Yep, summer is here and so is le Tour de France! I must admit, I got a late start watching le TDF this year and it took me a little while before I started to get totally involved in it. Well, I can say that I am totally into it again this year and I would encourage all you riders out there to tune in whenever you get a chance to see what this year’s Tour is all about.
Before I get into the details and my own take on the race so far this year, you can find the latest new, updates and winners on the 2014 TDF on the official TDF website here.
Le Tour is broadcast on the NBC Sports channel here in the US (in Chicago anyway) but keep in mind that the broadcasts are delayed after each day’s race has taken place so if you don’t want to know ahead of time who wins what, do not check out the website news until after you get a chance to see the current days’s broadcast.
So, very briefly, the 1st 3 stages were in England and the most recent stage (today) was in France. As of the end of stage 4 today, Vincenzo Nibali wears the Yellow Jersey (the rider with the lowest cumulative overall time for all stages completed), Peter Sagan wears the Green Jersey (the rider with the most points which are earned by winning various events within each stage), Cyril Lemoine wears the Polka Dot Jersey (the king of the mountain or the best climber) and Romain Bardet gets the White Jersey (the best rated young rider). Of course, this will all be out of date tomorrow!
What I really wanted to get to with this particular TDF post is that tomorrow’s stage (stage 5) is going to be very interesting with all these expensive race bikes, with their skinny tires, on the cobblestone roads of France.
I feel like I can relate to this since I have often ridden some pretty rough roads (even some cobblestone roads, I believe) with my skinny tired road bike. Of course, I am not usually riding at 30-40mph, or more, like the TDF riders!
They say that this is a very dangerous and unpredictable stage. It is probably not as scenic as the high mountain stages but it does sound like it is going to be very interesting.
I hope that you get a chance to watch at least some of this historic cycling event this year!
BTW: The photo that I included above is a close up of the TDF logo on the Proform TDF Indoor Cycle (here) that is shown in some pretty cool commercials during the TDF.