Tour De France

murray · Post by **murray** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:46 pm

Anyone else following the Tour this year? I have been enjoying it. It is nice that there aren't any run away favorites. There have been some monsterous solo efforts by Wiggins, Gerdemann, and Rasmussen. Rasmussen is looking good. He did a good job defending the " Maillot jaune" today. He just might win it this year. There probably won't be any big suprises in the next few flat stages. It will be interesting to see how Rasmussen does in the individual time trial. People have been critical of his TT abilities. I am looking forward to the Pyrenees.

Redskin in Canada · Post by **Redskin in Canada** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:42 pm

Sorry but I lost interest after so many drug scandals. I suspect that there are very few really clean cyclists left. It used to be a great competition in the years of Eddie Merx.

Cappster · Post by **Cappster** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:22 am

YAWN Sorry but cycling is very boring. I will not be watching the tour. Now, before I get flamed, cycling is a very difficult thing to do so I am not taking anything away from the atheletes. I just don't care for it.

Fios · Post by **Fios** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:59 am

Cappster wrote:YAWN Sorry but cycling is very boring. I will not be watching the tour. Now, before I get flamed, cycling is a very difficult thing to do so I am not taking anything away from the atheletes. I just don't care for it.

Agreed, just doesn't hold my interest though I do recognize the high degree of difficulty. Plus, Lance was the greatest ever, he's done, so I really have no reason to care.

Countertrey · Post by **Countertrey** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:36 am

Redskin in Canada wrote:Sorry but I lost interest after so many drug scandals. I suspect that there are very few really clean cyclists left. It used to be a great competition in the years of Eddie Merx.

I suspect there are plenty of clean cyclists left... they finish in the back.

While I stand in awe of these incredible athletes, please don't ask me to watch... boring. The highlights are plenty, thanks.

Kentucky Fried Hog · Post by **Kentucky Fried Hog** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:19 am

I honestly didn't know that the 'Tour' had began. I agree with the previous posts, I'm just not interested in watching (the highlights included).

murray · Post by **murray** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:30 pm

Drugs are without a question an issue with cycling. Everyone has known that cycling has been dirty for decades. I would be shocked if there has been a single person on the podium of the Tour in that last 15-20 years that hasn't taken drugs. I do believe that UCI is trying to clean up, after having egg rubbed all over its face by Floyd Landis. I hope that they are successful, and understand why a lot of viewers would be turned off by it.

Although cycling isn't always action packed, it is a very strategic sport. If you understand the dynamics, is very interesting to watch.

Redskin in Canada · Post by **Redskin in Canada** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:01 pm

murray wrote:Although cycling isn't always action packed, it is a very strategic sport. If you understand the dynamics, is very interesting to watch.

The latter part can be said about any race of any type. The first part is what makes the difference. Formula 1 and horse racing have often a lot more drama and action than a slower race.

Do not get me wrong, I do admire the effort by the cyclists. All of what you say is true. But, for the life of me, I only have a limited time to watch sports and the competition against the Tour de France is ferocious. I rather stick to mainly the Redskins and the the Habs in the NHL to a lesser extent. I would do no work and no other reading otherwise. :wink:

Mursilis · Post by **Mursilis** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:04 am

Redskin in Canada wrote:
murray wrote:Although cycling isn't always action packed, it is a very strategic sport. If you understand the dynamics, is very interesting to watch.
The latter part can be said about any race of any type. The first part is what makes the difference. Formula 1 and horse racing have often a lot more drama and action than a slower race.

Do not get me wrong, I do admire the effort by the cyclists. All of what you say is true. But, for the life of me, I only have a limited time to watch sports and the competition against the Tour de France is ferocious. I rather stick to mainly the Redskins and the the Habs in the NHL to a lesser extent. I would do no work and no other reading otherwise.

Luckily for Le Tour, it's on in July, before football has started and nothing much else good is on, sports-wise (like I'm going to watch baseball Yawn

). I've been a big fan for many years, and even saw it in person in '01, and rode parts of the route. I appreciated the effort before, but after having ridden climbs like L'Alpe d'Huez, I'm further amazed at the suffering these guys endure. Still, all the doping scandals have soured me some - I HATE cheaters. But I wouldn't go so far as to say there hasn't been a clean winner in 20 years - I don't think they're ALL cheaters. Some guys like Indurain always had clean reps, and hopefully that's the truth. Anyway, Rasmussen looks strong and I wish him luck.

BossHog · Post by **BossHog** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:32 am

Clean cyclists? ROTFALMAO

Watch 'Dying to Win' circa 2000.

There is no sport on the planet that has the disproportionate amount of drug abuse that cycling does, which is why you hear so much about it. They're just all smart enough to get away with it for the most part.

But again, watch Dying to Win to see the level that these athletes go to mask their drug use.

