Today was the first rest of the Tour de France. It has been a great first 8 stages with a few surprises, a few disappointments, and more than a few crashes. The cobbles of stage three were a real challenge that produced a few time gaps but the real challenges lay ahead on the weekend.
The riders hit the Alps (Lance kind of fell into them) and one by one on Sunday they began to fall off the back of the main group. Cavanel with his second stint in the Yellow Jersey could not keep the tempo set initially by Team Sky, then Saxo Bank and finally Astana. Everyone was in pain and Paul Sherwen was loving it! "Everyone is suffering now!"he announced cheerily.
But really how bad could it be? It's not that bad if you consider riding 143 km before starting to climb a mountain at 9% grade for 14 km then a quick descent before going for another quick 12km climb at the same grade. What's a measly 9% grade. In riding south of Calgary I've found some pretty stiff hills. I have been humbled many a time by the hills...HILLS! I did the old mapmyride.com thing to check the elevation and grade for a ride that Doc and I did a few weeks ago, because I'm sure they were like 10 km at 12% grade that we rocked.... 4% for 800 meters. I'm a Pansy! Paint my bike pink (not cool pink like at the Giro) and call me Francois. These guys are animals! Just look at Daniel Navarro, (not to be confused with Dave Navarro of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction fame). He looks like he's having a great time eating up those mountains! In contrast to Navarro's pain, the riders sitting second and third wheel, Contador and Schleck, are actually looking quite comfortable. Navarro put in a ton of time at the front pulling Contador along farther than I think even Contador expected and giving the Spaniard a chance to win the stage.
Shifting gears, cycling is not an overly popular spectator sport here in North America. Even with the emergence of the Tour of California and Lances emense popularity, there still is not the following one might expect. It is only in the past two years that I have started following cycling in earnest and this is the first year that I watched the Classics, which are truly great one day races (Cancellara is a monster).
With that being said, I am continually surprised at how many of my friends are into road cycling and through the wonder of Facebook I have discovered an old friend who is following the tour. Not only is he following the tour, but he is able to carry on a conversation (such that a FB conversation is, about the stages. Fantastic! In thinking of a moniker to bestow upon him, I thought the Predator would be fitting to his location geographically but then I thought that might conjure up images of a young guy with a handlebar mustache sitting around in a hospital gown watching men in spandex grind their way around Franceand we wouldn't want that. So we'll call him Klink, an homage to camp years gone by.
Now onto stage 9, more mountains and more time gaps. Exciting action all morning long.
Klink, enjoy the stage and heal up quick.
Monday, July 12, 2010
0
World Cup 2010 Finale
The games have all been played and we are now able to breathe a little sigh of relief. In my mind the World Cup lived up to all the hype..except for maybe the final. Holland and Spain was set to be a great game between two European titans. Now, don't get me wrong the game was good. Both sides had their chances, really good chances, and if it wasn't for some outrageous goal tending regulation time would not have ended in a nil-nil draw. After seeing the Dutch play several games during the tournament they looked to be in a great position to knock off the European Champions. But when the game started they started to play dirty. It kept getting worse, and worse as the game went on. It was like Lindsay Lohan's past 5 years was being played out on the pitch, which meant that it was only a matter before their was a disaster and the verdict came down the dutch were crying in the courtroom.
I got to thinking how a team that played so well went so bad and I wonder if it isn't partially the fault of the ref. I know, everyone blames the ref. The ref set out at the beginning of the match to show who was in control of the game, him. He called penalties that may have been marginal in hopes that the players would adjust and play a more open honest game. How'd that work for you Howard? What ended up happening was the Spanish adapted and the Dutch got upset and instead of concentrating on the game they concentrated on the officiating. The dutch ended the match with 9 players being carded and one receiving a red card.
From our end we can relax. There are no more games to contemplate, hard decisions to be made, no more calculating who is going to miss the match because of consecutive games with yellow cards. The final numbers are in and we have a champion. There were 8 players who entered teams in the elimination round and so in that spirit we'll list the top eight.
In eighth place is "Regina Rocket" Jim Haney, a couple points ahead was Lumpy who had an impressive streak from the quarters on. Al came in tied with Lumpy at 29 points. My dad and I were unable to resolve anything in the father/son battle as we both cane in at 31 points. Steve finished in the money at 32 points, Jamie made a valiant run, and won the other father/son match up, beating Lumpy by 3 points (sorry Lump). But our Champion who had an edge on us by growing up for a time in Germany is Andrew Shareski at 38 points.
Andrew has the honor of carrying the title of...guy who won the free pool, for the next 4 years.
