WeatherGirl’s Station

The Tour started this weekend with two stages in the UK! Reporting suggests over one million people lined the prologue route in London and two million were on the streets for stage 1 from London to Canterbury. Yee ha! It was a shame not to have been there but we could not have left the US early enough. Any way it looked fantastic on tv and Phil and Paul sure sounded thrilled to be commentating from home territory. Both stages even had thrilling endings.

To find grand tour live coverage where ever you are in the world check out cyclingfans.com

Current temperature: 81F/27C

The 2006 Tour De France is on and it looks like all bets are off as to who will win. With the big names out due to events in Spain and a couple of likely contenders out due to crashes in the first few days, I think this could be a really exciting Tour. I suspect we’ll get a lot closer to Paris before we know who will win, which pleases me greatly. I love it when it’s competitive. (That’s why the Vuelta is my favourite of the grand tours.)

To get connected to what’s going on check out cyclingfans.com

Current temperature 73F/23C

Another epic three weeks has come to an end and Lance Armstrong has won an incredible seventh consecutive Tour. Since they entered the Alps it’s been one nail biting thrilling stage after another.

As usual the Green jersey wasn’t decided until the final stage, cool to see Hushovd win. A shame they had to stop the timing due to the wet weather. Watching the Vinokourov/Leipheimer showdown would have been quite something.

My favourite ads this year have been the Trek Lucky 7 Scatch and Win, seeing poor old Bob get more and more desperate as he failed to win anything while Paul and Phil reel the prizes in has been quite a hoot.

Most annoying aspect of the Tour reporting - all the American reporters who keep describing Armstrong as the greatest cyclist ever. HE ISN’T! He’s a Tour de France specialist. Even Armstrong wouldn’t make this claim for himself. Eddy Merckx is the one cyclist who might be worthy of that title.

Main worry for next year’s cycling season - that OLN will treat the Tour as they are now treating the Vuelta, like total crap.

Current temperature 61F/16C

Yes, I’m a little behind on my posts, so we’ve had nine stages of the Tour and I haven’t commented.

Actually, we haven’t finished watching Stage 9, there’s just been too much going on this weekend to keep up. Thankfully Monday is a rest day so we can finish the stage. (Once again Tivo comes to our aid!) Hopefully we can avoid any news reports on the results so we can watch unspoiled.

It has certainly been an interesting Tour so far. Armstrong catches Ullrich in the time trial, CSC almost beats Discovery in the team time trial, the peloton races at breakneck speeds (one suspects some riders will implode eventually), and the green, polkadot and yellow jerseys look like they are all up for grabs.

OLN’s coverage has been much better than their miserable Giro coverage but it sure sounds like Paul and Phil are doing commentary for two different media outlets, only occassionally coming together for their much loved witty banter. Is OLN not paying them properly for their services perhaps?

Love all those Bob Roll ads. You should definitely surf over to www.bobinthebuff.com for a quick looksee at him in all his glory. Go Bob!!!!!

Current temperature 73F/23C

Alessandro Petacchi won stage 9 of the Giro d’Italia. We’ve waited a long time for the Fassa Bortolo boys to get things right and today the train was working hard and delivered Petacchi to the finally meters in great shape. It was especially sweet because of the catastrophe of stage 6 last Friday.

Yee ha!!!!

For Giro reporting check out cyclingnews.com.

To watch/listen to coverage of the Giro check out cyclingfans.com. Watching Italian TV post race coverage of today’s stage has been quite an experience. And I’m not an Italian speaker.

Current temperature 52F/11C

Having discovered cyclingfans.com I’ve been visiting every day and using their links to follow the 2005 Giro.

Today they added a live feed to Italian TV coverage of today’s stage. The picture wasn’t the greatest but when combined with the Eurosport audio feed it was a definite step up.

Cheers to cyclingfans.com for helping provide me with my daily Giro fix!!!

Current temperature 34F/1C (windchill 21F/-6C)

… those who love the grand tours thought their fairy godmother had come in the shape of OLN. There was wall to wall coverage of the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta. We were in seventh heaven. I fell in love the Vuelta, not so flashy as the Tour but much more likely to go down to the wire.

Then, after the 2004 Tour, it all went south. OLN dumped the the 2004 Vuelta and is currently covering only the weekend stages of the 2005 Giro. Their behaviour is bizarre. With the success of Lance Armstrong, and the depth of their coverage, they had built up a really hardcore following. The potential audience was huge. All it needed was nuturing and instead they blow the whole thing out of the water.

To my rescue has come the web site cyclingfans.com Here you can find all the differnet ways it is possible to follow the Giro. So now I’m listening to the live audio feed of the Eurosport tv channel and reading the ticker at cyclingnews.com. Then later in the day I can watch the web feed of Itallian tv coverage of the day’s stage. (I can’t use the OLN web feed of live pictures as I’m a Mac user.)

No Paul, Phil or Bob fix until the weekend.

What ever happened to pleasing the customer?

Current temperature 55F/13C