Free Republic

Yeah, sad for Andy, but, wow, did Cadel earn this one and iike you said Andy has plenty of time. So fantastic that the Land of Oz finally gets the honor, too.

I've only one minor quibble and it's that I'd have preferred Voelker had the privilege of stepping up to a podium in Paris today somehow.

But hopefully, he'll get lots of endorsement contracts in compensation for his heroic hard work serving as the Energizer lapin of the TdF this year.

Holy $%*&! Are you and your family okay?

Yeah, I thought today's stage was fun too especially with that mischievous Thor once again showing his true colors as a SINO*.

Plus it looks like Alberto's strategy of keeping his powder dry to allow his banged up knee time to heal may be paying off - it seems to have recovered enough to have let him make up some of his lost time today.

And if he didn't overdo it on this stage, maybe he can rouse a couple of members of the snoozing Schleck clan from their family naptime & stage a rootin-tootin' shoot-out up the Galabier & L'Alpe d'Huez.

(Or maybe that wascally SINO Thor can steal it away from the lot of them when no one's looking! Heh-heh.)

Ha, Roy and Moncoutie - and the French media who thought they had the stage win in the bag one way or the other - didn't even know what hit 'em, did they?

But I think in all the commotion yesterday maybe the God of Thunder must have gotten a couple of his consonants confused, because he sure looked to me like the God of Plunder raiding down the Col d'Ausbique to snatch the spoils of victory right outta the hands of the French natives.

So Euro, since it's a local number for you, maybe you should call that Viking Ship Museum in Oslo & tell 'em they need to update their exhibit. Because even though those cool longships used to get the job done pretty well back in the day, the preferred mode of transportation for invading Norsemen these days seems to be a Cervelo S5.

**s p o i l e r **

Whoaaaaaaaaaa, Thor! Ride 'em Norski cowboy! Yæï -Håø, Yïppië-kây-yåï-yö!

Most fun stage so far this year. What would you call what he just did there? Cuz it sure wasn't cycling. More like ...er, Saddle Schüssing?

Whatever, it looks like TdF needs a new jersey competition for King of the Slalom. Who knew that boy was such a hotdogger?

And perfect timing for a daredevil stage win like this, too, since he's in negotiations this very weekend for a team to call home next year. Give that man a raise, Garmin!

The website Cyclocosm looks at the statistics to see if the 2011 Tour de France really has been more dangerous, and concludes it hasn't & that the 2003, 1997 and 2007 races were actually harder hit:

[T]his years race hasn’t been as brutal as you might expect in terms of sending riders home. Through nine stages, 2011 is just a touch above the 15-year-average, and well below what you’d expect for such a full field. Certainly the GC contenders have been overrepresented in the early departures, but that higher visibility doesn’t necessarily reflect a more destructive event... It’s certainly felt like a more dangerous race, and viewer reactions (mine included) have helped foster that sense. But looking at the numbers, it’s pretty clear that reaction is not reflective of a greater number of crashes, but more a result of a greater public awareness of and affection for the athletes involved.

It may be that we're just seeing more of the crashes captured in more spectacularly vivid fashion on camera this year. And it also may be that everybody (players, race commentators & fans at home) have been seriously spooked after Leopard Trek's Wouter Weylandt died at the Giro two months ago. He was the first rider to die in a major tour since since Fabio Casartelli was killed in the 1995 TdF - a lot of the riders in this Tour were toddlers when that one happened. Everyone's on edge since the Giro, so our perspective on the crashes is magnified by that.

What I don’t really understand is what else [investigators] can learn from interviews beyond watching the video

Even though the crash does look like a typical move somebody makes when they're startled by obstructions in the road (drivers instinctively turn the wheel toward whichever hand is dominant), I'm still hoping somebody did an immediate blood alcohol test on the driver.

