Alrite baby! Lance is BAYK on the BIKE! Tour de France starts in < 6hrs and me, am ready to cheer. To all the naysayers – THERE IS NO WINNER OR LOSER IN A BIKE RACE. There are the mortals, and then are the cyclists! For the next 20days, a few hun100,000 fans will line up the alps of france to cheer the 200 odd men who battle their demons to pedel beyond what man was ever supposed to. I can’t be there, this yr but I will cheer – cheer cos THE SPORT IS STILL ALIVE, and cos, IT IS A SPORT WORTH GETTING PAINED FOR!

To LANCE and the rest of the PELETON Viva la TOUR!

Traditionally the first day in the Alps is considered the day when the race leaders go for the kill to assert their supremacy. It is generally the day when the riders who are in the contention for the top honors in the General Classification take the climbs seriously and put on a show of their life. After all the Alps are the toughest mountains in the sport and when it is Alpe d’Huez, no one can afford any letups.

On the final climb of the day, the tough Alpe d’Huez with an average gradient of 10d and the avg. speed not exceeding 8m/hr, the serious contenders of the race finally came to the fore to show why they are the best in the field. With the peleton breaking up at the start of the mountain and all the riders in the initial break falling away the leaders – Landis, Sastra, Leipheimer, Menchov, Evens and Kloden put up a show worthy of the best of the tours.

Even though the day was won by a relatively young rider named Frank Schleck, who by the way is a rider of the future, the leaders came home close on his heels to set up the race for the final showdown in its last week. 6mins is all that which separates Landis, who is leading the race, to Leipheimer who is currently in the 9^th place. All the above leaders are in there and with 2 more days left in the Alps, it’s anyone’s tour now.

Landis looks like the firm favorite as he is yet to crack in any of the stages. He was rather unfortunate in the individual time trial last week when he had to change his bike but expect for that he has looked totally in control. His only weakness could be his team who cannot support him in chasing down break-aways but if the peleton decides to give him a hand, he could take the tour easily.

With none of my favorite riders in the tour this year I am backing Leipheimer to take the yellow jersey at the Champs-Elysees. Even tough he is quite down in the overall I think he has what it takes to spring a surprise in one of the remaining mountain stages. He has the Vinokourov style of riding which appeals to me and his composure is a sight to watch. Had he been lucky in the first week he would have been in the top 3 now but that’s what makes this tour so amazing.

Once again the tour showed why the sport takes men of out of world character to compete in it. Jens Voigt, who has already won a stage in this tour, sacrificed himself on the Alpe d’Huez to the extent that even after an accident which injured his shoulder, he got back on the bike to set up Schleck for the victory. Such is the courage and strength of character of the men in the tour that when Voigt finally finished the day the whole tour stopped to applaud him. It’s a great race, this Le Tour and its sad that so few people follow it in India.

Every race is a story worth repeating a zillion times for the sheer strength and courage of all the 190 riders in the tour where each and every rider is a true hero. Anyone who can ride 3500 miles in 21days, in hot sun and bone-chilling cold showers, without breaking any rules, sitting up for riders who have fallen off even when there is a chance to win and having the camaraderie of waiting up when the opponent is lagging behind in order to beat each other in a fair sprint is something that needs to be applauded in the highest of decibels. It’s unfortunate that the skeptics of this sport are so many. I just hope that they realize what it takes to do what these riders do in 21days.

The first real mountain stage of this year’s tour is complete and the leader board has finally corrected marking the favorites in the top slots. It took 11 stages and 5 different yellow jersey holders to finally have this year’s top-guns in the top slots but when the big stage finally happened, after 5 horrendous climbs in 6hrs, the men who will take the race home have stamped their authority.

This year’s tour is quite different from the ones we had for many-many years as the last minute pull outs of the biggest names meant the whole pack and the individual teams were confused as to who will tame the peaks and who will break the timing bars. For 11 days the teams struggled without leaders who they can ride for and quite a few times the break-aways never succeeded because of the chaos at the tete de la course.

The crown tournament of the toughest sport in the world began this year amid horrendous controversies. 24hrs prior to the start at Strasbourg, some of the biggest names in the sport and serious contender’s to this year’s tour bowed out due to alleged Operacion Puerto where 23 riders were black listed on the account of doping.

This year with no Lance Armstrong, the loyalist’s of cycling finally had a chance to see if the likes of Ivan Basso, Alexander Vinokourov, and Tyler Hamilton along with the favorite Jan Ullrich would fight out for the coveted title, the champion of the canal le tour. The turn of the perennial second had come, for Jan had a chance to prove once and for all that his triumph in 1997 was no fluke and that he was justified for his 5 second place finishes, and claim that he is the best after Armstrong.

