Tour Week Has Arrived
–by Stuart Wade

Conditional apologies to Dakar, The Iditarod and Dean Karnazes’ “Outlook” calendar aside, it’s just seven days until the world’s toughest sporting event. And regardless of your stance on the sport’s recent stumbles, follies and outright embarrassments, plenty of reasons still exist to love its signature event.

New at ThePaceline

You may already be aware that, back in May, Paceline TV became a free product. Well, as The Paceline gears up for next Saturday, I wanted to take a moment to let readers know what else has been going on around these parts. 

Later this week, the team will announce a major “green” initiative including a large Paceline area devoted to awareness of the issue. While the immediate goal will be offsetting team carbon emissions (from support vehicles), awareness of the global issue is really the paramount long-term aim, with the team showing the way forward for the sport to embrace its inherent green-ness. Beginning in London, you’ll see green color accents on the riders’ helmets shorts and jerseys, as well as on the team cars. 

And here at the Paceline, you’ll be seeing the color green as well. We’ll roll out The GreenSpace, a sitelet devoted to the teams efforts, green issues and news surrounding (and extending beyond) our sport, our sponsor partners’ green activities and much more. 

New to Paceline visitors also will be:

• A news ticker/scroller feature allowing for more breaking news content
• Exclusive writings from some well-known voices in cycling and sports
• Frequent podcasts and first-person postings by members of the Team Discovery  Channel family
• Fan forums & fan-generated image galleries

…And a little something we like to call, The Disco Dream Ride. More on that later. As always, we do our thing with you in mind

Now without further ado…

Reasons to Still Love the Tour de France

• Phil Liggett. It begins and ends with the dulcet tones of That Voice that ushers so many of us through the month of July. Throw in the OLN/VS. theme music and you’ve got yourself an annual “goosebumps” scenario.
• The Devil. Every sport has its self-appointed, unsanctioned mascot. The Devil is about as authentic-looking (I suppose) as they come. And if he’s pointing his pitchfork and leaping up and down, you know it’s a Big Time Tour Moment. Also on the podium for this category is the Longhorn Helmet Dude, immortalized in a 2005 image of the peloton coming around a curve. Led by the Blue Train, nearly all the front riders are sneaking a peak and smiling at this Norse-inspired Lance Fanatic.
• Large-scale, personalized messages to the riders painted right onto the street. Look, this is a family website, but anyone who saw the “Rip their —- off, Lance” message painstakingly seared into the Alpe d’Huez asphalt in ’05 would agree — this is an annual tradition involving the slo-mo button on your TIVO.
• The way Bob Roll pronounces, ‘tuhr DAY france’. OK, some might argue this — along with the wild hand gesticulations and turns of Roll-ian phrase — isn’t a reason to LOVE the Tour. But I beg to differ. Roll, Bob, roll.
• Mountain-stage frenzy. The mixture of suspense, fear, mob behavior, cowbells, honking horns, ass-hauling motos and team cars, the tiny crevices of crazed supporters that somehow part just in time for the rider to squirt through, polkadots and Basque orange, and the solo fan w/flag who decides to haul ass alongside favorite rider… Actually,  I kinda hate this tradition. No, it’s uniquely TdF, and the still thrilling, still-fresh memories of Lance’s results in these stages more than makes up for the anxiety of merely watching from the comfort of home. 
• Two US-specific items. I am a huge fan of several American sports and a smattering of others. 1) Stateside, the Tour fills an otherwise dormant, between-seasons July period of Nothing But Baseball. 2) Waking up early on the weekend to watch the stage means all is right with the world.
• The list is endless. Sunflower fields… Podium girls… Farmers or chambers of commerce who “spell stuff out” in rocks, or their village’s main product such as hay or corn… The tourism shots of picturesque cities and villages… Some dude on his farm riding a horse alongside the peloton…
• …Lauding the lantern rouge… Spectacular turns of event such as Dave Z’s fall in ’05, or Rasmussen keeps falling in the TT or George winning the stage(!) or Lance passing Ulrich on the TT… Crazy sprint finishes… Hometown boys riding at the front of the peloton… Escapes that just…might…make…it…all…the…way!

One week to go.