Grand Depart

Tonights the night! The start of the 2009 Tour de France, and what a great tour it looks like being. I think 2009 could be one of the most interesting races for a little while. Why am I looking forward to 2009?

• Firstly, Lance Armstrong is back! Can he win? It will be tough but Lance is not someone you can ever write off. He seems confident and appears to be in great shape, is in probably the strongest team and is the ultimate champion in my mind.
• Secondly, Cadel Evans says he is more ready, better trained and had a better lead up than the previous two years where he has placed second. Competition is tougher this year I think, but so is Cadel.
• Thirdly – the team time trial is back. Stage 4 on July 7th in Montpellier is a 39km team time trial. I’ve always loved these, especially when it was Lance and the US Postal/Discovery Channel doing so well. I’m not sure why they decided to leave them out recently, but I’m glad it is back.
• Fourthly, it is going to be anybody’s race right to the end. With the penultimate stage including a climb up to Mont Ventoux this tour will be interesting to the end.

There are two teams I’d love to see crash and burn – Cervelo and Quickstep. Cervelo and last years winner Carlos Sastre played weird (Spanish) mateship politics in leaving out Aussie rider Simon Gerrans from their squad, naming some clearly (IMHO) inferior riders in their team, including one who is 40 years old. Gerrans who won a stage in last years tour, and also a stage in the recent Tour of Italy is very unlucky to miss out. Quickstep have omitted Tour Down Under winner Alan Davis from their squad, after fighting through the courts to have their druggy sprinter Tom Boonen cleared to ride. So, here’s hoping Sastre, Boonen and their whole damned teams crash and burn.

The omission of these two Aussie stars, primarily due to favouritism based on nationality is surely a good reason to be pushing for an Aussie team!

So which teams and riders would I like to see do well,

• Astana, with Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner, Yaroslav Popvych and Andreas Kloden look really strong.
• Silence Lotto and Cadel Evans, of course
• Columbia Highroad with another big Aussie chance in Michael Rogers, and also big George Hincapie, another of my all time favourite riders.
• Saxobank with Stuart O’Grady and the Schleck’s.

The ideal finish for me – Lance, Cadel and Michael Rogers on the podium in Paris, with (sorry guys) Lance in yellow. An eighth win would just be awesome. That though is a bit “pie in the sky” – what is more likely, probably Contador, Schleck, Evans – but it is anybody’s race.

Lots of late nights to come!

At weigh-in this morning I was back down into the 73s again, at 73.8kg.

A trip to the market including buying a new trolley (the old one was shot), and another shopping trip to highpoint where I got another birthday present from my darling wife, which was a lovely framed picture of the Geelong 2007 Premiership team. I also spent some of my birthday money – on a book and some DVDs – more on that later.

Tonight I’m going to see Melbourne Storm with Chris. My first NRL game, looking forward to it!