I can't believe no one has started a live thread yet! Paul and Phil are currently talking on a live mic at Versus.Com but they don't seem to know it is live. 5 minutes to go.

Adelaide City Council 90KM Street Circuit looks a bit flat. Here's the street map (PDF)

via www.tourdownunder.com.au

In case you didn't catch it live streaming video is at

http://www.versus.com/blogs/2010-tour-de-france-and-cycling-events/santos-tour-down-under-chat/

• Stage 1: Sunday, May 15 – South Lake Tahoe to North Lake Tahoe-Northstar at Tahoe Resort
• Stage 2: Monday, May 16 – North Lake Tahoe-Squaw Valley USA  to Sacramento
• Stage 3: Tuesday, May 17 – Auburn to Modesto
• Stage 4: Wednesday, May 18 – Livermore to San Jose
• Stage 5: Thursday, May 19 – Seaside to Paso Robles
• Stage 6: Friday, May 20 – Solvang Individual Time Trial
• Stage 7: Saturday, May 21 – Claremont to Mt. Baldy
• Stage 8: Sunday, May 22 – Santa Clarita to Thousand Oaks

It isn't clear (I couldn't find it) if the first day will be a stage. Its only 45.7 miles (73.5 KM) so unless they depart from US Highway 89 it will be a short stage with almost no elevation gain. US 89 is a gorgeous drive along the west side of Lake Tahoe. We camp there every summer. There are many mountains to climb along the way if they choose to depart the highway. It'll be interesting to see the actual route.

Update: Velonews has a report with Stage 1 as a regular stage that loops 1.5 times clockwise around Lake Tahoe and going into the state of Nevada on the east side of the lake.

Stage 1 actually ends in Truckee, not North Lake Tahoe if indeed it ends at Northstar Resort.Northstar's address is in Truckee.

Stage 2 should be fantastic as well. Squaw Valley USA is a beautiful resort village. It hosted the Winter Olympics in 1960. It looks like I have some camping reservations to make, fast!

Many of you will be happy to know the traditional Solvang ITT has returned as well. Another PdC Solvang House Party perhaps?

For more information visit the official race website: www.amgentourofcalifornia.com

USA Pro Cycling is providing us with live video (no audio though) of today's road race championship on their website.  Start time is posted as 1PM EST. 

http://www.usacyclingchampionships.com/

Considering it is raining here for the first time in months I have a good excuse to watch cycling all day. One of the perks of not having any responsibilities on a Sunday. Kids grown and no husband! Yeehaw!

And here's a video of yesterday's podium. Check out 6'5" Taylor Phinney trying to put on a jersey that's "Levi's size" as he puts it.

2010 US Pro TT - Phinney Gets Stars and Stripes (via CarolinaCyclingNews)

Velonews reported today that a team soigneur, Spanish massage therapist Txema González, died in the hospital in Sevilla.  Greg Henderson tweeted earlier today about the illness:

Keep fighting team carer Txema. He is in a very critical coma condition in Sevilla hospital. All related to @teamsky virus that swept team.

Juan Flecha abandoned today after spending a few hours in the hospital sick last night. I commented on the live thread today they should pull the team out and go home. The risk just seems too high. They are also risking infecting everyone else.

Update: Team Sky has clarified in a statement on their website that Txema González's death was not caused by the same virus that has made the other riders and staff ill.

A hottitude thread needs no introduction for anyone who has been around the cafe for more than a couple months.  For those new members (or lurkers) give it a day or so and it will all be clear. Here is a handy start list at Steephill.tv sortable by country, team or age.  As well as a bunch of images in the Podium Cafe group on Flickr that our members have given permission for use here. Just be sure to credit the owner.

Let's try to keep this edition constrained to riders who are on a team roster to ride the 2010 Tour de France. This won't be too difficult. From what I hear Footon-Servetto has an entire team of Tour virgins with an average age of 25 years old. I mean, who can resist a guy named Eros?

Eros Capecchi  by © Matthieu Riegler, CC-BY, Wikimedia Commons

More after the jump....

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Details here. Live coverage scheduled for 9am Eastern Time for Stages 1-4 and 10am ET for Stages 5-7.  So us West Coasters get to sleep in until 7am on Saturday and Sunday! What a treat. 

Universal Sports TV will show coverage at 3pm ET each day.

