Tour de France 2012

The 2,150 mile route of the 2012 Tour de France

Mark Cavendish, sprinter, from the Isle of Man

Lance Armstrong, retired, winner of 7 Tours

The 99th running of what is yearly called "the most physically demanding contest in all of sports", the Tour de France, gets under way today in the Prologue time trial event in Liege, Belgium. It concludes on the second to last Sunday in July in 23 days, with only two days of rest, on the Champs-Elysees of Paris. Surely, this year's Tour will live up to its annual billing of "welcome to suffering."

The 2012 Tour has it all...once again.  20 stages consisting of: 9 flat courses, 4 medium mountain courses with one summit finish, 5 tall mountain courses with two summit finishes, 2 individual time trials, today's Prologue and 3,497 kilometers of road mayhem, lung-busting, leg-spasming and brain-farting drama. 

One road weary rider will be crowned the winner in 23 days, the leader of the general classification, wearing the coveted "maillot jaune" or the yellow jersey. And he will have earned it because this is no joy ride.

There are many riders in this event to watch.  But I will give you one who will not win the "maillot jaune" because his specialty is the sprint and his weakness is climbing. To win the yellow jersey you must do both well. This rider hates the mountains, regardless, he is so fun to watch at the end of the non-mountain stages. 

This sprinter extraordinaire, Mark Cavendish, is a powerhouse rocketship from the Isle of Man, a small wisp of a rockpile landscape in the northern Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. Over the last four years, Cavendish has won 20 stages in the Tour de France, mostly, in the last minute of the race by sprinting to the tape ahead of his pursuers.  His 20 victories rank #6 all time behind the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx of Belgium, with 34 stage wins.  If Cavendish, 27, stays healthy and is lucky aka avoids crashes, he will exceed Merckx's record in 4 years time.  But that's a big IF.  This is the Tour and nothing is easy about it.

Set against this backdrop of exciting Tour theatre is the current doping allegations against 7 time Tour winner, Lance Armstrong, by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the preeminent doping authority in the country funded by the US Olympic Committee.  The USADA alleges several doping violations by Armstrong in the 2000s, of which most damning are "blood transfusions."  The USADA is armed with 10 witnesses against Armstrong.  If found guilty, Armstrong will be stripped of all Tour titles, fine him and ban him for life in all competitions including his current focus, triathlons. 

Did Armstrong cheat?  I don't know.  What I do know is he has been the most tested athlete in the world and all of his tests have been clean. However, if Armstrong, cancer survivor, multiple Tour winner, and fundraiser of hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research, is found gulity of these latest charges, it will be the greatest betrayal of public trust since MLB's McGwire-Sosa-Bonds-etc...steroid era and a close second to Albert Pujols leaving St. Louis for Anaheim.

Returning to the Tour, frankly, there is a part of me that believes that you must be one of two types to subject oneself to the road torture of the Tour: one, you must be on drugs, two; you must be crazy as a loon.   Here's hoping there are more loons than druggies.

Amidst it all and against this annual backdrop of suspicion, as the French would say, "C'est la vie", that's life.

In any event, enjoy the most incredible bike ride on earth through the glorious French countryside on NBC Sports each night with the greatest sports announcers of any sport, Paul Sherwen, Phil Liggett and Bob Roll.

Au revoir sports fans.