10 Things To Love About The 2008 Tour de France

After reading this great blog about the 2008 Tour de France, I've decided that I should write my own ten things to love about it. So here goes:

1. Daniel Friebe's blog. Not only was it the inspiration for this blog post, it was very entertaining to follow throughout the Tour. Without it I wouldn't have started calling Kim Kirchen "Grim Kim" and I probably wouldn't have been tuned into the Cadel Evans meltdowns. The blog wasn't all about humor either. It had interesting coverage of the doping drama of the race, and cool interviews from people within the sport.

2. Super Besse. OK, so Riccardo Ricco might have won here, and he might be a doper, but still. Super Besse introduced us to the drama of the Tour. It showed us that the race was going to be exciting. Oh, and Stefan Schumacher fell, going uphill, and lost the yellow jersey. I really hate that guy.

3. Saunier Duval. I don't know what the ASO was thinking when they said the Tour would be doping free. Secretly I'm glad it wasn't one of my favorite teams that took the hit. Saunier got nailed when Ricco tested positive after winning two stages. I read this and laughed. Of course he's a doper. No one with that sort of attitude, and bite up a mountain, could be clean. So props to Saunier Duval for lasting only half the Tour.

4. The crazy attacks. I love watching Thomas Voeckler race. I think he thinks it's funny to attack the peloton, all the time. Like when he crested one of the Pyrenees in the top few places, partly to steal some mountains points, and partly to wave some guys on to motivate them to go it alone. Of course everyone ignored him, and fell back into the slipstreams of their teammates. Sylvain Chavanel was another one who would go for anything. He even tried one on the Champs Elysees, although in his defense, he did win a stage on a break this year. Props.

5. The epic crashes. Ok, they might have hurt the riders, but they definitely made the race more exciting to watch. Check out these goodies from: John-Lee Augustyn, Oscar Pereiro and, Sven Krauss.

6. Christian Vande Velde. Team USA wasn't supposed to have a GC guy this year, at all. Our biggest hope was a top 30 from George Hincapie, but good ole' Christian really saved the day, and probably extended the Versus coverage contract another year. He may have faded a bit in the Alps, but to have an American racing so well really pumped up American viewership. One of my friends actually knew who he was. I was shocked.

7. Spain. Yellow jersey for three years now, first green jersey ever, several stage wins, and the biggest doping drama of the Tour. Team Spain really managed to ride in style this year, getting guys all over the press for a wide variety of reasons. Ultimately it was exciting to see Team Spain take another big sporting victory, after having won the Euro Cup in June. Olympics anyone?

8. The greatest meltdowns ever. Between Cadel Evans pretty much LOSING HIS MIND by the end of the Tour, and Carlos Barredo LOSING HIS SHIT at the end of Stage 18, the Tour de France had plenty of divas. My favorite was Cadel, probably because he has a really high pitched voice, and it looks seriously nuts when he is trying to swat guys away. I'm pretty sure he lost like half of his brain cells when he crashed in the Pyrenees, subsequently causing a deterioration in his mental stability. Or not.

9. Team CSC. Christian Vande Velde said that CSC was going to have war plan, and he was pretty much right on that one. I can just imagine Bjarne Riis sitting around his hotel room moving plastic cyclists over maps trying to determine the plan for each stage. With a helmet on. Of course. But seriously, Team CSC knew what they wanted from the start, and they did an incredible ride to get it. As Jens Voigt said in the Versus interviews: "A team has to be one leader, and eight guys willing to die for yellow." That is exactly what they had, and it was incredible.

10. L'Alpe d'Huez. Incredible. The 21 most famous switchbacks in the world were the stage for the etapa reina, the queen stage. It was epic, it was amazing, it was everything that a cycling fan wanted it to be. And what Carlos Sastre and Team CSC wanted it to be. The tactics were incredible, the rides were raw and real, and seriously, the stage blew my mind. I wanted to yell, but I was breathless due to the excitement. It will be a stage that will forever be immortalized by my grand collection of Tour de France tapes. And one I will watch over and over, to analyze the tactics of Bjarne Riis.



Now that the Tour is over I'm at a loss of things to do. I can naturally wake up at 6:30 in the morning, due to waking up to see the mountains everyday for the last week or two. I'll probably pull from the archives for the next few days, until I fall back into real life. I do have some things to look forward too... the Olympics start on the 8th of August, and I'll be in Paris during Paris-Tours and some other, more minor races. The battle plan of what I want to go to will be crafted soon, and when I know, you will be the first to know...