Anyone want to suggest a day (weekday) for me to take off to watch? Which day will probably be decisive? I need to take a furlough day and might as well schedule it wisely.

I’m a total nostalgic when it comes to the Olympics. I love the Olympic Games. And I don't mean like, "Oh, I love George Hincapie." I don't really love him. I don't even know him. I mean I have an emotional attachment to the Olympics.

OK. I give. Maybe it is the same as my attachment to Big George but who cares?

Despite the protests, and all of the other noise about its cost, the cleansing of social ills in the host cities, blah, blah blah. I’m not blind to the negatives but I always manage to put them aside for the 2 weeks of the games and immerse myself into the experience. I cannot help but be filled with anticipation right now.

I love the spectacle of the opening and closing ceremonies, the joy of the participating athletes and their families, the pride of the host country. The torch relay through the host country. <-- Clicky for some beautiful photos of this one.

In 1984, a year after I graduated from high school, a family friend asked me to house sit while her family went on a 2 week cruise. They had a large screen TV, very rare back then, and I watched hours and hours of coverage. I was 18, my boyfriend was floating on a big Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. I was lonely. The Winter Olympics in Sarajevo (then a part of Yugoslavia) were on during those 2 weeks. I was so happy when the tiny Scott Hamilton overcame a childhood illness that stopped his growth and beat them all! and Torvill and Dean and their emotionally charged best ever in all of history ice dancing performance. (I adored them.) The beautiful and mysterious East German Katarina Witt beating our Rosalynn Sumners.  Oh the memories.

When Yugoslavia was bombed in the early 1990s (did you know that Sarajevo underwent the longest siege in modern military history during the Bosnian War? According to Wikipedia.) I actually cried while watching the news video of that beautiful old city crumbling to the ground. I could not believe my eyes. I thought, "Who would do that to the Olympic City?"

That was my first experience with was to become my ever growing emotional attachment to the Olympics.

I then visited Munich, West Germany in 1987 and went to the Olympic Stadium & Village where members of the Israeli Olympic Team were held hostage and 11 were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1972. I remembered watching the news reports of the tragedy when I was 7 years old and not understanding a bit of why it was. Now I know.

I'll curtail my walk down memory lane. I know some people don't get into the Olympic fever but I do. Right now I am watching the live stream of the Olympic Torch relay through Vancouver. (It just went off. Sorry.)

So tonight at  4:30pm Pacific Time the Opening Ceremony festivities begin. Who's with me?

Cycling News has the brief story.  Vania Rossi's A sample from the Italian Women's National Cyclo-cross Championships on January 10th where she finished 2nd has come back positive for CERA EPO.

Really? After all Mr. Ricco has been through. She is still using CERA EPO? My first though was, "Are you kidding me? Well, clearly neither of them learned anything from his positive." Also, do they consider using dope par for the course? Sounds like it. Says to me that he went right back to using it as well and just hopes he doesn't get caught.

Call me disgusted and biased. I don't like this guy, never have, and now she can join him.

Where is everyone? The TDU has begun!

ABC Radio Adelaide is streaming (excellent) audio coverage at:

http://abc.net.au/adelaide/onair/891stream.asx

If you are on a Mac, open Quicktime and click on File, Open URL and paste the above URL, clcik OK. I have flip4Mac installed. If the url doesn't work, try installing it.

The tour officials are tweeting the action at http://twitter.com/SantosTDU_Live

So far there's a 3 man breakaway of Martin Kohler (SUI) BMC Racing Team, Blel Kadri (FRA) Ag2r La Mondiale and UniSA Timothy Roe (SA). They have 8 minutes or so with 92KM to go.

(I am posting this for Nikki. She gets credit for all the lovely links.)

It's that time of day again to cheer on the boys riding the Zurich 6 day! Daniel Holloway, a favorite of many of us here in the US, is having a blast and as we found out yesterday, will do magical things for us here at the Cafe - like go and get Franco on screen for Zoe! Woot!

Some important links:

The Live Racing:

http://www.20min.ch/sport/weitere/story/18221614

Daniel Holloway's Live Streaming:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hwood87

Awesome heckling enabling quiz on page 15:

http://sixdays-zuerich.ch/~aktuell/News_18-12-09.pdf

Enjoy!

The Original Schleck proposed to his girlfriend at the Amstel Gold Curacao. Wonder if anyone got pictures? He did it at a fireworks show so it sounds like it was in public. Awww. So romantic! Many a Luxembourgian girl's heart broke upon this news. Oh yeah, and Cyclegirl's.

