Interesting Tour

This year's Tour de France has been fairly interesting to this point and still has many strong contenders in most of the competitions (the overall race win is just one of the awards at stake). Kim Kirchen's race lead has been a surprise to say the least, but he's always been a decent rider and could surprise and hold on for a podium spot by the time all is said and done. You do have to wonder how so much time defending the race lead will effect him and how much it will wear on his team. It's times like that Columbia has to be happy to have a guy like George Hincapie who knows a thing or two about working for the Tour leader (seven times for Lance and last year for Alberto Contador).

On that note, for the first time we have two U.S. registered teams in the Tour. Columbia Sportswear and Garmin-Chipotle are serving as title sponsors for teams that started the year as Team Highroad and Slipstream powered by Chipotle. Both teams were essentially competing under the names of the teams' management companies before new sponsors were announced in June.

Both teams have had a fair amount of success to this point. Columbia not only has Kirchen in the race lead and points lead (a competition that generally awards the most consistent finisher on each day's racing) but they have two stage wins with sprinter Mark Cavendish and had several days with Thomas Lovkvist as the best young rider. Garmin-Chipotle currently has American Christian Vande Velde in third place and actually led the team classification for most of the first week.

It always seems like there is one guy that wins that I just flat out can't stand. Usually it's Robbie McEwen, but he's been out of the picture with his entire team devoting their efforts to helping Cadel Evans win the overall race. Instead it's been Italian climber Ricardo Ricco who has been the most obnoxious winner taking both Thursday's and today's stages. He's a phenomenal climber in the mold of the late, great Marco Pantani who just flies up hills and makes everybody else look like me when the road turns upward (only they're much, much better than I am).

Ricco is a rider that has a tendency to say what's on his mind, for better or for worse, and has managed to alienate a good portion of the pro cycling world. His attitude is arrogant as evidenced by his post race comments from today: "I was impressive, I went very fast [on the final climb]. My directeur sportif was impressed with my power output the last three kilometres of the climb." That sound you hear is me puking. Yes it was impressive, but what a schmuck.

I would say there are maybe a half dozen guys capable of winning the whole thing, but there's a lot of racing left and just about anything can happen. It should be fun.