At the moment, I don't have a television so I've been following the Tour de France entirely online. Surprisingly, the experience of reading about bike racing is almost as good as watching the highlights on television.

Pre-race, the T-Mobile team site had a great little series of diary entries from Jan Ullrich, which if they weren't written by Ullrich himself had the good graces to competantly sound like they might have been. Now, during the Tour, the official site has some fanstastic recaps of stages, which are informative, witty, and effectively capture the intensity of the racing. The following excerpt describes the race strategy in the mountains for Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel team:

The scene was reminiscent of what has happened on the major mountains since the beginning of the Armstrong Era. It’s a formula which requires phenomenal legs and perfect timing. The policy is simple: ignore the early escapes, don’t panic on the first mountain, get to the final challenge with a complete team setting a pace that’s high enough to ward off any dangerous attacks, let the 'domestique's go into overdrive to sort the pretenders from the contenders, and then give Lance the chance to dance.

All that said about good sports writing, I still need to time a trip to Europe in the middle of July to catch the Tour in person sometime soon. Seeing the peloton fly past or watching the riders tackle the grueling mountain climbs in person must be incredible. Next year? We'll see.