Read all about it. (Google translate to English)

The eldest of the Schleck brothers, Frank Schleck, intends to marry.  He proposed to his fiancee in a swimming pool on the Dutch island of Curacao yesterday... his girlfriend Martine, who did not need much reflection and answered yes.

Guy East (TREK-Livestrong U23) and Austin Carroll (BMC) are competing as a team in the Grenoble 6 Day Race. They won the 6 Days of Dortmund U23 last winter. They are both 22 (I believe) and new to 6 day racing. It looks like they are competing in the regular race with the big boys, not the U23. Both are regular Twitter users and Austin Carroll blogs and vlogs about his experiences as a young up and coming cyclist. He enjoys video editing and film making. He's an affable guy and fun to follow and clearly excited about this race. He has already posted a video of their arrival in France yesterday. Check his blog link.

6DayRacing.ca did a story on them earlier this year.

I am hoping we will find some live video from Grenoble but I'm not holding my breath. The Grenoble 6 day race starts today tomorrow October 29th. Check them out.

I want to make sure I don't oversleep and miss out on the live thread party but I don't want to get up any earlier than necessary. The current posted times make me tired just looking at them. Waking up in the middle of the night to watch Euro racing is such a burden for us left coasters to carry. Sigh. I think we deserve the award for most dedication. 2:30am for the TT and 1:30am for the road race? Yikes! Might as well not go to bed at all. Reminds me of watching the Olympics road race.

/whine

My question to the cafe, especially those in Europe is - what time are your local TV schedules showing as live video start times?

Universal's schedule reflects the same start times as the actual race times on the official Mendrisio 09 site. So I am wondering if the Universal schedule is not yet displaying the actual video start times or are we going to get streaming video of the entire men's races both days?

The Universal Sports Schedule shows:

Women's Elite Time Trial:  Wednesday, Sep 23 at 8:00am ET

Men's Elite Time Trial:  Thursday, Sep 24 at 5:30am ET

Women's Elite Road Race:  Saturday, Sep 26 at 3:00am ET

Men's Elite Road Race:  Sunday, Sep 27 at 4:30am ET

Updated: The UCI has posted start lists and TV coverage info. Sure enough they are showing the entire men's TT and road race live. Wow.

Stage Five – Sedalia, Time Trial, 30.5 km

A time trial for the purists awaits in Sedalia. This is what time trialing is all about, flat, fast, and wide open. A collection of the best time trialists in the world go full throttle from start to finish on the Missouri State Fair grounds in Sedalia. (Or bring your bike and cruise the Katy Trail, which offers three great viewing points of the course in a five-mile stretch.)

Video Link: http://tourofmissouritracker.com/

The first rider just left the star house. Low res video with commentary is up. High resolution video with Universal Sports commentary scheduled to start at 1:00PM Pacific Time.

Live Ticker: http://live.cyclingnews.com/
Start list with times: http://www.cyclingfans.com/node/511

For those of you assuming yesterday's stage would be another ho-hum Cav wins again day, think again. Thor Hushovd and Cervelo Test Team (with the assistance of a Missouri roller and a 6 lane highway) managed to hatch a plan to beat Cavendish and it worked. We, the online viewers, were fighting off seasickness just watching the rollers go by from the back of a motocam. Up and down and up and down and up and down.....  Missouri is not flat. We learned this again yesterday.

Once again, Columbia was forced to pull all day yesterday with Cav in yellow and looked like they ran out of steam at the sprinty end. Cervelo now holds the yellow jersey with Hushovd. Will they put their boys on the front, will they again try to force Columbia HTC to pull the break back, or will a break get away and stay away? Rider times are so close in the GC that any break could produce the winner of the 2009 Tour of Missouri. Two thirds of the riders are within 20 seconds of the lead with a 30.5 KM individual time trial tomorrow.

Profile and video information after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Today's stage description from the official website:

Stage 3 –Farmington to Rolla, 114.3 mi. (183.9 km)

Perhaps the most challenging stage in the three-year history of Tour of Missouri awaits the riders during this stage. The start in Farmington’s quaint downtown belies the challenges to come in the Ozark Mountains. With over 6,000 feet of total climbing on hill after hill, this day will begin to shape the race for the overall champion. The familiar finish in Rolla could again see a solo winner as it did in 2008 with Michael Barry.

