Author Topic: Tour de France  (Read 1096 times)

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Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Tour de France
« Topic Start: July 26, 2009, 01:06:06 AM »
Not bad for an old fart.  Podium finish for Lance...booyah!

Re: Tour de France
« Reply #1: July 26, 2009, 08:07:08 AM »
You know, anytime I watch the Tour de France it isn't for the biking but the scenery and the fans. I love seeing the backdrops they bike in and some of the fanatical fans they have watching on the edges of the road.

Offline DCFan

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #2: July 26, 2009, 08:13:10 AM »
They're all doping. Same with track and field. The only race for them is eluding the testers.  :whip:

Offline tomterp

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #3: July 26, 2009, 11:16:08 AM »
They're all doping. Same with track and field. The only race for them is eluding the testers.  :whip:

True, they all dope, but the blood tests set well defined limits and they are all doping to a point just short of the limits, so it's a fair contest nonetheless. 

There's no getting around the fact that Armstrong is a lion of a competitor, has more courage and fortitude than you'd find in 100 men altogether.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #4: July 26, 2009, 12:04:57 PM »
As opposed to...baseball?!?

They're all doping. Same with track and field. The only race for them is eluding the testers.  :whip:

Offline DCFan

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #5: July 26, 2009, 12:14:30 PM »
As opposed to...baseball?!?

As clean and pure a sport as can be found.  :halo:

Offline mitlen

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #6: July 26, 2009, 02:53:07 PM »
You know, anytime I watch the Tour de France it isn't for the biking but the scenery and the fans. I love seeing the backdrops they bike in and some of the fanatical fans they have watching on the edges of the road.

Yep

Offline thurdl01

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #7: July 27, 2009, 04:23:38 PM »
I'm with Living Dead and mitlen, I love watching it for the scenery, and loved it that much more with this being the first year I could watch it in HD.  Just incredible the rolling country side that then gives way to these little towns older than the US each with their castle.  I'm thinking about giving the Tour of Ireland a try, since VS was advertising the start of that in a few weeks.  It's only a week long (edit: apparently just three days this year), but with Armstrong and Cavendish in the mix, it should make for some interesting watching, and there should be some just as amazing scenery.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #8: July 27, 2009, 05:09:04 PM »
The Vuelta d'Espana is coming up as well...not sure how much of it Versus will carry (probably just an hour a week), but that certainly won't be hard on the eyes either.  DC Fan will probably hate on it because all of Franco's good work in that country (locking up trade unionists, torturing and killing leftists, and shackling the press) has been undone, but for the rest of us it will be glorious scenery (and some bike racing). 

Offline DCFan

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #9: July 27, 2009, 05:12:23 PM »

Offline mitlen

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #10: July 28, 2009, 12:44:47 PM »
I'm with Living Dead and mitlen, I love watching it for the scenery, and loved it that much more with this being the first year I could watch it in HD.  Just incredible the rolling country side that then gives way to these little towns older than the US each with their castle.  I'm thinking about giving the Tour of Ireland a try, since VS was advertising the start of that in a few weeks.  It's only a week long (edit: apparently just three days this year), but with Armstrong and Cavendish in the mix, it should make for some interesting watching, and there should be some just as amazing scenery.

Just got my HD this year too.    Hell, I'm even watchin' fishing and the food channel. :P

Online blue911

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #11: July 28, 2009, 12:46:53 PM »
Just got my HD this year too.    Hell, I'm even watchin' fishing and the food channel. :P


Diners,Drive Ins & Dives. Best show on TV.

Offline thurdl01

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #12: July 28, 2009, 12:58:27 PM »
I was a food channel addict before HD.  I'm finding myself watching a LOT of nature documentaries with HD.

Offline Frau Mau

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #13: July 28, 2009, 04:44:18 PM »
I was a food channel addict before HD.  I'm finding myself watching a LOT of nature documentaries with HD.

"Nature" on WETA Sunday nights at 8 is amazing....You should check it out if you haven't already. WETA has an HD channel separate from it's regular channel.

Online JCA-CrystalCity

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #14: May 20, 2011, 06:41:13 PM »
Bump - Not just Hamilton and Frankie Andrieu pin EPO on Lance, but also CBS has gotten a grand jury leak that George Hincapie admits to supplying and receiving EPO from Lance.

