Posted: July 8, 2005

Cycling: TOUR DE FRANCE TIMES - Volume 3, No. 7 (July 8, 2005)

By James Raia
www.ByJamesRaia.com

Publisher's Greeting

For the third straight day, Lance Armstrong (Austin, Texas) avoided crashes in the concluding day of the traditional early flat stages of the Tour de France and retained his leader's Yellow Jersey for the fourth day.

Armstrong finished 53rd in the eighth stage with the main peloton and kept his 55-second margin over Discovery Channel teammate George Hincapie (Greenville, S.C.). Alexandre Vinokourov (T-Mobile) of Kazakhstan remains third, trailing by 1:02 . . .

Australia's Robbie McEwen (Davitamon-Lotto) won the 228.5-kilometer seventh stage from Luneville to Karlsruhe in 5 hours, 3 minutes and 45 seconds. The peloton rode again in solid rain early in the stage and finished under overcast skies and at average speed of 45.136 kph (28.04 mph)

McEwen, who also claimed the sixth stage, joined Tom Boonen (Gerolsteiner) of Belgium as the Tour's double winners. McEwen now has seven career Tour stage wins . . .

Next stage, stage 8, 7/9: Pforzheim-Gerardmer, 231 km. A rolling course for the entire route. It begins in Germany and the Tour returns to France for the finish, The stage has three category three climbs early in the stage and then enters the Vosges, the rounded mountains of France. There's a category 2 climb near the end of the stage and then a steep downhill toward to the finish

For today's full results, visit the Tour's official web site: www.letour.fr.

News, Notes & Quotes

If Armstrong retains the lead after the eighth stage it will be his 70th career day in the Yellow Jersey. Only Eddy Merckx (111) and Bernard Hinault (79) have more career days in the leader's jersey . . .

Bobby Julich (CSC) of Reno, Nev., remains fifth overall, trailing by 1:07. He's trailed by Floyd Landis (Phonak), San Diego, Calif., 18th @ 1:50; Levi Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner), Santa Rosa, Calif., 26th @ 2:31; Fred Rodriguez (Saunier Duval-Prodir), Emeryville, Calif., 59th @ 3:57; Chris Horner (Saunier Duval-Prodir), Bend, Ore., 82nd @ 4:54 and David Zabriskie (CSC), Salt Lake City, 159th @10:28 . . .

Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc reiterated the Tour de France will not take any further security measures in response to the terrorists attack in London.

Leblanc has take the same tact as did in the Tour following the 911 attacks in New York and in last year's Tour following the Madrid subway and suburban bombings on March 11, 2004.

"The Tour de France is for the people of France and it is impossible to secure the Tour de France."

The Spanish team Liberty Seguros wore black armbands in honor of the London tragedy . . .

Tom Boonen crashed during the stage and lost three or four minutes to the peloton untill he chased and returned to the group. He finished seventh in the sprint, but his rear end has a nasty looking contusion. He said following the stage "I thought I broke my bad, and I have a lot of pain." . . .

Team CSC maintained its lead in the team classification with a two-second margin over Discovery Channel and a 2:17 cushion over T-Mobile . . .

Tour de France Times publisher on the radio: In addition to print reports for several daily newspapers, I will be providing radio reports during the race for Capital Public Radio in Sacramento (KXJZ, 88.9FM), National Public Radio (KXJZ 88.9FM) and Sacramento station KTKZ (Newstalk 1380AM).

The network's respective web sites: www.capradio.org, www.npr.org and www.ktkz.com. Dates and times vary.

Postcard From The Tour

The French road system is a bizarre, complex web of narrow city streets, country roads, national routes and auto routes.

As a whole, the system is a combination of logic, convenience and absurdity.

City streets called rues can be only slightly wider than the width of a small car and sometimes there's parking on both sides of the street.

Country roads can be glorious as they wind their way through vineyards, past chateaus and along endless miles of sunflower fields.

State routes are the equivalent of smaller U.S. highways and are designated by green signs. Auto routes, the largest asphalt routes in France, are the super highways and designated with blue signs. Directions to any two major cities, for example, will include directions via blue signs and green signs

A driver can avoid hefty road tolls by utilizing state routes and country roads, and the distance from city A to City B may be shorter via smaller roads. But it may take at least twice as long to get to a destinatioin via green sign directions.

Potentially more problematic is the direction directional signs are pointed. A directional sign positioned at a 45-degree tells a driver to continue in the same direction. It's only when a directional sign is pointed in a 90-degree angle that a driver should turn left or right.

A finally, France is big on roundabouts, just like many European countries. There are many nuances to proper roundabout etiquette, but with only two rules, a driver can fare well. The rules: 1. If there's no other vehicle in the roundabout, proceed; 2. Do it aggressively.

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© Copyright 2005, James Raia

Posted with the permission of James Raia.

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