2007 Tour de France

There's no Lance Armstrong and no testosterone-loaded Floyd Landis in attendance, but is anyone else here as excited about the 2007 Tour de France as I am? It's one of those weird events where I can follow it intently and love every minute of it while knowing absolutely *nothing* about any of the participants. Seriously, I barely know who any of these guys are. I recognize a few names from last year and years past but that's it.

Hopefully this year the 2007 Tour de France can have a controversy-free competition. Alexandre Vinokourov is many people's favorite. Levi Leipmeimer, whose name doesn't sound very American, is probably the best bet for our country. He got 6th in 2005.

The coverage this event gets is pretty great. The athletes are all tough as nails and it's fun to see how everything plays out over the course of the 3 weeks of riding. The race covers 3,550 kilometers, or about 2200 miles for you non-metric weirdos. That's a little bit more than a nice leisurely ride from San Francisco to Chicago, and a bit more hilly.