I love the Tour De France regardless. And it's definitely interesting this year without Lance. For the record, I do and always have thought that Lance was king. The man was a machine... drug-aided or not.

Funny how now that Lance is done, it has less or little appeal to Americans...

JansenFan · Post by **JansenFan** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:52 am

Part of the problem is that with Lance, there was a butt load of coverage and without, you get 10 seconds of video on the local news and that's about it.

We are a self-important society though, so it does have a lot to do with the fact there is no American with a shot, much like the decline of Men's Tennis and the ascent of Women's Tennis when Sampras and Andre retired and the Williams' sisters came on the scene.

Redskin in Canada · Post by **Redskin in Canada** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:08 pm

JansenFan wrote:We are a self-important society though, ...

I totally disagree. What an awful thing to say against your own society. What a bias!

Allow me to explain this to you:

It is a technological problem. Yes, it is. You see, most people cover their outside windows in their houses with transparent or translucent glass (or no glass at all) outside of the US.

In the US, on the other hand, technology and marketing have advanced to such prodigious technological extent that instead of those materials used internationally, US homes, offices and buildings of all types use inside-facing mirrors. If most Americans do not see their reflection back onto everything they see, it is not worth their time and money watching at all.

It is a "quality" control thing. The media does it on behalf of the people without asking for the opinion of anybody. And it goes well beyond sports. It goes into every endeavour in modern society -because- it makes -market- sense. And that makes "perfect sense" to me.

Only problem is that it shelters and isolates most Americans from exposure to reality and knowledge outside of anything non-US. Interestingly, this is not the first time in history that such an attitude has developed. Romans throughout the Empire always felt that sports and political news from the City of Rome were always overwhelmingly more important than anything that ocurred outside the Empire ...

... until such lack of touch about what happened outside the Empire came down hard on them to destroy it. Dangerous attitude if you ask me. My 2 cents

JansenFan · Post by **JansenFan** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:23 pm

It's not all that awful. I didn't say we are all egotistical bastards, only that we are self-important, which sort of agrees with your post. The reasons you list are the reasons most Americans believe that the USA is the sun that the rest of the world revolves around.

Your Roman comparisons are pretty dead on, and something I've read about before.

Irn-Bru · Post by **Irn-Bru** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:27 pm

Yeah, but how many French citizens watch the Superbowl or World Series?

Americans generally don't watch sports outside of the big three. I understand that the sentiment of self-absorption is present, but it's too much of a caricature for me, considering there are some 300 million living here. . .

As for the Roman comparison: bah humbug. I've been hearing that since I was born (allowing homosexuality will make us fall like Rome did, don't-you-know). If anything is going to cause our downfall, it'll be our mimicry of Roman monetary policy :shock:

, not a refusal to watch an international cycling competition.

Fios · Post by **Fios** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:45 pm

Where in the hell did I put my fiddle?

UK Skins Fan · Post by **UK Skins Fan** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 4:02 pm

Say what you like about those Romans, they could build a lovely pillar.

UK Skins Fan · Post by **UK Skins Fan** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 4:05 pm

JansenFan wrote:Part of the problem is that with Lance, there was a butt load of coverage and without, you get 10 seconds of video on the local news and that's about it.

We are a self-important society though, so it does have a lot to do with the fact there is no American with a shot, much like the decline of Men's Tennis and the ascent of Women's Tennis when Sampras and Andre retired and the Williams' sisters came on the scene.

To be fair, there weren't many Brits interested in Olympic rowing until Redgrave and Pinsent came along. It may be a stronger trait in the US, but it doesn't belong exclusively to you guys.

On the other hand, we've always been slightly crazy about tennis. We had as much fun watching Borg and McEnroe as we have had cheering on Henman, and now Murray.

murray · Post by **murray** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 12:08 am

Some guys like Indurain always had clean reps, and hopefully that's the truth.

Indurain tested positive for Salbutamol in 1994. Salbutamol is a bronchial dilator, which widens the air passages in the lungs (something that any cyclist would love). He was able to justify using it by showing that it was prescribed by a doctor for his asthma. The guy who finished second to Landis last year, Oscar Pereiro, has also tested positive for it. He too claimed that it was prescribed by a doctor for his asthma. The president of the AFLD, the French Anti-doping agency has said that 60 percent of the 105 riders that were tested for drugs in the 2006 tour had a perscription for Salbutamol, and therefor were taking it "legally". Sixty percent is an order of magnitude larger than the percentage of the general public that have a prescription for Salbutamol. Do you think that is a coincidence? There is little question in my mind that Indurain was cheating by taking Salbutamol. He just able to get a doctor to write him a prescription. That being said, he was a fantastic rider.

Countertrey · Post by **Countertrey** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:30 am

The president of the AFLD, the French Anti-doping agency has said that 60 percent of the 105 riders that were tested for drugs in the 2006 tour had a perscription for Salbutamol, and therefor were taking it "legally".