I hate to say this, but when I first saw the crash and rewound to try to make out the sign on the car & saw it was a France 2 vehicle, I instantly thought of Princess Diana's crash. The investigation showed her French driver had ingested an ungodly amount of booze in her Parisian hotel's bar downstairs right before she stepped into the car that night.

Evidently Hooglander & Flecha's respective teams are doing their own investigations to be sure their riders' interests are served and at least one of 'em is not ruling out legal action. Via UK's The Guardian, Team Sky May Sue Over Flecha Car Crash

Didn't see his Dad, but if anybody knows how hard these guys train to get to TdF it's a parent. Must be every bit as excruciating for the father as it is for his son.

But aside from the disappointment & the anger, surely he also has to be damned proud of his kid. Hoogerland looked like he'd been mauled by a mountain lion, but he got right up and into the race again, with his sliced & diced flesh and bike shorts flapping in the wind and finished what he began.

Now that's a true competitor.Very impressive.

That team car driver needs to be banned from the rest of the tour. - deport

He did get expelled this afternoon. Via CyclingFan:

The ASO made a statement after the Tour de France stage, about the incident. “Following the accident which occurred at the 167 kilometers mark … involving the riders Juan Antonio Flecha and Johnny Hoogerland, vehicle Euro Media numbered 800 has been excluded from the Tour de France.”

Tour de France race director, Christian Prudhomme was furious about the unforgettable incident and explained his feelings about the day.

“I announced on Radio Tour, which is the channel everyone should be listening to, that all cars should pull to the side and give priority to the team cars,” said Prudhomme.

“The car previously received the order from the race direction not to pass and let the Europcar team manager get through to the breakaway to give Thomas Voeckler the bottle he was asking for.

“They did not take that order into account … and caused the crash of both riders. This behavior is intolerable.”

Via VeloNation, the riders' team managers are weighing their options:

The driver is the second to be thrown off the Tour, with a motorbike pilot sent home after a stage four incident involving Nicki Sørensen (Saxo Bank SunGard).

For now, both Sky Procycling and Vacansoleil are delaying their comments. Dave Brailsford said the team wanted to wait. “After the stage everyone's emotional now. We'll look at the situation tomorrow and we'll take the matter forward then.”

Vacansoleil said in a statement that it too would think over things. “After the horrible accident of Johnny Hoogerland and Juan Antonio Flecha (Team Sky) in the 9th stage of the Tour de France the managment of Vacansoleil-DCM will discuss what has happened tomorrow with the parties involved. No further comments will be made today so that they are not based on emotions,” it stated.

Hoogland himself seemed pretty sanguine about it, though- at least at first. Via Cyclism’Actu (roughly translated from the French over there):

"We can be happy to be alive, it's horrible. I don't want to blame anyone, because no one ever does things like this on purpose. Those who drove the car must already feel terribly guilty, and I'm sure they'll apologize. In any case, Juan Antonio [Flecha, other the cyclist who got whacked by the car] came me to apologize. This shouldn't happen, but there's always a risk. "

That comment may have been before it sunk in & before he wept at the polka dot ceremony, however - so heartbreaking, luv2ski.

And so infuriating!

Absolutely agree. It’s that dynamic combination of all the rich visuals which makes it so compelling -and so wonderfully festive- to look at.

What an interesting tale of cycling from one who knows! Please share more of your racing experience!

I'll second that, luv2ski. You really do have a knack for storytelling, baynative. I was just looking for that cool story you told us about meeting Phil Leggett one year (that was you, right?) but couldn't track it down in a search just now to give a link to it.

Seems like the best sports writing IMO is the kind that does tell a good story. You ought to consider covering races as a freelance when you retire. Then you could travel to TdF and maybe as a sideline take over for Didi when he retires!

He is getting up there in years. Somebody's gonna have to do something soon about appointing a successor. ;-)

I've been enjoying all the kinetic displays this year too. Are there more of those than there used to be or were they always out there in the fields & they're only now choosing to show more of them to TV viewers?

