, has a little write up about the many boats that left Dorset's Weymouth Harbour to cross the English Channel:

Floyd Landis had agreed not to tour any of France in competition this year, and it looks like he'll be making the rounds of the talk shows here in the USA and elsewhere if things go as one might expect. The book will cover Landis' whole life up to and including the results of the mid-May anti-doping hearing. Bicycling Magazine executive editor Loren Mooney will be co-author, and Amazon.com is offering up preorders. Here's an affiliate link if you want one... Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France.

If for no other reason we here in the United States remember the Champs-Élysées as the scene of many yellow jerseyed moments over the last few years. But it seems the French are worried that the street has descended into megastore commercialism, losing the flavor held so long as a romantic refuge for artists and those who love them. A recent piece in the International Herald Tribune mentions skating police briefly among many other interesting facts and opinions...

Not much new here except the information that there is now a way to contribute to Floyd's defense. What would really be interesting would be if they would sell stock in the defense so that if he loses, you lose, but if he wins, you win too! Now that would really be an educational lottery!

Now and then...OK every day...I'm transported back to moments...this time standing by the stacks in the library in grad school, reading the diaries of Tennessee Williams.  

I had an assignment to find out where Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill were and what they were doing the night Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway. (I think that was it, or something close; a great assignment that led me to the microfiche of the New York Times Broadway ads and much more.) Have I written about this lately or just thought of it? Never mind.

Wow. Spoilers here so watch out if you don't want to know what's happening now. I'll insert a break so the preview doesn't spoil it...click to see the rest...after the replay I'll remove the break probably.

In his Tuesday journal entry, Chris Carmichael made some rather prescient remarks about Tour de France strategy:

I was watching today's stage with Lance Armstrong and several other people, and at one point during the race, Lance and I talked a bit about the difference between racing conservatively and aggressively.
 
During his reign as Tour de France champion, Lance was adamant about seizing every opportunity to gain time on his rivals. The idea was to build a cushion between Lance and his nearest competitors in case he ran into problems later on in the race. A one-minute lead can turn into a three-minute deficit in just a few kilometers, and Lance and Johan Bruyneel always said they'd rather defend a lead than fight to catch up.
 
If you're in the lead, you have two options. You can follow other riders, and as long as you stay with them you don't lose any of your lead. Your other choice is to attack and build an even bigger lead. If you get into a situation where you're behind, there's only one option. You have to attack and drop riders who somehow gained time on you already, and there's never any guarantee you'll be able to do that.
 
The one thing that's certain about the Tour de France is that anything can happen, to anyone, at any time. Having the yellow jersey and several minutes of time in hand gives a rider a margin of safety; losing one minute of a six-minute lead isn't a cause for major concern. Losing one minute of a one-and-a-half-minute lead puts the yellow jersey in a stressful position and lends encouragement to the challenger.

I guess they pretty much nailed that one. It's a fair question to ask whether Floyd actually could have put more time into his rivals last week and early this week, and whether it would have been enough to matter when the bad day did come. But they sure did see it coming.

Coupla fun TdF links...

These folks have combined Google Maps with GPS and heart rate data to create a live Tour de France tracker. It'll be interesting to see how it works while the race is on.

Throughout the duration of the 2006 Tour de France, the news section on the left sidebar will have a "Tour de France" subsection.

As with all the news items, members will see a blue block with a white "b" in it beside the title. Click the blue block to blog about the article. It's a pretty easy way to look at the TdF news and comment.

Here's a quick note to start us out on TdF. What a sad state sports are in, and what an awful deal for the innocent, if there are any, and I'm sure there are. I think the tdf will still be great without the top five from last year, and I have not much worry over cheaters getting punished, but there was no way to have due process in this case it seems. I don't know if it's better to let the riders ride then strip them of their prize if found guilty, or to do as the teams agreed, remove anyone under investigation. Seems that Vino got an especially bad deal, if he hasn't been doing anything, as he's not even charged but lost enough team members to not have a team, as I understand it.