Dopestrong

it's a combination of all of the above. not having a tv is a big hindrance to following the Tour. but all of the dopers and whatnot make me not care about it enough to seek out a place to watch it.

I get my TdF news from Bike Snob NYC.

But seriously, no TV and the coverage online is all about whos injecting what. Le sigh.

there is a thread on the boards about TdF.

I've noticed a loss of interest myself.

This thread prompted me to turn on the TV and I just caught the bigboys in their 53/11 sprinting towards the finish. Apparently Cavendish just won his 3rd stage of this year's tour. But for realz my interest has diminished, except if we wanna talk about euro-football.

good online coverage at:
http://www.steephill.tv/2008/tour-de-france/

Big reason for not paying attention: doping
secondary reason: no tv
tertiary reason: not enough time to ride bikes as is

Dopestrong: I have some work acquaintances who are working on a "Dopestrong" team kit. Graphics of blood bags on the back of the jersey, syringes filled with the world championship colors, should be ironically awesome.

really... nobody watched it before Lance and nobody watches it now. Doping was there before Lance and will always be there. I don't really see that anything changed? On a worldwide basis its still one of the most watched sporting events. It will never compete with NASCAR because NASCAR is about sitting on your ass and driving fast, crashing, smoke, skidmarks, beer and fire. Cycling isnt.
The Lance era is over and things are back to normal. Interest spiked in the Lemond era, the there was potential for a Landis era. Interest was there until Floyd tested positive. Until some kid from the US starts winning interest will be down in the states. Bike sales spiked and every doctor, lawyer, and dork was dropping their cash to get a TT bike just like Lances' to put on the roof of their Cayenne. They all had the full USPS team kit..
American viewers need a 'story' they have to have an underdog to fight for, Laurent Fignon, a hunting accident, Cancer, being Amish... we dont want a winner.. we want an underdog that can scap with the big dogs and win! European cyclists dont give Americans a story or a cause to get behind. Too bad Dale Eranhardt didn't ride then every redneck would give us plenty of room on the back roads.
Maybe we could make some #3 jerseys to get some respect in the mtns!

The UCI is stupid corrupt, is holding back bicycle design and 17 of the 18 proteams have told them that they arent resigning with UCI for next year.
I've been watching every night from 10 to 11 as I fall asleep. I still watch.. As for as EPO goes, after last nights self induced masochistic thrashing I would love to have some!

and I don't even own a road bike (gasp). Hit record on the DVR and I fast forward through it and watch the whole stage in about 20 minutes. Mtn stages are the best and some big ones are coming up.

If I'm not going for a ride myself, I watch it when I get home from work. I also turn it on in the mornings to catch the prerace.

but I don't have a whole lot to say:

1. I'm rooting for Vandevelde, as well as the Garmin-Chipotle and Columbia teams in general.

2. I don't know what to think of the doping. I'd like to think that we're getting false positives because the detection is new, imperfect technology. But I accept that those guys may really be so stupid as to think they could get away with it.

3. Wow, those guys are fast.

did you see Ricco's head? it's HUGE!

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/07/17/team.tour.ap/index.html

I've been watching a lot. But I can't ride at all with my wrist at the moment.

I think the doping controls are working and I really wish Astana was in the race.

Sorta ranks above golf, but just barely. The Dope injects a bit of human interest into it in a Jerry Springer kind of way, but even then it is still boring. Getting drunk at the course and watching it go by is fun, but that is the cycling equivalent to tailgating.

This is from another forum that I spend time in.
Maybe intersing to some of you.

-----------------------------------
ORIGINAL: rhody

we have been watching the TDF Very confusing Someone wins and the next bunch of riders all get the same time,WHY? How does the point system work? Actually kind of boring,all the leaders ride the race together and then the last few clicks determine the winner of that stage. Cavendash (sp) has won lots of stages but isnt in 1st place WHY? I think Versus does a really poor job of explaining what is happening. If auto racing used the same rules it would die a quick death.

Soberjohn
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The "same time" thing is for safety. They don't want all 180 riders (especially the team leaders) racing for a 25 ft wide finish line in the sprints, trying to get a few seconds when it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things for most of them. Now, why they have that same rule for smaller groups, I don't know. With today's RFID technology, they might actually be able to get an accurate time reading for everybody, but there's no good place to mount the thing for the distance differences required. The placings are based on the leading edge of the bike+rider, and you obviously can't mount the RFID transponder on the front wheel, so you'd have folks building stupid rigs to put their RFID chip out as far as possible. But for the most part, the RFID things are on the chain stay or the fork and are used for locating riders in this or that group, I think. Plus bike changes are allowed, and that'd screw things up, so they don't want to rely on it too much.

Points--there are two systems, sprint points (on level ground out on the course and the finish line) and mountain points (on climbs and mountain top finishes). You get points for crossing a certain point on the course first (and second, and so on with diminishing point values as the placings go on). The points count consistency. If you're always near the front (at least when the sprint or mountain point lines are), you accumulate more points.

The reason Cavendish isn't in first place overall is because the "general classification" (GC) is based on total time over the 21 stages, kinda like golf being scored by total strokes over one or more rounds rather than holes (or stages) won. He also doesn't have the sprint point leader jersey because he doesn't care to contest the intermediate sprints out on the road. He cares only about winning stages. But guys like Oscar Freire and Thor Hushovd care about the sprint jersey so they contest those intermediate sprints as well.

While Cavendish finishes a few seconds faster than most of the field on the sprint stages, he finishes tens of minutes behind the GC contenders in the mountains and minutes in the time trials. For the non-sprint stages, all he cares about is not getting disqualified for taking too long (a percentage of the winner's time) so he can save his mojo for the sprint finishes.

Which showing are you watching? They tend to have more explanations of stuff in the 8pm showing with host Craig Hummer asking "newbie" questions about stuff, with his co-hosts, etc. answering.

As for the race being boring until the last few K's, a lot of people agree with you that sprint stages are boring. It's kinda like a basketball game where nothing too interesting happens until the latter part of the 4th quarter. The intermediate sprints are supposed to lend some excitement out to various locations on the course, though it usually fails to, but you never know--it's been interesting a few times, e.g. when Vinokourov pushed Leipheimer down a spot in the Tour a few years ago by taking a sprint time bonus.

The sprint stages can be exciting before the final Ks when there's a breakaway that has a chance of surviving. We saw that a couple of times this year--one breakway being reeled in at < 100m out from the line. There was tension about whether they'd get caught or not for a significant amount of time.

Folks also blame Lance for entrenching a consistently winning formula that has led to the boring behavior you describe, with the team leaders rarely going for a big attack unless they really have to. Or they might attack on just one mountain stage (or long time trial), get a gap, then just nurse that gap along and rely on the guys behind you to battle it out for 2nd and 3rd. Excitement has come when some wildcard happens, e.g. Lance's crash when he snagged a spectator's bag, then went on to win that mountain stage on a half broken (carbon!) bike. Or a wildcard like this year's big name alleged doper, Ricardo Ricco, goes out on attacks on climbs that nobody can follow.