Itchy Feet

Wow. I totally missed the start of le Tour this year. It's 10 stages in and I finally remembered about it. *headdesks* I blame the Jays for distracting me.

In any event, it's another Armstrong tour. The big Texan is second overall after 10 stages, by a fraction of a second and he's looking good. My personal favourites, my Aussie boys, are still mostly in the middle of things. There's six of them this year - definite decrease - and no Robbie McEwan due to a nasty accident a couple of months ago where he chipped off part of his tibia. Woe.

16 - Michael ROGERS
35 - Cadel EVANS
38 - Stuart O’GRADY
58 - Brett Daniel LANCASTER
86 - Mark RENSHAW
130 - Matthew LLOYD

Of the six, I'm familiar with three - O'Grady, Rogers and Evans. O'Grady is a veteran of the Tour and it's great to see him still in there after a serious head injury several years ago from an assault; at one point he was having serious issues with heart irregularities. Evans, the (other) man with two last names, is a sprinter, just starting to come into his own. He won stages last year and the year before, and even wore the yellow jersey as overall leader at one point (memory is fuzzy). is not Baden Cook. Bad me, no cyclist. Rogers is, in my limited opinion, Australia's next great chance of an overall winner. He was doing amazingly well last year before an unfortunate crash on the downhill run of the Alps took him out of the race but he seems to have recovered well from that and is 16th overall. At least apparently until he crashed. Bugger.

The last three are new-ish faces to me, which means I'll have to do some reading up on them before I comment. Which means they probably raced last year and I missed them completely. *wry*

In other sporting news, it looks like I'll be getting a free ticket to the Jays game on the 18th. No idea where yet, but since I'll be helping out with the Lady Jays Food Drive, I'm thinking somewhere semi-reasonable. Must remember to take my glove, at least as a protective measure. ;) But yeah, doing charity stuff on Saturday, taking in donations of food and cash for the Food Bank Saturday morning. I figured it was a charity event I'd a) enjoy and b) be able to contribute to (finances are still recovering) and hey, I might get to gush at Roy Hallday's wife. ;)

Hmm. This is an interesting situation - McEwan has been disqualified for this stage and pretty much lost his chances of getting the green sprinter's jersey this year. McEwan claims O'Grady pinned his elbow, O'Grady claims McEwan was beign too aggressive and the footage is inconclusive. Either way? Stupid, stupid thing.

Found on [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s journal...

For the Aussie cycling nuts that missed it, Hell On Wheels is screening on SBS July 2nd at 9:30pm. Hell, I'll be watching it again, especially since I'm not working. :)

Also? Le Tour starts Sunday, and SBS is screening the whole thing. All 21 days. I think while I'm in Sydney next weekend there will need to be some private time with the TV. ;)