Some random recollections from the second week of the Tour de France:

• Disappointing that so many prominent Australians went out on the first Alpine stage: Michael Rogers and Stewart O'Grady both crashed seriously and sprinter Robbie McEwan finished too far behind the stage winner and was disqualified.
• Watching the Astana team of Alexander Vinikourov trying to blow the main group apart on the flat stage 12, taking advantage of a reasonably stiff cross wind, was great. All the team tactics and somewhat expected conclusions where the mountain stages are ridden one way and the flat stages mostly as a group with a bunch spring can lead to boring television. So seeing a group of extremely fit cyclists trying to ride each other into the ground on good, flat roads was great.
• The individual time trial in stage 13 wasn't as boring to watch as it could have been. Particularly memorable moment, though, was watching Vinikourov go down the main hill in the middle at an astonishingly slow speed. It was raining lightly and the road was slippery, so he was taking extra care not to fall off (something other riders did not always achieve). Despite this cautious approach, he won the stage by a huge amount. His confidence in his ability to ride fast on the safe portions and thus being able to slow down on the really dangerous bit was impressive.
• Michael Rasmussen is still a very good climber. Good to watch. The television commentators are trying to play up the fact that Australian Cadel Evans is in third place and can ride a better time trial on the second last day. But if he's minutes and minutes behind super-Rasmussen as a result of the latter being able to climb every mountain at a great rate, it's not going to help much.
• I was on a plane from Sydney to the US for stage 15, but it looks like Vinikourov is still trying to catch up the time lost from crashes in the first week. He and his team and looking very good (see the comment about stage 12, above).

Topics: sport/cycling/Tour de France

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Another three weeks of late night television watching. It's Tour de France time again!

I can't remember when I first started to regularly follow this race, the only real cycling event I follow with any real awareness. Certainly back in the early- and mid-80's, I was aware of Phil Anderson's name, the first non-European (and Australian) to wear the yellow jersey and who finished in the top 10 overall six times in a row. At that time, television coverage in Australia was exceedingly minimal. Half an hour a day showing highlights from the previous day's riding. It was often hard to completely avoid hearing the overnight results, so there wasn't even a lot of suspense.

Over the years, the local SBS television station has increased its coverage. The highlights show was shown at 6:30 p.m., instead of only at 11:30 or midnight. Then we were shown the final stage in its entirety. Of all the stages to show: there's essentially zero suspense in who's going to win by that point, most years. Now we're living in fan heaven. Every stage shown in full, live. The only thing they haven't managed to arrange is to move France a bit closer to Australia. So the coverage starts at 10:30 at night and the finish is 1:30 to 2 in the morning.

Not going to be able to watch every stage in full, I'm afraid. At least, not if I want to also participate in daylight society as well.

As has been pointed out in numerous writings, the event is somewhat scarred by the last couple of years' worth of doping revelations and exclusions. Blog-buddy Dave's writing gives the fan's point of view quite elegantly; I agree with his sentiments. The commentary during the event for the larger number of rookies and absence of many former names is almost surreal at times. Yes, I'm sure it is a sign of the strength of the younger riders and the growth of the sport. However, do you think it might also be because so many of the more experienced riders have either had their team or been individually excluded for using artificial stimulants? Those gaps have to be filled somehow. Apparently the television and "official" website commentators are dealing with the image problems by politely not talking about them.

Still lots to watch from an Australian perspective this year (if I'm only going to watch one event a year and know hardly anybody, it will be the Australians that I'll follow, since at least I've heard of them before they were stars). Can Robbie McEwen win the sprinter's title again? Can Cadel Evans or Michael Rogers compete for the overall prize? Can Phil Liggett come up with some new ways to say "I think they're going to catch him" and similar, or will I feel like throwing the remote at the television after the first week again?

Topics: sport/cycling/Tour de France

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I do not intend to become a "link blogger". Nothing drives me off the edge faster in the morning than scanning my RSS feeds only to find a bunch of posts that are 50% hyperlinks and 100% information free. Once in a while is OK, doing it regularly just makes me want to look up some GPS coordinates and hunt out the launch codes.

That being said (I feel so much better now!), a couple of random items I thought were worth sharing...

World Cup Football

I'm not a huge football/soccer fan, although I do kind of follow the English Premier League results throughout the year (more so than the Australian A League, strangely). With Australia having qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 30+ years (and their previous attempt resulted in 3 losses from 3 games with zero goals scored), it's a bit hard to avoid the media coverage around here at the moment. Most of the coverage is not that entertaining. One notable exception is Der Blog, written by an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the US version) reporter who is following the Australian team. It took me a while to put my finger on why I was enjoying reading it, but his enthusiasm really comes through in most posts. Here's a guy having a lot of fun doing his job and writing articles you don't normally get to see as the event unfolds for a professional journalist.

Secondly, to see how an intelligent, enthusiastic fan might be spending these few weeks, go read Dave Mason's daily predictions (although you do have to actually know the results, since he seems to have slacked off a bit on post-match commentary).

Pretty Pictures

Often when you read about personalised newspapers in a science-fiction novel, they have a requirement or feature that you always get a little bit of random news you didn't ask for or that you might disagree with. I like the idea. I have a few random feeds in my aggregator and sites in my links collection that serve no real purpose other than to provide ideas.

One of the these is The Illustration Blog. Via this site, I have discovered the Photoshop Experiment, containing detailed play-by-play overviews of how some amazing illustrations are created in Photoshop. I'm no artist, but I like to play in the Gimp a lot. Seeing this website brings home (yet again!) just how fiddly really good art is to do. It's not just talent or luck; it's hard work. The main blog of Cory Godbey (the person behind The Photoshop Experiment) is worth a browse, too, if you like illustration.

Topics: art, sport/football, software/graphics

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