My hypothesis would be that competitive cycling causes asthma. Maybe we should ban it! :lol:

murray · Post by **murray** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:18 pm

My hypothesis would be that competitive cycling causes asthma. Maybe we should ban it!

That sound like a good hypothesis to me

.

Redskin in Canada · Post by **Redskin in Canada** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:53 pm

Irn-Bru wrote:If anything is going to cause our downfall, it'll be our mimicry of Roman monetary policy , not a refusal to watch an international cycling competition.

There is a wonderful book Storia di Roma by Indro Montanelli , which supports the monetary/economic theory, which I personally feel to be a key (and probably most important) factor. Please see the work done in this regard by Ludwig von Mises, Michael Rostovtzeff and Bruce Bartlett.

However, there are many other interesting theories of military, political, sociological, religious and/or technological orientations from Vegetius to Arnold Toynbee to Peter Heather.

UK Skins Fan wrote:On the other hand, we've always been slightly crazy about tennis. We had as much fun watching Borg and McEnroe as we have had cheering on Henman, and now Murray.

You can also get much more extensive news coverage about the world in the UK.

If anybody -really- wishes to learn how biased and minimal the international news coverage is in the USA, please have a look every once in a while beyond Fox News and CNN onto BBC International, French TV5, Sky, German Deutsche Wella (they have English broadcasts), Italian RAI, Spanish RTVE and even Canadian CBC, not to mention Al-Jazeera for middle-east coverage.

... Or to get my point, you could ask a number of university students in almost any place in the USA to name the capitals of, say, The Kingdom of Tonga, Equatorial Guinea and the Sultanate of Brunei. In fact, why would anybody want to expose young people? ask anybody else and do the stats.

The chances of a free citizen in the Roman Empire truly knowing where Cairo was located at the time were much higher. So, let's not put the Romans too way down.

My point is not to try to put down the USA or its people. My point is that there is a tremendous internal coverage bias in the US, which probably makes perfect economic sense, but it clouds the judgment of its people towards all others outside. This is very dangerous not only to Americans but to ALL other people outside the USA.

Cappster · Post by **Cappster** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 3:01 pm

Americans can only be so sheltered from the world these days. With the internet, we can discover a lot of things about other countries. Most of us just choose not to do so for reasons ranging from laziness to not caring to being to busy with our own lives. Why would I want to know the capital of the Kingdom of Tonga? I have never heard of Tonga until just now.

I choose not to watch the news that much. It is rather depressing be it cable news or local news. News channels have to fit in all of the murders in the USA before they can cover the murders in the rest of the world because thats all it seems like they show (thanks PG county). Even if they did cover cycling, I probably wouldn't catch it anyway. I really don't care that much about any other sport than football. I guess the closest thing to football for me is racing. I can relate to racing because I race my car sometimes. If another country had something that I was interested in, I would find out more about it. Until then, I guess I will be looking in the mirror.

If you have read this far, I am sorry because I just babbled and not really sure if it makes sense.

thanks

Cappster

Redskin in Canada · Post by **Redskin in Canada** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:14 pm

Cappster wrote:If you have read this far, I am sorry because I just babbled and not really sure if it makes sense.

Yes, it makes sense. I do not watch cycling either. I only follow NFL and the NHL to a smaller extent, as I wrote before. As long as our choices are made consciously, and not by others, we are fine.

Irn-Bru · Post by **Irn-Bru** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:41 pm

Redskin in Canada wrote:There is a wonderful book Storia di Roma by Indro Montanelli , which supports the monetary/economic theory, which I personally feel to be a key (and probably most important) factor. Please see the work done in this regard by Ludwig von Mises, Michael Rostovtzeff and Bruce Bartlett.

Of course, even Rome was hampered by having to use actual metal to do what they did – clipping the edges off of coins, diluting the precious metals with other common ones, etc. The scary thing is that the Fed is limited only by how much paper it can print, and in some cases (and increasingly so), it's nothing more than changing characters on a computer screen. New data, essentially. . .talk about fiat(!).

There are obviously other reasons Rome fell, and there would be just as many distinct reasons for a potential U.S. crumbling, but I find the monetary policies to be a fascinating study.

And Ludwig von Mises. . . :hail:

murray · Post by **murray** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:40 pm

What a devistating blow to cycling. The Tour leader, Rasmussen, missed two drug tests prior to the Tour. Today, after he won the stage, and all but secured his victory in Paris, Rasmussen was fired by his Team Rabobank, and withdrawn from the Tour. He had apparrently lied to the team about where he was when he missed the drug tests. The last two days have seen two positive drug tests, one from Vinokourov (who had one two stages in very dramatic fashion), and the other a no-name Cristian Moreni.

I must admit that having invested massive time watching this race, and supporting Rasmussen, that I feel riped off.