Since the beginning of GW’s reign, and especially throughout the war, I’ve been hesitant to promote my nationality in any form. But for three weeks in July I can’t help but cheer for the Americans in the Tour de France. I’m not much of a sports fan, but cycling is different. It mixes sheer endurance of the individual with complex team strategies (and occassional in-team rivalries that Greg LeMond encoutered in 1985-86), and all the drama, gusto and gossip of a major European sporting event.

And cycling generally avoids the monetary hoopla and commercialism that has infected other mainstream sports. Cycling teams don’t coerce cities into spending billions on fancy stadiums — it welcomes everyone that wants to watch with a free ticket to the sidelines, especially the fans who dress up in bunny costumes and run alongside their favorite riders on the slow, grueling climbs. Nothing is off limits, and fan participation has remained a significant (if not dangerous) part of the event.

As someone who doesn’t subscribe to cable television I feed my fancy by rolling out of bed and reading the days’ race reports, with the stage freshly finished when I wake up in Pacific Time each morning. Here are some of the sites I visit to get my fix.

• Canal Le Tour — The official site of the Tour de France is the best site for comphrehensive Tour standings. And there are a lot of them — General Classification (overall standings) and stage standings for individual, team and five categories. But the 14 daily results are organized so it’s easy to find who won the stage and how Lance is doing in the overall (very well, thanks to a magnificent performance by the Posties in the team time trial on Wednesday) and a plethora of other data. The race map with detailed elevation profiles is available in static and Flash versions (the latter only in French). If I woke up early enough I could also read the play-by-play with live updates every few minutes.
• New York Times — the Times, my primary general purpose news source, has a Tour page that unnecessarily pops up the Interactive Tour page everytime you navigate there. I promptly close it because it’s the typical Flash nightmare — slow to realize mouse clicks, poor proprietary navigation, etc. But the coverage by Samuel Abt and other Times’ reporters contains excellent writing and covers human interest aspects of the tour such as what it’s like to be waiting on the sidelines and how the TV coverage works.
• VeloNews — The gold standard of pro cycling rags, VeloNews has the most comprehensive Tour coverage without needing to explain the basics for a mainstream audience, and no fancy interactive fluff needed to drum up interest — if you’re there, you already love cycling. Articles are arranged by stage so it’s easy to keep track of where you left off (something I have a hard time doing with the NYT). VeloNews also has writing contracts with USPS trainer Chris Carmichael and several riders. Nothing technologically fancy, just writing about bike racing.
• ESPN — A leading site in ball-centered sports, ESPN built out its Tour de France site to appeal to the general sports enthusiast. For some reason, the title of the page reads “ESPN - Olympic Sports - Tour de France” — cycling evidently always falls under olympic sports on the site (aren’t basketball, baseball, tennis and hockey also olympic sports?). The coverage is thin — in fact I hadn’t even thought to visit the ESPN site until I started writing this entry. The layout is good, but the updates are slow to arrive — nothing more than the statistical results for most stages. However, the map interactivity is among the best and has a nice elevation profile overlay, but only on mountain stages where it matters most. It’s the quickest to respond to clicks since it’s not bloated with features. I applaud it for its simplicity. And ESPN.com is also XHTML compliant.
• Bicycling Magazine — the be-all of bicycling magazines, Bicycling is known as a practical knowledge bicycling magazine for those who ride. It fits real Tour coverage between articles like 13 Rides Tough Enough to Change Your Life and The Best Champagne to Drink During the Tour de France. Has all the expected race results, interesting facts and contributing writers. Like VeloNews, their tour map is plain HTML on a regular page which makes it the easiest to read. But there’s something so 1997 about this site that doesn’t appeal to me.

I’ve noticed over the years that all cycling becomes more pleasureable when the tour is underway. When you can link each hill on your commute to work with a particular Tour climb, you just go faster and feel better. While the Postal Service is climbing up Alp d’ Huez on Sunday, I’ll be doing my final training ride for RAMROD, a 155 mile ride around Mt. Rainier on July 31st, where I’m sure I’ll have the tour in mind plenty.