The Black Friday operation that opened the flood gates of allegations against team managers and rider’s alike after the Giro d’Italia, the signature street race of Italy, where in the final time trail Ullrich decimated all competition by winning 28secs ahead of Ivan Basso who is considered the best sprinter in the world of cycling. Also the above mentioned front runners notched up some unbelievable time that sent controversy hunters into frenzied activity and they were rewarded well after unearthing some compromising conversations between team doctors’s and dope suppliers.

All this meant that the top cyclists were forced to withdraw from the signature event in the world of cycling while the teams were left with no choice but to let the riders of the teams fight out among themselves to elect a leader whom everyone would rally around.

The race with the likes of Landis, Menchov, Evans, Sastra, Hincapie, Moncutie, Leipheimer and Kloden never really lacked the drama but by not having Lance and Ullrich, the peleton was scattered like a bunch of amateurs for a long time. The flat stages hardly saw any break-aways succeeding with the sprinters like Boonen and McEwen always finishing off in style. But as always the real test lay in the mountains and today the leaders finally got there act together.

Five Category 1 climbs meant that the peleton would dissolve by the last climb and that’s exactly what happened. In the end, the big 3 and the favorites, Landis, Leipheimer and Menchov came home to give some semblance to the race. The tour is all about working collectively together and kicking in the last possible minute and for these 3, today was that chance. There teams, Phonak, Gerolesteiner and Rabobank have finally found there men and the next 12 days will be all about bringing these 3 men out in front on every climb. Team T-Mobile will join them soon am sure but if there is one team that’s finally cracking after years its team Discovery, the former team of Lance Armstrong.

Unlike many years where Armstrong and Ullrich rode days after days in amazing tandem and sticking together when all the other 188 riders have fallen by to decide the better one in the final gradients of the Pyrenees and the Alps, the likes of Landis, Sastra, Evens and Kloden have to work very hard to get the camaraderie among themselves going and trust each other to be together to the final lengths in the mountains. It’s like that Lance and Jan dominated the race and sport providing some of the greatest displays of human strengths, character and quality that the tour is famous for.

I have followed this sport for a while now and every time when I watch the races this year I could hardly stop myself from thinking how the race would have been in Ullrich and Basso were around. Such was the strength of these guys along with Lance that they made this sport such a pleasure to watch.

The rivalry of Lance and Ullrich may no longer be there but by the end of this race I am sure there will be there worthy successors in place who will make this tour simply the greatest tournament of human spirit in the world.

Consider this:

1993: Jan Ullrich – Youngest Amateur World Cycling Champion
Lance Armstrong – Junior Cycling Champion
1994: Jan Ullrich – World’s Fastest Bike Rider
Lance Armstrong – American Cycling Champion.
1995: Lance Armstrong – 36th – 1st stage Victory
1996: Jan Ullrich – Debut – Finishes 2nd
Lance Armstrong – Down with cancer.
1997: Jan Ullrich – First
Lance Armstrong – Down with cancer.
1998: Jan Ullrich – Second
Lance Armstrong – Down with cancer.
1999 – 2005 – Lance Armstrong – Tour de France Champion
Jan Ullrich – Second

They are probably the greatest rivals that any sport has ever seen and also probably the toughest competitors in the world with each one having gone through his fair share of triumphs and tribulations. One knows what it means to be a step away from death and the other knows what it is like to be perennially a step away from achieving the greatest goal in the sport.

Lance Armstrong has for the seventh consecutive time won the Tour de France, the world championship in the field of cycling. And Jan Ullrich in all probability will finish second for the 7th time in his career. Nothing will be more gratifying for one and more painful for the other.

What really sets these men apart from the rest of 200-odd bike riders in the sport is that both of them have over a period of time understood that to ride 3500 miles in 21 days takes not only talent, strength & guts but also a true spirit of companionship and an attitude to take your rival along and decide it right at the finish under equal conditions. Both these men have done it for the last 9 years of their professional life’s and that is why they are not only the best in the sport but also the best of friends.

I really got hooked onto the sport about 4yrs back when ESPN was really about sports and not about soap opera television and Indian cricket re-run marathons. That was the time when Lance and Jan rode together day after day in practically the most treacherous mountain stages, sometimes the only 2 left on cold rainy days. But they never left each other’s side and always battled for supremacy right at the end.

Like F1, it was the same story every year. Lance would eventually win on the last time-trail in the run unto the Champs-Ellessyes and Jan would settle on the second step hoping for the reversal of fortunes the next year. But much unlike F1, cycling was never boring when these two were in the midst of the huge Peleton. The breakaways would succeed but never did that effect their overall focus to cover the distance in the shortest time among the rest.

The camaraderie was there to be seen by one and all. I still remember the days when on particularly difficult climbs, one would sit up for the other to come up and then attack the elements with their combined forces. They would create mock chases and show of strengths just to get the crowds excited. They would even exchange drinks to show the amount of trust they possessed in each others teams. They were men of flesh and blood who at the end of the day truly enjoyed their glasses of 1869 bolognas watching their kids grow up to be just as resilient