I'm excited! no really...

On July 7 in London, 189 dudes will don the lycra and pedal their bikes around a 7.9km course with the aim of winning the first race - the Prologue - of the 2007 Tour de France. Over the following 20 days of competition, they will ride 3,542kms in 21 teams of 9, averaging just over 175kms per day.

With €3.2 million to be won, €450,000 of which go the the overall winner, it's a serious business. The French love it and after Lance Armstrong, so do the Yanks. The Germans, Italians, Spanish all have national cycling heroes. Riding a bike in the Tour de France is a big deal - but hardly anyone in Australia bothers to flick it a glance.

It doesn't help that the stages shown live on SBS start at around 10:30 or 11:00 at night our time (it's not their fault we're on the other side of the world), and it's not the sort of sport that will suck you in with it's flashy acrobatics as you casually surf the late night TV dials. But for those who have learnt to love the Tour, it's a wonderful three weeks of drama and heroics.

Over the next little while I intend to get all Toury on yo asses. If you know nothing about it, well, you should - it's one of the great sporting events, one of the great spectacles.

Learning to love the Tour is like learning to love Test cricket. Things don't happen quickly, it's all about the building tension, the deepening tactics and the moments of brilliance that can change the course of the whole event. Like this...

2003. Lance Armstrong attempts to win his fifth Tour de France in a row. It's the 15th stage - 159kms of mountains including two hors category climbs (the steepest hills in the race): the Col du Tourmalet after 124kms; and the Luz-Ardiden at the finish.

At the top of the Col du Tourmalet, with 35kms to go, the race is led by a lonely figure, Sylvain Chavanel, a Frenchman. Four minutes behind him are the main contenders, Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Iban Mayo and four others.

As the following group hits the start of the final climb about 10kms from the finish line, Mayo attacks. Armstrong is up out of his seat hanging onto his wheel in a flash. A duel develops up the steep slope and Jan Ullrich gets onto the back. Then in a famous moment, Armstrong's handlebar catches a bag held by a spectator and he crashes heavily, bringing Mayo down with him.

Ullrich, avoiding the carnage is suddenly ahead of his two main rivals in a small group with only Chavanel to chase down. After four years of Armstrong dominance, the path to Ullrich's first win in the Tour de France lies open. Then something extraordinary happens. Ullrich and his fellow riders slow down the pace and wait for Armstrong to catch up.

Legend has it that a few years earlier, Armstrong and Ullrich had been involved in a close race and Ullrich had suffered a puncture. Armstrong, instead of exploiting his luck, held back and allowed Ullrich to catch up before resuming the race. Jump forward to 2003 and Ullrich, it is thought, is repaying the favour.

Within minutes Armstrong and Mayo are back to the leaders. The pace increases again but Mayo and Armstrong move immediately, breaking the resolve of the pack and leaving Ullrich floundering. There is a brief moment during the break when Armstrong turns his head over his shoulder, catches Mayo's eye and then blows him away, powering ahead in an extraordinary display of endurance and strength.

With 4kms to the line, Armstrong approaches and overtakes the gallant Chavanel, patting him on the back as he does so to console him and acknowledge his effort. Armstrong wins the stage by 40 seconds ahead of Mayo and Ullrich (who fought back valiantly) and goes onto win the Tour for the fifth time. Chavanel finishes the stage in 10th place.

This is the sort of stuff legends are made of. Despite the rumours of drugs, the Tour de France remains one of the great bastions of sportsmanship, while the sheer endurance required simply to complete a Tour is phenomenal.

Watch it.





Well if that hasn't got you interested, stay tuned. There's a lot to know about how the whole thing operates and the more you know, the more interesting it becomes. Needless to say it's not just about who can get to the finish line the quickest.

If you're one of my readers who's just not that into sport, don't dismiss the Tour - it's as much a cultural event as it a sporting contest - and you never know, you just might learn to love it like I did.

AB v PK

Ha!

Matt Price on his Australian blog post about Keating's performance on Lateline last night, just wrote: "I’ve sent a message to Andrew Bolt..., suggesting now might be the time to strike with a proposal for AB v PK weekly program."

I would watch. That.

I saw the Keating interview and it was as good as everyone's saying it was. The man knows how to speak. Well. And eloquently. And passionately.

To see him going Andrew Bolt would be a joy to behold.

Why can't this country have politicians with panache any more?

Filler?

You're just going to have to entertain yourselves for a while, cos I's gots nothin'.

This should help.



[via]

And God said "Let There Be FRIV"

If you've been keeping up with the news - and I know you all have been - you've probably heard about this new "Creation Museum" that's opened in the US. If you haven't, well, this is a brand new US$27 million, state of the art Fundamentalist Christian propaganda device that represents the book of Genesis as the literal truth, complete with Adam and Eve playing with dinosaurs and cuddling lambs.

Now I have all sorts of issues with this (not the least of which is the fact that the guy who runs the thing is a freakin' Australian), but there are many other people who have written about it far more cogently than I could hope to. By all reports, it is jam-packed with the sort of bizarre pseudo-science that makes the vaguely intelligent shudder and the less-than-clever think they might be onto something.

I'm particularly fond of the well-muscled Adam and waif-like Eve as seen in this picture.

[Link]

Does anyone else think Eve looks like a Gelfling?


And here they are sans water (that blows any nudie-bits fantasies out of the water - so to speak).

[Link]

Still. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous. Read more about it here. And who better to make my point for me and to usher back the first Friday Random Interweb Video for, well, AGES, but Ricky Gervais.



Happy Friday team!

Oh dear

A five-year-old captive-bred panda fell to his death less than a year after he was released into the wild, possibly after a fight with other pandas, Xinhua news agency said today.

Xiang Xiang, the world's only artificially bred panda living in the wild, was released at the Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas in the mountainous southwestern province of Sichuan in April last year.

That's very sad.

Kevin Judd?

At lunch time today in general conversation about the local football code, I referred to the Worlds Greatest Footballer (TM) as Chris Rudd.

Freudian slip? Or perhaps I'm onto something... They both certainly seem to be teflon coated right now. Still. Makes for fun with the photoshop.

It could be good...it really could

Have you read the Phillip Pullman 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy?

If so, isn't it unreal? If not - WHAT ARE YOU THINKING - get ye to a library/book-selling emporium immediately!

I'm actually serious. It may be pitched as young adult fiction (even though there are many who think this is not the case), but (at the risk of being howled down) it is honestly one of the most beautifully created fantasy worlds since the Lord of the Rings - and I don't even LIKE fantasy.

This mildly hysterical outburst has been brought to you by the fact that the books have been turned into films and the first official trailer for the first film "The Golden Compass" has JUST been released.

Quietly - I'm excited. Really very excited. Some may even say pumped.

Now I try to keep these things a little under wraps. The last film I got this excited about was Happy Feet and that let me down in any number of ways, but this one has real promise. Starring an unknown young actor as the principal protaganist Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards - sounds more like a show name for a pedigree dog than a young girl, but still), the film includes notable performers such as Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green and Sam Elliott and with the screenplay adaptation from Pullman novels by none other than Tom Stoppard, it could be ace.



See the first official trailer here. Wheee!!