Yup.
W 0 0 T
wahoo!
ok im confused… did he win or not…
"That meant Armstrong only had to complete the course to pick up his seventh Tour win.
Alexandre Vinokourov, though, took the stage win after flying off defying the sprinters in the final 1km."
???
Chase
Armstrong won the whole race, the other guy just won the stage.
ohh i see… thanks
Chase
The Tour de France is a stage race and has 21 stages. The overall winner is determined by adding up the finish time for each stage. Lance had the lowest cumulative time for all 21 stages so he is the overall winner.
Since the overall lead depends on cumulative time it is possible for Lance to win the overall race without ever winning an individual stage. Lance won one stage this year, the individual time trial for stage 20.
There are actually four races going on at the same time. There are four different jerseys to designate the leaders in the four different categories.
Yellow jersey: For the overall lead based on cumulative time
Green jersey: For winning the most sprints
Polka Dot jersey: For winning the most climbs
White jersey: For the best young rider under 25 years based on cumulative time
The Tour de France Wikipedia entry has more info about the Tour and the different jerseys and how the race is done.
Dont forget the team competition John
Ah yes, the team competition. It’s easy to overlook that one because there isn’t a special jersey for the leading team.
The team competition is based on the cumulative time from the first three riders from each team on each stage. This year T-Mobile won the team competition. T-Mobile is the team with Jan Ullrich.
lance shuts france up for the 7th year. ohyea
tour
What about the “lanterne rouge”?
John, not quite that simple, although it is the lowest accumulated time that wins, time is deducted from a racer’s total for finishing in a high position (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.) time bonus is also awarded for reaching the top of certian climbs first. Also certain stages are time trials where the riders go against the clock over much shorter distances, i’m aware that you porbably know this but it mite interest other readers.
Yeah, I did simplify things to avoid writing a page long essay. That’s why I linked to the Wikipedia article. But even the Wikipedia article is a bit thin in places since it doesn’t talk much about tactics and strategy and how a team can help support a rider.
Re: tour
The lanterne rouge is the person who is in last place in the general classification (cumulative riding time). Finishing in Paris as the lanterne rouge is a badge of honor for some people in the race.
It’s not as easy as you may think to stay in the race with a low time, especially in the mountain stages. For each stage you have to finish within a certain percentage of the winning time for the stage. If you finish outside of that time you are eliminated from the race. The elimination time is typically around the winning time plus 15% or so. The exact percentage can change for different types of stages (mountain, time trial, flat, etc.) and is determined by the race director. But even a simple rule like that is at the discretion of the race officials. For example let’s say a small breakaway goes out and puts a lot of time on the main peloton. The breakaway can get enough time on the field to eliminate a large portion of the peloton. The race officials aren’t going to eliminate most of the peloton on one stage so there is some flexibility in the rules to allow some discretion.
The mountain stages are very tough on the non-climbers. The slower climbers have to climb for their lives just to stay within the elimination time. Typically you’ll see a group of riders at the back of a climb keeping a perfect pace that is just enough to finish within the projected elimination time. There is strategy to going slow but not too slow.
In france a big part of the population thinks that all (bi)cyclist take drugs.
they ride montains stage at 50 km/hours for 230km, it’s crazy. (sorry for us metric system)
I don’t say that because a US team won, but I think it’s a nasty sport.
armstrong doped/cheater
As it turns out, lots of the cyclists also think armstrong doped, including the ones who say they saw him do it, or who did it with him.
Of course, he dumped his wife for a newer model, and rode with George W Bush, so he must be of impeccable character.
In my opinion, they are pretty much all doped.
if everyone dopes and armstrong still wins, then he is still the best. but i dont think he doped illegally.
But did he chant with Richard Alpert, the pinnacle of character impeccability?