Lance wins!







I know he won nine days ago, I was off to Maine with the family so I didn't have a chance to view the final stage until we got back on Saturday. but I was there live or on tape for just about every single stage for the whole three weeks, suffering through Al and Bob in the evenings and following along with Phil & Paul on the weekend mornings (and very early one weekday morning for that long mountain stage).



As TdF's go, it wasn't nearly as exciting as last year, but only because Lance was so dominant. It was almost disappointing that he didn't have to work harder to get the record, but Jan was too slow and Tyler fell again and Levi couldn't come through in the clutch. Only Ivan Basso really pushed Armstrong's limit, but his lack of time trialing ability made it mostly a wasted effort. It makes Basso look good enough to win the Vuelta or the Giro, though (Heras has the same problem and he's won the Vuelta a couple of times). Kloden's second place was sort of out of the blue, much like Levi getting third at the Vuelta a couple of years ago, where he placed high because he was pacing his main GC guy, then ended up with a better overall time. It remains to be seen whether he could repeat that success on another team.



Some of Lance's previous wins before last year were similarly dominating, although he'd still get different guys challenging on one stage or another, primarily Pantani and Ullrich. Voeckler was the big story of this year's tour, but the fact that he held the yellow jersey through 8 or 9 flat stages and then lost 10 or 15 minutes at a time once they hit the mountains doesn't really speak well for his future hopes as a GC contender. In the end he couldn't even keep the white jersey.



So it was a good tour, didn't get much done otherwise while it was going on, it was fun to see the general level of professionalism continue to increase on OLN, even if it's at the expense of hearing much from Phil & Paul in prime time, or seeing much actual racing in the first hour. Although Al Trautwig could stand to take a more in-depth course in cycling tactics and Tour history, OLN might have a group that's worthy of keeping together for next year. They've benefited so far from having Lance to gush over, though, once he goes I think the coverage will drop off dramatically unless some other American can jump right in. They're down to a one-hour highlights show of the Vuelta, a month after the fact, so all it takes is a lack of Americans (even if there's an American team) and we'll be back to a steady diet of fishing and hunting shows in July too. Then a half hour of daily highlights hosted by Adrian Karsten will seem like a fond memory.