Video here: http://tourofmissouritracker.com/ 

Currently it is the low res stream with no commentary. The high resolution video with commentary starts approximately 2 hours before the stage finish.

Live ticker: http://live.cyclingnews.com/

Its a 180.9 KM stage today.  From the Official race website:

This new territory for the Tour of Missouri will offer the racers their first taste of state’s rolling hills and scenic countryside. Some early KOM hills and a technical finish on Cape’s riverfront should provide a challenge for the day’s winner.

Video here: http://tourofmissouritracker.com/

Live ticker: http://live.cyclingnews.com/

Video started early on in the stage yesterday as a low res version with Dave Towle's race announcing as the audio commentary. With approximately 2 hours to the finish, Paul Sherwen and Frankie Andreu took over for Universal Sports and the high res video became available. No video as of yet for today and the stage started about 30 min ago.

Low resolution video stream here currently: http://tourofmissouritracker.com/

Universalsports is supposed to have higher resolution video for last 2 hours of race. The relay plane is not up until then.

CyclingNews has a live ticker at: http://live.cyclingnews.com/

Stage information from the official website:

Stage 1 – St. Louis, circuit race, 75 miles (120.7 km)

A new kickoff point for the third Tour of Missouri will be a showcase of St. Louis on Labor Day Weekend. While the terrain is relatively easy, the course is fast and technical, which will make things interesting from the start. Everyone will have fresh legs and a shot at the first yellow jersey of the tour, making this opening day an exciting one.

Hincapie to Team Radio Shack according to Roadcycling.Com Supposedly Lance Armstrong confirmed that Hincapie made a commitment to TRS a long time ago:

In an interview with Outside Magazine Lance Armstrong confirms that he is to reunite with personal friend and former teammate George Hincapie on Team RadioShack in 2010.

 

"He’s already committed. Has been since before we got our funding," Lance Armstrong told Outside Magazine.

I am waiting to cry until this is official but the tears are ready to run. No, George! Don't do it. Please. No.

looks like the Tour de France Team Presentation is tomorrow (Thursday July 2nd) at 9AM US Pacific Time, if I figured that correctly. It is at 6PM in Monaco.

Last year we had a wildly comedic, spontaneously fun and thoroughly entertaining live thread for viewing the spectacle. (Enough exaggerating adjectives for ya?)

Can any of you over there ::pointing to Europe:: see if there may be live web streaming of the presentation this year? If so, please post any information here. Much appreciated.

[Ed. note: and here we go . . . ]

Edited: should start in about an hour. Cameras ready?

Check http://www.cyclingfans.com/ and http://www.steephill.tv/tour-de-france/ for live stream links.

SacBee.Com reports that NevadaCountyTV.Org will be streaming the Nevada City Bicycle Classic live starting at 4:45 pm pacific time on Sunday.

Click on "Watch NCTV Now" for live player.

"The inclusion of Lance made it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Gilbert Dominguez, owner of TouchDown Productions. "We are a 'go' for this event."

While there won't be helicopters and motorcycles with onboard photographers following the bicyclists, Dominguez said that the live production will give viewers a flavor of the start, finish and the pedal down Broad Street. -Gilbert Dominguez, owner of TouchDown Productions.

Got a laugh out of that second quote. As if they have the budget for helicopter shots. I was planning to go but getting in and out of Nevada City is not easy and there's very little parking. Crowds are expected to be huge due to the Lance factor. I have little patience for crowds and traffic. If I go I'll certainly take pictures and report back to the PdC.

Updated: Live video up now.

for video. Yeah!!

Which means it should be a much easier viewing experience for Mac users (and Windows for those with issues.) I got video on demand to work on my Mac no problem this afternoon. It wasn't working previously even with Flip4Mac and it also the Flip4Mac plug-in doesn't give the user any control over the video. Flash does. You can rewind, fast forward and pause. That is nice.

I had been using Boot Camp to run Windows XP to watch the Giro video up until today. Not necessary any more.

If you don't have it already, you'll need to install Flash Player 10. Page is here for downloading it for all operating systems - Mac, Windows and even Linux!

Also, Universal Sports said that not all video on demand has been changed to Flash but today's Giro stage is. I just watched it.

Girbecco says: Universal Sports believes in cycling

Update: If you want to try testing it out try watching this video of today's stage. Its in flash player.