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07/18/03 – TdF: Armchair Racing with the Bellas
In an attempt to keep the tour somewhat interesting, I am going to make a prediction of the top five. If I am right, all of you have to buy me a Belgian beer. To avoid candyass (no offense Brenda) predictions, my prediction is in the order I think they will finish. Feel free to make your own and state your desired prize if you should win:

Lance Armstrong
Jan Ullrich
Tyler Hamilton
Iban Mayo
Joseba Beloki

-Sabine

***
I have been thinking about this all night, so here go my predictions:

Lance (the man can dance) Armstrong
Mario Tripleringee (he'll need it in the mtns where it is rumored he is so angry for not having an invite he has threatened to sprint himself to 1st place GC)
Jaan Kissipoo
Fabio Badasso
David Mancutie
Phil Leggit (my same source says he is gonna give it a go in his new retro bicycle, and show those young snipper snappers a thing or two.)

Okay so I picked a bunch of sprinters with cool names and one old english fart. I think that counts for a least one prize.
-Laura

***
All I can say is Tyler Hamilton is my biggest hero!!!!!! What a great race today. I can do it, I can do it. Just don't give up!!!!!! What a stud!!
-Legs

***
Okay, so I lied. This year the Tour is waaay more exciting than the Tours of the past few years. Armstrong not dominating the prologue, The dramatic crash on Stage 1, Tyler riding with a broken collarbone, Tyler attacking with a broken collarbone, everyone attacking Lance, and then today's stage! I was late for work because I could not stop watching. Today's stage was supposed to be a formality and a chance for a frenchman to escape and win a stage on Bastille day, it was anything but.

This is a spoiler so don't click if you don't want to know. Actually, you shouldn't even be reading this email then either.

Check out the amazing photo in the upper left corner! Well, there goes my top five prediction. I was doing pretty good until then with my picks I thought as I expect Jan to move up and Mancebo and Vino to move down after the 2 individual time trials. If you haven't been watching, you are missing a real show!

-Sabine
p.s. We should make Lance an honorary member of the Dirty Dozen.

***
And for the OLN deprived among you (myself included), check this out.

The link above automatically launches real player on my machine. If that doesn't work for you, go to this link:

...and scroll down the middle column and click on [la caduta di Beloki].

Even if you don't understand Italian (I don't!) TURN UP THE VOLUME for full effect!

Honorary member of the Dirty Dozen INDEED...somebody send this man a Bella jersey... check it out.

-Heather

***
..also on the OLN site.

What is with you people without OLN? How do you manage?
-Sabine

***
It's never been harder to NOT have OLN than this year's Tour. Listening, reading and looking at the pictures on line just aren't enough. Can't wait for the DVD!! So enjoy you lucky people. Tyler Hamilton is a stud!
-Monica

***

not sure how you found that awesome video clip on an italian website, being a non-italian-language-understander, but looks like you were able to see the best of the 2hour oln coverage without having to spend 2 hours doing it...

"yadda yadda Beloki yadda yadda muy malo yadda yadda Armstrong cyclocrosso yadda yadda biciclette"

I guess that about sums it up, actually.
-Tracie

***
When I first looked at the picture of Lance going off-road (trying to avoid Joseba Beloki) I thought it was a joke. It looked like Lance was trying to ram Beloki's crouch. The power of photography. I need more sleep I guess. But my bust size is increasing rapidly and I'm blonder and taller.
-Angela

***
Tomorrow is a big stage in the tour. It is a 45K (or something) Time Trial. In typical "race of truth" fashion, the GC should sort out to close to how it will be at the end of the tour. Will it be Lance's chance to show his doubters that he will once again win, or it will be everyone else's chance to show that Lance can be beaten? Which one will it be? Here are my predictions for the top 5 of tomorrow's stage:

Armstrong
Ullrich
Botero
Millar
Hamilton

Millar, Hamilton and Botero will post times that will seem amazing and will beat everyone. And then Jan and Lance will ride even faster. I would put Hamilton even further up, but he's been complaining about back and rib soreness (from overcompensating) and in a time trial that could cost him some time. The gap between Lance and Jan will be smaller than the gap between Jan and everyone else. Then the top 5 in GC will look like this:

Armstrong
Vinokourov
Ullrich
Mayo
Hamilton

Happy Watching
-Sabine

***
And from your OLN-deprived-Bella (that spends far too much time surfing random Tour info online) I must share a quote I found from the winner of Stage 11, iBanesto.com rider Juan Antonio Flecha:

"I knew the last part of the stage very well, because my girlfriend Lourdes lives in Toulouse, and I often visit her here. I had a strong desire to win today, and knew that I had to continue to attack if I wanted to win. My victory today comes from the heart, because for every meter I rode in the break, I got closer to her."

HOLY ROMANTIC CHEESEBALL RIDING IN THE TOUR DE FRANCE! I LOVE IT!!!!

I'm sure podium boys would have an equally positive effect on our motivations to win -- every mile we'd ride, the closer we'd get to the podium boys :)

Where are our podium boys???
-Heather

***
Stop it! He DID not really say that did he? Wow, those latin lovers. He deserves the Polyester Jersey for sure. I gave away a few polyester jerseys last year, I think its time to revive the Polyester Jersey category for this year and Juan Antonio Feltchya is the first wearer for his cornball yet romantic remark. Congratulations Juan!

Please feel free to nominate anyone you think in upcoming days that deserves the Polyester Jersey. I have no idea what the criteria is, but you get the picture.