And so many gorgeous shots of all the Loire châteaux aujourd'hui! Showcasing the scenery is how you can get more female eyeballs to your coverage, Versus.

[Speaking of which, j'espère que vous avez eu la chance de voir tous ces belles images du paysage fantastique, dearly departed RighteousMomma (AKA JusteMaman?), wherever you are out there in Zotland!]

Is there any question in anybody's mind that CNN is not in the right's corner after their shameful coverage of the Tucson massacre?

Then ask yourself the question: why would this known leftist outlet which has been attempting to falsely smear all conservatives & the Tea Party as freaking mass murderers for pete's sake be so very hot to trot to air the Bachmann response?

Could it be that if Bachmann diverts attention, dilutes the message and diminishes the impact of the Ryan response, she confuses the public by creating cacophony out of the opposition's case and all the members of the public out there whom we need to persuade in order to make real conservative change in this country will be left with really only one message (from the POTUS & speaking for all lib dems) which will achieve a clear & unified and therefore more powerful & persuasive resonance?

Barack & ALL the Dems in DC & across the country will be coming out with a single 'mission statement' for the public to digest tonight.

As it is, even had Bachmann not self-servingly chosen to insert herself into the mix, we'd have been at a severe PR disadvantage in getting our message accorded the same level of importance as his by the biased MSM.

But now thanks to Bachmann, and at a very critical moment, we're stupidly divvying up into separate little teams and sending out a divided, confusing defense against the Democratic power establishment's unified offensive line.

THAT's why CNN is more than thrilled to air Bachmann's attention-diverting response. By giving the press the hand-engraved invitation to cover the divisions among Republicans rather than a cohesive message itself, Bachmann actually helps the MSM's very good friends in this White House & at the DNC.

Sure, lots of US would like to hear what she has to say. But we're already well & truly convinced Obama and the Dems are sending the country to ruin. It doesn't matter for us whether she turns our alternative to the Dem agenda into a muddled, cacophonic mess because we ALREADY FRIKKIN' GET IT!

But it sure as hell does matter if the rest of the country whom we need to convincingly communicate our message in order to pull this nation back from the brink of disaster gets distracted & confused by what we're trying to say. We just don't get many opportunities like this to speak in unison to the nation with a clear persuasive voice, and Bachmann is inexplicably trying to piss it away!

So no, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Fox was the only cable outlet fair enough to the conservative side to give us the most strategically advantageous opportunity possible to deliver our response to the millions of people who need to hear it. And I for one will be eternally grateful if, unlike CNN, FNC decides NOT to sabotage the clarity of the opposition's case right after the leftlib dem one the Prez gets to make by himself tonight holding a much bigger megaphone than ours. And I'm not even a fan of FoxNews - haven't watched 'em except on election nights in years!

I’m going to believe him, until it’s proven otherwise.I’d like to believe that in spite of the prevalence of drug usage , even in this sport ,there’s still that person whose genes give them a natural advantage over other competitors.

Yeah, innocent until proven guilty for me too, because otherwise what's the point? Also, if as we keep being told, everybody does it, he must have had some kind of natural advantage to keep beating the pants off his fellow dopers, no?

I'm not naive about pro-cycling, I'm not inclined to think Lance is an angel, I don't have a vested interest in his innocence and I've been prepared for the smoking gun against the man to land on my FR ping page via Ready4Freddy for a long time, but it Just. Never. Comes. The Feds' case certainly isn't helped that all the same people who've been making make the same charge against him for ten years are totally creepy & have really weird axes to grind.

And to this day, I just cannot get past the idea that a doctor - indeed any competent medical professional of sound mind who'd received any training at all - would ask a patient sensitive questions for inclusion in his history (and make diagnostic judgements & treatment decisions based on the responses received) in front of a gaggle of various & sundry & familially unrelated hangers-on during a football game.