This is like Pettitte testifying against Clemens.  Absolute game changer.  I hate grand jury leaks, and think the prosecutor is a scumbag for condoning leaks here (and in the Bonds / Balco investigation), but that is independent of the substance. 

BTW - Hamilton returned his 2004 Gold to the Olympics.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #15: May 20, 2011, 10:52:22 PM »
I've been in denial about this for a few years but with Hincapie's testimony it is now impossible to ignore that these allegations are almost certainly true. 

This really makes me sad.  I grew up bike racing through my teens and then again in my early 30s but have been a lifelong fan of the Giro, Tour, Vuelta, and the odd American stage race ever since.  Lance's story struck me (and most everyone) in peculiar ways. 

I actually don't care all that much about his using EPO (everyone did so in those days, and he would certainly have had to in 1997-98 for obvious reasons while he was on hiatus)...in fact, I'm not even sure that off-label use of EPO was banned in cycling back in 1999, but it doesn't matter, his reputation has been stained and the sport has been turned into a laughing stock circus once again (like when the whole Festina team got arrested in the 90s for a whole van full of refrigerated blood).

A dark day for cycling.  But Tyler Hamilton (who has nothing left to lose) may have forced the issue in ways that the Ivan Basso and Floyd Landis positive tests could not.

   

Online JCA-CrystalCity

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #16: May 21, 2011, 07:43:55 PM »
Well, as a friend who is an avid racing fan and cyclist pointed out, some of these leaks have not panned out at all.  Wasn't Popovich supposedly caught with doping equipment as part of this investigation?  If there was any truth to that, how could he still be racing?  This could be something tactical to put the heat on Rubeira or Popovich or other USPS/Discovery guys to take immunity and talk.  The old prisoners' dilemma.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #17: May 23, 2011, 08:24:54 PM »
Pretty cool outcome in the Tour of California.  The top two finishers were 39 and 37 years of age.  Frank Schleck (age 25), 2nd overall in last year's Tour de France, got burned.


Online JCA-CrystalCity

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #18: May 24, 2011, 07:26:50 PM »
Great about Horner.  Didn't Leipheimer once lose out on a TdF podium on the last day due to an intermediate sprint time bonus awarded to Vinokourov? Nice guy who does not quite finish last but never really broke through.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #19: May 24, 2011, 09:51:53 PM »
I believe so...I think that the time bonuses on the last day may have been scrapped since then, but I'm not entirely sure.  Either way, Vinokourav was one of, well, just about every podium finisher to subsequently blow a pos for PEDs.  Cycling is where baseball was 8 or 9 years ago...rock bottom. 

Great about Horner.  Didn't Leipheimer once lose out on a TdF podium on the last day due to an intermediate sprint time bonus awarded to Vinokourov? Nice guy who does not quite finish last but never really broke through.

Online JCA-CrystalCity

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #20: August 04, 2011, 07:37:31 PM »
HTC-Highroad disbands.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #21: August 04, 2011, 09:32:23 PM »

Offline EdStroud

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #22: August 05, 2011, 12:49:14 AM »
Put 40 of them on a figure eight course with banked turns popularity with skyrocket.

Online Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #23: August 05, 2011, 01:24:36 AM »
Looking at metronome-boring crap go around and around a track through chain link sunk into jersey walls is so lame compared to 45 degree switchbacks up mountains in the alps and pyrenees. 

This really sucks.  Mark Cavendish (the fastest non-motorised human on earth) aside, that team was always a great source of interesting young talent.  First Brit to ever win the green jersey. 

The haters who go on soccer and cycling threads to dump on sports they neither like nor understand will prolly always continue to do so, but will inevitably drift back to their PPV cagefights and autofellating over their own xbox avatars. 

   

Put 40 of them on a figure eight course with banked turns popularity with skyrocket.

Offline MarquisDeSade

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Re: Tour de France
« Reply #24: August 05, 2011, 06:13:19 AM »
The haters who go on soccer and cycling threads to dump on sports they neither like nor understand will prolly always continue to do so, but will inevitably drift back to their PPV cagefights and autofellating over their own xbox avatars.

There's so much win in this post it almost killed my interwebz.