Tour De France Update - 7/23/2009

The Rise and Fall of the Mountains:

Alberto Contador leads Team Astana-shing to the top spot, snagging the maillot jeune on the way through the Alps this week. Armstrong slips to 4th place, a remarkable achievement for someone just coming out of retirement.

The beautiful scenery and hordes of schmenges* came in second place to the action on the road.

Team Saxo Bank is the BIG news this week with super-talent Schleck Brothers kicking ass and winning stages and hearts everywhere. Andy and Frank are in spots 2 and 3 about 2 minutes behind Contador. Superstar Jens Voight of Saxo Bank suffering a BRUTAL crash on a descent, breaking his face and having to abandon the Tour.

Big Thor Hushovd - the god of thunder - performing miracles on stage 17 yesterday, leading an entire stage to capture all the sprint points and retain the green jersey and avoiding what would have been a spectacular crash - comingthisclose- to taking a header off the mountain.

Dennis Menchov hitting the same spot that almost took Thor and going down hard on his knee only to crash again a few minutes later and somehow the big Russian still finished the stage!

Only a few stages left before the ride into Paris! Look for the time trial and final mountain stage coming up.

*schmenges = the people who camp out for 3 days on the mountain getting drunk and celebrating the Tour...

UPDATE:

Contador wins the Time Trial today, practically sealing his Tour De France 2009 win! Lance moves back in to 3rd place...

Armstrong with an amazing announcement today of the formation of Team Radioshack, to be led by none other than Johan Bruyneel. Lance will hopefully stock this team with superstars and we are looking forward to another Dream Team. We'd like to see on Team Radioshack: Armstrong, Hincapie, Leipheimer, Hushovd, Boonen, Cavendish, Kloeden, Sastre, Evans, The Schleck Bros, Popovych, Cancellara, Voight...etc... All the Superstars!