Le Tour de France 2009

Saturday marked the first stage of the 2009 Tour de France. Lance Armstrong has rejoined the race as part of team Astana along with many other top riders including Alberto Contador, Andres Kloden, Levi Leipheimer, Daniel Navarro, and Yaroslov Popovych. Team Astana leads the tour after stage 3 in overall rankings, followed by Team Columbia-HTC, who is 1'46" back. Mark Cavendish is part of Team Columbia-HTC and, according to Armstrong, is someone to watch. Cavendish is currently ranked at 142, but won stages 2 and 3. George Hincapie is also on Team Columbia-HTC. Hincapie began riding with Lance Armstrong in 1997 and continued through Lance's first step away from the tour. Hincapie is renowned in the cycling world and one of the longest riding cyclists in the Tour de France and the only cyclist to have been on 8 tour-winning teams.

Lance Armstrong returned to cycling in large part to bring attention to the thousands battling cancer each year. His Livestrong Foundation is very active. You can support cancer with a donation to Livestrong (I recently made donations in support of my stepfather John and a friend, Claude). If you are on Twitter, you can add a Livestrong band to your profile photo to show support, too.

One last thing, there is a great cycling website if you have kids interested in the tour. Check out Mike and the Bike for easy to access kid orientation tour information.

Have a great day!