The Big Picture on the Tour de France

Finally they have posted their Tour de France gallery. I have used Skitch to borrow a few images for my blog.

Here’s the front part of the peloton on Stage 6:

And then there is this image of Jens Voigt after a serious tumble off his bike on the race down the Petit Col St-Bernard. Out of the Tour:

And to contrast here is the yellow jersey on the same stage, Alberto Contador!

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Lance Armstrong is a tremendous athlete

Image via Wikipedia

It was amazing to see Lance spurt ahead to rejoin the leaders of the pack, including his team-mate Contador, who is the overall individual leader of the Tour de France, at the top of the Petit Col St-Bernard.

At the end of the day he kept his overall second place standing, 1:37 behind his team make, Contador, who wears the yellow jersey.

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The Tour de France web site calls him a “winning machine”

And he did it again today bringing his lifetime record to 8 stage wins, and four in this Tour deF.

He is an exceptional sprinter. Phil Leggett, who calls the Tour for OLN, didn’t think that he could do it today since the last 500 meters was uphill and curvy. But with a great HTC team effort George Hincapie put Mark C in the right spot and Mark turned on his spring jets to win again!

Velo News puts it simply DESIRE:

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Le Tour de France gets to Paris at the end of the 20th stage

Image via Wikipedia

and the winner, Carlos Sastre, enjoys his triumph with l’Arc de Triomphe in the background!

In case you are interested you can view a lot more Tour de F photos at Big Picture!

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I do quite a bit of biking so I related immediately to this image

I admit that I probably coundn’t capture this image because I find it hard to control my bike once I take my hands of the bars. The person who snapped this image obviously didn’t have this kind of an issue.

WOW what a contrast!

With thx to AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski who is obviously following this year’s Tour de France.

Col du Tourmalet

Image by Simon Aughton via Flickr

The Tour de France starts this Saturday July 5 in the Brest area of France. One stop on its two week journey to Paris is up and over the Col du Tourmalet. This epic bike climb is well known to cycling enthusiasts and renowned bike climbers like Lance Armstrong.

Here is a small visual sample of what it looks like from a point near the top of the run:

I did not snap this image. I found it via Panoramio and Picnik-ed the copy to get this view.

In case you didn’t notice the Col du Tourmalet – Hautacam climbs on the 2008 Tour de France were yesterday. Two riders from the Saunier Duval team were 1 and 2 in this stage, Piepoli and Acebo Cobo.

Image by earthhopper via Flickr