Wouldn’t that be nice? American pro cycling has arrived and we deserve our own Grand Tour. See my rant on Informed Sources:
http://independentsources.com/2005/07/02/tour-de-france-stage-one/
Luke
That’d be a mistake…Tour of Spain has done things really nicely by shortening the stages to favor attacks instead of controlled race which means the race has been very exciting in past years and almost always decided in the last few days.
doesn’t mean the US couldn’t have a Tour (let’s say we call it Tour Dupond 
)
the US is the #1 nation in cycling?? because of the Tour? so the Tour is the only cycling race in the world…
Drift some more please…
I don’t think any country really “deserves” a Grand Tour. Anyway, if the United States wants a Grand Tour, they can add a couple weeks onto the Tour of California, which is supposed to start up next year, and make the purse about $20,000,000. I guarantee it’d be the #1 tour with that type of prize money, even if the tradition would be severely lacking compared to it’s European counterparts.
that i definitely agree with…huge purse…and people will come.
Now, before the climbs are lined up with fans as it is the case in France/Spain/Belgium etc…it’s going to take a while…
probably lined up with rednecks with guns thinking these little guys in spandex are targets for them to practice with…
maybe that’s why the US doesn’t have a grand Tour yet
the dullest of the current big three Grand Tours is Tour de France.
Sorry to say this but both the Giro and Vuelta is more exciting to watch.
The Tour is too predictable.
And cycling is more than TdF TT’ing, so that doesn’t make US the best cycling nation in the world.
That’s being really unfair Francois…I was on a large organized ride through redneck territory a couple of weeks ago and not a single person shot a gun at us. The Idiots that set up camp and were whacking golf balls at us, well that’s another story.
“And cycling is more than TdF TT’ing”
Short lived. Most of our top pros in Europe are going to retire within five years.
ok, I should have said, rednecks and old rich golf players…LOL…life is weird!
“And cycling is more than TdF TT’ing”
Short lived. Most of our top pros in Europe are going to retire within five years."
To be replaced by riders like Zabriskie and Farrar…
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forgot Danielson methink…
Yup - sure did :0)
Farrar is the one to watch though; he might just turn out to be the USA’s Tom Boonen… (and I have raced against him since he was about 14…)
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the good thing for american riders is that they now have (thanks to lemond then Armstrong) the opportunity to ride in Europe where all the big races are and where the public is truly interested in cycling, not just in those 3 weeks in july…which is sad…there are some great moments of cycling in the classics…say, hinault winning Liege-Bastogne-liege in 1980 in the snow, blizzard conditions, breaking away and winning by more than 9’…this was just a fantastic ride.
Couldn’t agree more, and this is why I am so excited about a rider like Farrar - on the podium at the “baby Flanders.” I love the one day races as much as the Grand Tours - and having an up-and-coming american classics specialist is at last as exciting to me as the crop of tour specialists…
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just hoping that if one day a US team has 3 riders in a breakaway in roubaix and they all enter the velodrome together, they will actually do the sprint instead of having the team director decide for them…
(this was just an example of course, not that this ever happened in cycling… )
Wouldn’t that be nice? American pro cycling has arrived and we deserve our own Grand Tour. See my rant on…<<<
Thx for link. Luke has a number of good posts up there. One thing I’ll say for him, not afraid to speak his mind.
I’m also way into the Tour of America concept.
http://independentsources.com/category/off-topic/tour-de-france-2005
I hope the great cycling nation of France is enjoying seeing their boy don the Clown Jersey (aka KoM) today. I bet that Cat. 4 climb was a real thigh burner.
Luke
yeah, you would have beat him…
troll
Francios: “yeah, you would have beat him…troll”
argumentum ad hominem
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Yeah…only in the US we could not have anyone with #3 as that has officially been retired thanks to a NASCAR death. And the ONLY person they would want to see is Lance…the rest are targets for mullet wearing NRA members who like to yell “get er dun” and “da roooad is made fer trucks queer”. The race would last a year or two - after that farmers would park combines in the road and sprinkle them with broken glass and thumb tacks…