Does anyone give a damn about the Tour de France?

Same here. With or without Armstrong.

 

Man, I hope this guy doesn't read this site, but here goes ...

I worked at a (small-to-) midsize where the "columnist" -- not the most in-touch guy I've ever known -- was occasionally called upon to do the agate. He would change the header for the Tour de France results to "Tour of France." Honest to god. He thought he was doing a service by translating.

For the past decade, I've always thought of it as the Tour of France.

 

good lord, what did he do when Los Tres Amigos came out?

 

Maybe one of you veloheads can answer this for me. Why do all riders finishing in groups all receive the same time? Surely 20 guys can't finish all at the same time, so why not say the guys the crossed at 4:31:22 get that for a time and the guys that came across a second later get 23 and so on.

Also, the climbing/sprinting points are beyond me.

 

I can't tell you "why" exactly, but all riders that finish in a group get the same time. If there is a visible gap, then there will be time split. I guess the thinking is if you've got a pack of 75 guys on a two-lane road physical boundaries prevent them from spreading out to challenge for individual times.

As for the jerseys, there are certain points on the route that give sprint points and king of the mountain points on categorized climbs. The breakdown along the way usually gives points for first across through third. It gets bigger at the finish line. The king of the mountain points are award 1-3 for Cat. 4 climbs and go up for the higher classified climbs, and just like sprint points, if it's a mountain top stage finish, the point value is higher. It's just a competition within a competition. Eddy Merckx actually won the yellow, green and polka dot jerseys all in one year one time.

As for competitions with a competition, the entire Tour is that. Think of the tour just like a championship in racing (before NASCAR screwed it up). Each stage is a race and recognized as such in its own right.

 

The thing that drives me nuts is how you have a team, with one guy being the star, and that the rest of the bikers try to have the star win the race. It's like, why don't the other bikers try to win the race themselves, instead of trying to help their teammate?

 

I don't know ... why don't offensive linemen try to score touchdowns?
Cycling is a team sport.

 

Because they are not eligible to catch forward passes, and they really can't turn the corner as fast as a running back.

Why is cycling a team sport? I can understand if the primary goal and rewards go to the entire team, instead of an individual. But by having individual champions and yellow jerseys, it seems strange that not everyone is racing to win.

 

Everyone isn't racing to win. Just like those offensive linemen, guys are on the team to block, pace the team leader, go back to the team car and get water bottles, if need be give the leader your bike, jump in breaks and disrupt another team's strategy, be leadout guys for the sprinters, all sorts of things.

That's not saying one of the domestiques can't go for a stage win if the situation presents itself. Some teams aren't even challenging for the yellow jersey. Their goal is stage wins. Those teams will have things more spread out.

 

This has pretty much become our coverage plan. Small inside story or brief, maybe bigger stories when we have more space/fewer stories. It helps that our deadline is right around 11 a.m., so we can usually sneak in the day's results.
I honestly think the Tour de France was invented by sports editors sick of not having enough stuff to fill sections during the July doldrums.

 

You are close. The Tour was invented by Henri Desgrange to boost circulation of his paper -- which is the ancestor of l'Equipe

 

I'd love to take a tour of France. Lovely place on pictures.