Tour de France.

I don't have a whole lot of patience for those who say that world-class cyclists somehow aren't athletes because all they do is ride a bike, and anyone can do that. And yet, baseball and football players are? When they stand around doing nothing 95% and 75% of the time, respectively? I'd sure like to see any of them - columnists or baseball and football players - ride a bike for 125 miles, ride the bike up a mountain that is steeper than they would want to either drive or walk up, and have the energy left to sprint to the finish line. And then do that for 21 days in a row.

On the other hand, some commentators do get it, and get it well enough to realize the beauty of a well-designed team supporting the team's star. Given that those team members don't get much recognition for their work, it's wonderful to see that one of them (Victor Hugo Pena) now leads the Tour, one second ahead of the star teammate (Lance Armstrong), and that Armstrong is clearly delighted that Pena has gotten the chance to wear the yellow jersey.

Anyway. There's been remarkable coverage of this year's Tour: the helicopter shots are amazing: rock-steady telephoto shots from ten feet off the ground make it look as though the camera is in the peleton, and there are enough cameras around that you don't miss any of the action. And the commentators do a reasonably good job of explaining the various strategies in a manner that casual viewers can understand without boring people who are familiar with stage racing.

Great fun watching yesterday's team time trial, and the U.S. Postal team turning on the speed. They clearly were better prepared to work as a team, always in a tight aerodynamic line, while many of the other teams - including the good time trialing teams, like ONCE - rode in packs, rather than lines, and occasionally dropped team members from the pack to finish more slowly, on their own. (One of the sadistic, guilty pleasures was watching the U.S. Postal team, an hour into their run, zip past a dropped member from a team that had started 15 minutes earlier.) With the tremendous finish, Armstrong looks well poised to grab the lead of the Tour when they make it to the mountains in a few days.