Thor Hushovd won. I’ll tell you more later, right now I’m watching the men’s final at wimbledon. Nadal is up 2 sets! Getting crazy….

An interesting start to the tour. Since 1967 the tour has started with either a prologue or a time trial to seperate the contenders, but this year they opted for a more standard stage. Mostly flat, with a few short climbs, and then a nice tight finish with a 90 degree bend at a bridge and then a pretty steep uphill finish.

At the end, Team Columbia had a pretty strong showing giving their GC man Kim Kirchen a real shot at winning the stage, but he kicked too early to the finish and Alejandro Valverde dropped it into passing gear and blew his doors off.

One thing that blew my mind was the Tour De France commercial being played on the Outside channel. It shows all the recent dopers from the tour riding backwards, as if erasing their tainted miles. The scene with Landis having his Jersey removed and Basso stepping off the podium were particularly poignant. Here’s hoping that there are none of those types of shenanigans this year (not holding my breath on that though).

Nice surprise, Thomas Voeckler, the French crowd favorite since his improbably run in yellow a few years ago, is King of the Mountain for the day.

More tomorrow!

OK, I can’t help it. I’m fucking addicted to the Tour de France, even though I have a terrible track record.

I’m going to be watching the Tour again this year. Thanks to doping a lot of the usual suspects are out of the race this year, but here are a few key guys that will be fun to watch.

Robbie Mcewen will be racing for the Green Jersey again this year. He is my favorite sprinter to watch, and honestly, I can’t believe he is still racing. He’s getting a little long in the tooth. But with Tom Boonen out (he pulled an Ullrich and got busted doing party drugs), he’ll figure in every sprint.

Cadel Evans, the Australian who busted ass for a podium place last year will be gunning for top spot.

George Hincapie will be riding as team captain of the newly formed Columbia team. George is great, and I hope he has a good showing. Trent Lowe is also riding, formerly of the Jittery Joe’s cycling team.

I’m not picking any favorites though. They tend to get busted as dopers. I am just going to watch the race and see what happens. It’s always good.