Yet that's what Frankie & Betsy (and if we are to believe Greg LeMond, Stephanie McIlvain (sp?) on alternate days) have claimed: one of his cancer docs asked (and expected to get an honest answer from a patient) all these uncomfortable, highly private & potentially incriminating questions in a public place with all of all those people leaning in & listening intently enough to memorize the patient's confessional answers. Uh-unh. No sale.

The only thing really new I can see in this article was the "charge" about the Baxter HemAssist clinical trials until I deconstructed the 2 paragraphs (last graphs on page 5 at the SI link) wherein the authors actually try to pin it on him.

There isn't the faintest glimmer of a suggestion there exists any actual record of him participating in the trials of which they are even aware. Only that 1) Someone who is not named in the article allegedly said Lance was "interested in Baxter, whatever the hell that means. 2) Baxter at one time was conducting trials of the drug Hema-Assist which could be of benefit to cyclists. and 3) It's possible that some of the drug which went out of production after the trial was canceled might - might! - still be laying around and are therefore in (oooh) danger of perhaps - perhaps! - being stolen by a conniving Texan who possibly - possibly! - rides a bike for a living, but, oops, the researcher associated with the clinical trial says they're likely all still accounted for. Er, never mind.

I mean, that's an awfully thin pretext to oh-so-casually invite your readers to infer that Armstrong was actually benefiting somehow from the purloined stuff in competition, SI. The very WORST form of yellow journalism. Textbook, in fact.

And the thing is, SI isn't just casually slandering Armstrong with this HemAssist charge. He'd have to have been in cahoots with the manufacturer and/or the director &/or unethical lab managers of the clinical trials to get his mitts on what was then an unbanned substance for non-medical reasons, so SI is essentially defaming all their reputations too based on the unbelievably wispy 'evidence' that someone allegedly told the fed investigators that at one time "Armstrong was interested in Baxter." Wow. Just wow.

So good going Selena! You managed to learn absolutely NOTHING from your much-criticized "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" coverage of the Duke LAX players. Amazing accomplishment.

Based on the evidence you've just given us of your professional incompetence, may we infer YOU are now in all probability also ingesting illegal substances which have impaired your journalistic judgement so severely that you actually signed your name to this dreck?

You too, La E. (see above post). Thanks for fighting the good fight here, too.

I don't come to FR much anymore mostly because of all the threads with thoroughly demoralizing comments like some of the ones here, but I wish I could reach into my laptop screen right now & hug that post of yours. Mmmwack! <---big sloppy wet kiss right there.

Who would know better how to restore the American Dream than someone who had a front row seat for the first 18 years of his life watching his Mom & Dad living it?

Good luck tomorrow, Marco!

Peace to her family and I miss Howlin.

Boy, I do too. FR is missing a lot of its brightest & most distinctive voices. But wherever she is now, I hope she's still calling 'em like she sees 'em. Some people at FR resented that for some reason, but she's definitely one of the smarter ones on our side.

That photo of the gorgous peonies she had grown that you posted here, aphid, was just such a wonderfully sweet & uplifting addition to this thread - especially since we all learned thatCmom had been workiing in her beloved garden before she died. Thank you.

My condolences to you & all her friends at FR & at other forums online. I know that every one of you will cherish those moments of heartfelt camaraderie you were lucky enough to share with her.

I am so sorry to hear about CarolinaMom, Dolly. Prayers that all of her kids will keep strong through their grief, especially with the shock of losing her so suddenly.

I’m also sorry you won’t get to finally meet her in this life as you’d both planned, but maybe your Mom can keep her company until you get the chance later (tho’ much later!)

I hope your Mom’s memorial was just as blingy as she’d have wanted and that you and your brother were able to enjoy sharing memories with all the people who loved her yesterday.

Gosh, it’s been a sad year, hasn’t it?

Not just Laura but her father-in-law GHWBush 41 and wife Barbara are also supposed to be there right now for an exhibit opening at his library (about a mile from Rudder Tower where the possible gunman is being sought.)