The Tour de France is ready for another edition with Lance Armstrong, and Saturday’s opening stage may show whether he’s ready to challenge for another title.
Armstrong’s 37-year-old legs will be tested immediately when the three-week race begins with a 9.6-mile time trial. The stage will be run along the hilly streets and hairpin turns of Monaco, a Mediterranean principality better known for Formula One than for huffing two-wheelers.
The ride will likely offer an early shakeout of potential contenders who want to at least hold their own in the race against the clock.
Specialists in the discipline include …Â Details
George Hincapie helped Lance Armstrong win seven straight Tour de France titles and believes his old friend could surprise a lot of people this year.
Back competing after 3 1/2 years of retirement, Armstrong will start his first Tour since 2005 on Saturday, in the opening and difficult time trial in Monaco. Many cycling experts are writing off the 37-year-old cancer survivor. But not Hincapie.
“I think he has got very good possibilities,†Hincapie said on Friday. “He has trained very hard, he says he is feeling good. It’s going to be exciting, but I cannot predict what he will do. I wouldn’t put anything past him.â€
Hincapie, who spent the greatest years of his career working for Armstrong, now …Â Details
The International Cycling Union’s (UCI) Management Committee, which is meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on June 18th and 19th, today approved the calendar for the 2010 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup.
The 2010 World Cup will include six rounds for each discipline and will take place at nine venues in eight countries.
World cup :
Round 1 – 4-cross 01-02.05.2010 Houffalize (BEL)
Round 1/2 -DH/4-cross 15-16.05.2010 Maribor (SLO)
Round 2/3 DH/4-cross 05-06.06.2010 Fort William (GBR)
Round 3/4 DH/4-cross 19-20.06.2010 Schladming (AUT)
Round 4 DH 24-25.07.2010 Champéry (SUI)
Round 5 DH/4-cross 31.07-01.08.2010 Val di Sole (ITA)
Round 6 DH/4-cross 28-29.08.2010 Windham (USA)
World Championships :
XCO/DH/4-cross 31.08-05.09.2010 Mt-Ste-Anne (CAN)
Two new venues in 2010 …Â Details
For those privileged and masochistic enough to take it on, the Tour de France offers private agonies in the most public of settings.
For Lance Armstrong, the price of torture has always been offset by the spoils of victory, as he wheeled an inexorable path toward seven titles and a permanent etching in history.
Yet as he returns after four years to the scene where his legend was created, Armstrong does so with less in the way of obvious tangible recompense for his muscle-wracking output.
Incredibly, this man who blitzed the field for so long with his iron spirit and metronomic cadence enters the 2009 Tour – which starts in the principality of Monaco on Saturday – without any realistic possibility of … Details