-Sabine
pic of polyester jersey

***
In addition to the polyester jersey, I think EVERYONE should get some kind of acknowledgement. Wouldn't want to leave anyone out now would we? In true bella fashion, EVERYONE is a WINNER (ha, and you that this Juan guy was corny)...after viewing through stage 11, a couple that come to mind:

JUAN FLECHA, as already stated, is the proud recipient of a polyester jersey.

FLOYD LANDIS deserves a good solid WOODEN JERSEY. Is it just me, or does he look totally out of place on a bike? He looks like a rigid wooden statue that's trying as hard as possible to not move any muscle in his body and yet still ride a bike at the same time.

PETACHI might as well have worn an aqua-saphone jersey.

LANCE ARMSTRONG, in addition to the yellow jersey, needs the BULLS-EYE jersey.

JENS VOIGT (and only in today's stage, other than that he road magnificently) needs one of those "Old men who get fat in the winter" jerseys. What happened??? Was he ill? Did he stay up late partying last night???

BADEN COOKE needs a CHOCOLATE CHIP jersey. Phil Ligget really can't seem to make up his mind weather it's "cook" or "cookie". Maybe it has to do with whether or not the coverage is airing during snack time.

SIMONI needs a FURRY jersey. Turns out this man is all bark and no bite.

GEORGE HINCAPIE should do us all a favor and not wear a jersey at all. and oustide of jerseys...

Looks like the TdF finally got a podium boy. But come on, if Arnold Swartzineger is going to be up there, shouldn't he have to wear an ugly yellow dress too???
-Tracie

***
Well, so I was only half right. I figured Jan would have a good ride, but holy moly. He was flying. He looked like a big diesel truck plowing past little putt putt cars. You could almost hear the airhorn as he passed them...

The swarthy Columbian, Botero, let me down. Don't know if he'll earn a polyester jersey this year if he keeps that up. And Millar just slipped out of the top 5 to finish 7th. Hamilton finished right where I thought he would, and Vino had the TT of his life, losing less than a minute to Armstrong. The big loser of the day is poor Iban Mayo who slipped back to 6th overall and almost 5 minutes down.

That means Armstrong can breath a little against Iban, who is stronger in the mountains, but not so much against Vino and Jan. Fun fact: Vino and Jan are party buddies from back in Jan's Telecom days. They'd hang out at the German discos (doing the Sprocket dance?), speed around in Jan's Porsche and, well, for Jan at least, imbibe in a little ecstasy (the drug, not the state of being). I have no idea what this has to do with anything, but sometimes its nice to know that these guys aren't just the machines they appear to be.

So, from the comfy perch of my armchair, well, Herman Miller chair since I'm actually at work, here is how I think the rest of the tour will unfold. And I haven't really let you down yet have I?

Since there is one more time trial, and it is 2K longer than today's time trial, Armstrong needs to put time on Jan in the mountains. Look for Armstrong to attack Jan in the Pyrenees. Also, look for Vino to show aggression and try to do some attacks on his own. My take is that the climbs of the Pyrenees are steeper than the Alps, and Vino won't be able to match the pace of the pure climbers, but he's been a tenacious little bugger so far, so who knows. In the meantime, the Basque pair of Haimar and Iban "makings of a mullet" Mayo will probably tag team attack, especially since they will be riding in their team's home of the Basque, where the fans are insane for cyling. And Tyler, well, he'll continue to amaze by hanging tough and I think he will do enough to move up one place in GC.

They head into the Pyrenees tomorrow, where there are two Cat 1 climbs and a mtn top finish. Sunday is an outrageous stage with 4 cat 1 climbs and 2 cat 2s. But THE stage of the Tour, has to be Monday's stage featuring 2 legendary Uncategorized (which is really categorized because it means tougher than Cat 1, why don't they slip them all down one, make the dials go to 11 or something?) climbs. The fabled Tourmalet and the mtn finish up Luz Ardiden. Some advantages for Armstrong is that he recovers well and has the strongest team in the tour helping him.

Finally, the TdF is very very exciting!
-Sabine

07/03/03 - Le Tour Time!
Le Tour is almost upon us. And while, personally I don't think this race is as exciting as the Giro, it is the Grand Dame of bicycle racing and the one time that the rest of the world pays attention to our funny little sport.

Besides, cycling history is being made, so its good that we watch so we can bore our great great grandkids with stories from back in the day.

The racing begins July 5th!! How to watch?

OLN!
Next best thing to being there is OLN's daily usually live coverage. Their website is pretty cool too and is the official English language Le Tour site. If you don't get OLN, (why wouldn't you?) you can listen to their coverage via the website, or if you're really geeky, have the results sent to your mobile phone!

Velonews
Nicely organized, live updates, pictures, but the best part of the
Velonews coverage has to be Tyler Tunes, Tyler Hamilton's diary. Amazing that a guy can race his brains out, but still have the capacity to string some interesting words together. What better than insight from a podium contender?

Cyclingnews
You can't beat Cyclingnews when it comes down to basic race reports and results delivered quickly without a lot of muss and fuss. They have a few extra features for the Tour such as racer diaries, tech reports, podium girl gone bad. But if I just want to know who won and what happened without sifting through a lot of other stuff, Cyclingnews is usually where I head first.

Eurosport
If you want a different perspective on the tour, try Eurosport for a
less LanceCentric version. And, again for the geeky, you can get
results and reports on their pda version.

Sabine's House
Alan says that if you bring waffles, bacon and some Peets coffee, you can come over to our house at 6:00 a.m. to watch OLN coverage and whince at the Liggetisms and hurl insults at the french riders.

Viva Le Tour!