le Tour de France, 2009

• first day’s top ten - note the horrible strength of astana
• 2009 tour de france is about to start - who to watch?

  the ten strongest riders
  mark cavendish - another cipollini?

• looking forward to this year’s greatest show on earth
• this year’s stages
• mid-tour review, 17th july

first day’s top ten - note the horrible strength of astana

The results after the individual time trial in Monaco on 4th July.

2009 tour de france is about to start - who to watch?

The circus is about to begin! Roadside preparations have started:

Roadside bike at Heches, in the Pyrenees

Roundabout near Argèles-Gazost in the Pyrenees [on stage 9]

Out of the one hundred and eighty cyclists, who will do well, or even actually win the greatest show in the world?

The ten strongest cyclists in this year’s race are:

Contador is reckoned to be unbeatable, but with Lance Armstrong coming back, and strongly as usual, who knows. Watching the interplay of these fellow cyclists in the Astana team could be interesting.

Note also that Astana, who had been thrown out of the Tour for almost institutional drugging of its cyclists, is now rehabilitated and, after two years, has been allowed to again participate in the Tour.

last year (2008): the first ten riders

mark cavendish - another cipollini?

Another cyclist to watch, we at least while he’s still in the race, is the Briton, Mark Cavendish [Team Columbia-High Road], who a rather less blatant version of the Italian cyclist, Cipollini. He appears to be taking up Cipollini’s style of racing. Going extremely fast in the first few stages on the flat, winning stages and the yellow jersey perhaps, the fading and dropping out of the race as soon as it hits the steep mountain stages.

In the Italian Giro, Cavendish won the Team Time Trial and three stages, before abandoning after his stage 13 win. He had braved three mountain stages, but was faced with five more in seven days. He is still young at just 24 years old, and it usually takes longer than that for a cyclist to reach his full strength, 24 is a bit early for a cyclist to come to his peak power.

looking forward to this year’s greatest show on earth

The Great Departure of the Tour 2009 will be from the Principality of Monaco.

By spreading the mountain stages over two weeks, the Tour organisers will ensure that the public watch a battle until the penultimate stage. From the arrival in the Andorran ski resort of Arcalis, on the 11th July, until the ascent of the fearsome Mont Ventoux on the eve of the arrival in Paris, the Yellow Jersey could change shoulders many times.

To give opportunities for more competitors, the format for the against-the-clock stages has been reworked. The 55 kilometres total for the individual time-trials will be one of the shortest since its systematic introduction in 1947. The Tour 2009 will also mark the return of the team time-trial, for the first time since 2005.

A spectacular moving showcase, the Tour races through the great range of landscapes, monuments and architecture of France. This year, the theme of the sea occupies a central place, with the visit of three great beacons of the Mediterranean: Monaco, Marseille and Barcelona. The Tour’s route then takes the peleton into the Pyrenees, through the centre of France, then east to the Vosges and the Alps, before going north from Mont Ventoux in Provence.

Never before in the history of the race has there been a mountain stage on the eve of the final day and the arrival at Paris.But this will be the case with the 20th stage finish at the summit of Ventoux.

After the Grand Départ in Monaco, the Tour will go to France, Spain, Andorra and Switzerland, with a little detour into Italy, thus visiting six countries. (The record number of countries visited was in 1992, with seven countries.)

This year’s prize money will total 3.2 million euros, with 450,000 euros going to the winner of the Yellow Jersey.

Remember the dates, 4th to 26th July, and the map below when planning any visit to France later this year!

this year’s stages

There will be 21 stages, of which seven are mountain stages [Alps 4, Pyrenees 3], one medium mountain stage, one team against-the-clock and two are individual against-the-clock [contre-le-montre] time trials. There are 2 rest days. All other days are ‘on the plain’ - relatively flat days, almost touring through France. The total distance ridden will be about 3,500 kilometres, or roughly 2,175 miles.