Tour de France Preview (Astana)

First a little background: Team Astana is mainly sponsored by the government of Kazakhstan. Many of the main players (team director, riders, etc) from Team Discovery (US Postal before that(the team that won 7 Tours de France with Lance Armstrong)) came to Astana after it was rocked by the a doping scandal during the 2006 Tour de France. Confused? Welcome to the world of cycling.

-Alberto Contador almost started le Tour dressed in Argyle. How crazy would that have been!

-the Fat Cyclist, once again, has great advice for Johan 'the ass' Bruyneel on how to deal with 4 potential TdF winners, on the same team, in the same race. Although if my memory serves me right, Johan tried racing with multiple leaders before. The first TdF post-Lance was quite a disaster.

-Chis Horner did not make the team, which makes me sad since he's a fellow lover of In-N-Out Burger. Which reminds me, did you know Landon Donovan had In-N-Out Burger cater at his wedding? Brilliant!

-Star

Giro Update (stage 5) by star

I have forgotten how much nicer it is to run to a mountain stage. It makes my suffering so much less when I see these riders going up a 11% incline after 3 hrs in the saddle. The carnage was up and down the mountain, everyone was digging down into their suitcase of courage. Boom boom and out go the lights! And the elastic has snapped! He's stamping the pedals in anger! Oh how I miss Phil and Paul.

But what's up with these crazy Italians, 2 mountain top finished and it's only stage 5.......do they know it's a 3 week race? This is the 100th anniversary of the race, I think they've done it before.

I'll tell you who looks good: Levi Leipheimer. It looked like he was out on a Sunday afternoon bike ride. I don't think he was even sweating or breathing hard.

Dear, Chris Horner
Zip your jersey up.
Thank you,
the audience of Giro

Avis is one of the sponsors of Barloworld.....why would a rental CAR company sponsor a cycling team? Curiouser and curiouser?

The best place rider for Garmin-Slipstream on the last two stages was Bradley Wiggins. This is the rider that is a time trial and track specialist....I don't understand. What happened to Tom Danielson, I thought he was part mountain goat?

Everyone's favorite super domestique, Chechu was awesome again today. He's up to 43rd, 7:46 back. He would have done even better if he would have stayed with the teams actual GC contender (Levi), not the most famous rider (not Levi, but it starts with an L) on the team.......I didn't know he (not Levi) needed 3 riders as body guards to ride up a mountain.....sigh