So until Brazil 2014, when the vuvuzela will hopefully be a distant memory, and we can join in with most fanatical of Football fans in celebrating World Cup 2014!
I got to thinking how a team that played so well went so bad and I wonder if it isn't partially the fault of the ref. I know, everyone blames the ref. The ref set out at the beginning of the match to show who was in control of the game, him. He called penalties that may have been marginal in hopes that the players would adjust and play a more open honest game. How'd that work for you Howard? What ended up happening was the Spanish adapted and the Dutch got upset and instead of concentrating on the game they concentrated on the officiating. The dutch ended the match with 9 players being carded and one receiving a red card.
From our end we can relax. There are no more games to contemplate, hard decisions to be made, no more calculating who is going to miss the match because of consecutive games with yellow cards. The final numbers are in and we have a champion. There were 8 players who entered teams in the elimination round and so in that spirit we'll list the top eight.
In eighth place is "Regina Rocket" Jim Haney, a couple points ahead was Lumpy who had an impressive streak from the quarters on. Al came in tied with Lumpy at 29 points. My dad and I were unable to resolve anything in the father/son battle as we both cane in at 31 points. Steve finished in the money at 32 points, Jamie made a valiant run, and won the other father/son match up, beating Lumpy by 3 points (sorry Lump). But our Champion who had an edge on us by growing up for a time in Germany is Andrew Shareski at 38 points.
Andrew has the honor of carrying the title of...guy who won the free pool, for the next 4 years.
So until Brazil 2014, when the vuvuzela will hopefully be a distant memory, and we can join in with most fanatical of Football fans in celebrating World Cup 2014!
Monday, July 5, 2010
0
Surprises Abound
So this weekend I was poised to move into the lead! I was sure that no one else had thought to select Brazil over the Dutch, or Argentina over Germany, or Ghana over Uruguay, or Spain over Paraguay. How wrong was I!
I didn't even watch much of the action. I caught the score early in the Brazil/Netherlands game and Brazil was up 1-0. I figured that was it. Brazil has never lost a World Cup match when leading after half. It wasn't until the next day that I found out that the Dutch had come all the way back to win the game.
I did see the second half of the Ghana/Uruguay match and the extra time and the shootout. A shootout that never should have happened. For those of you who saw it you will agree. For those of you who didn't this is what happened.
To give us a little perspective on why it was so wrong for buddy to miss that penalty let us turn to mathematics. A soccer goal is approximately 8 feet tall by 27 feet wide. Lets say on average a soccer ball is 8.65 in diameter but to make the math a little easier lets say 1 foot. Lets go a little further and say that a soccer ball is approximately 1 square foot while the goal is 216 square feet. so you would think that it would be ease to put a little ball in a big net....but wait what about the goalie? Fair enough. Let's add them into the equation. At 6 feet tall, 2 feet wide he'll take up 12 square feet. All in you still have 204 square feet to hit.
Either way, the guy missed and it set up for an exciting shoot out where the Uruguayan goalie made two fantastic saves to lead them to the victory.
So we only have 4 games to go. Tuesday 12:00 sees the first semi final with Uruguay v. Netherlands, Wednesday has the second semi with Germany facing Spain. The losers of those matches will play on Saturday while the winners close out the tournament on Sunday.
Get your picks in by lunch to ensure they count.
I didn't even watch much of the action. I caught the score early in the Brazil/Netherlands game and Brazil was up 1-0. I figured that was it. Brazil has never lost a World Cup match when leading after half. It wasn't until the next day that I found out that the Dutch had come all the way back to win the game.
I did see the second half of the Ghana/Uruguay match and the extra time and the shootout. A shootout that never should have happened. For those of you who saw it you will agree. For those of you who didn't this is what happened.
To give us a little perspective on why it was so wrong for buddy to miss that penalty let us turn to mathematics. A soccer goal is approximately 8 feet tall by 27 feet wide. Lets say on average a soccer ball is 8.65 in diameter but to make the math a little easier lets say 1 foot. Lets go a little further and say that a soccer ball is approximately 1 square foot while the goal is 216 square feet. so you would think that it would be ease to put a little ball in a big net....but wait what about the goalie? Fair enough. Let's add them into the equation. At 6 feet tall, 2 feet wide he'll take up 12 square feet. All in you still have 204 square feet to hit.
Either way, the guy missed and it set up for an exciting shoot out where the Uruguayan goalie made two fantastic saves to lead them to the victory.
So we only have 4 games to go. Tuesday 12:00 sees the first semi final with Uruguay v. Netherlands, Wednesday has the second semi with Germany facing Spain. The losers of those matches will play on Saturday while the winners close out the tournament on Sunday.
Get your picks in by lunch to ensure they count.
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