Tour wrap - Stage 1 of 2010 Tour was fun

After three weeks full of drama the 2009 Tour feels more like the first stage of next year's race, than an event in and of itself. The internal struggle of the Astana team was of course at the forefront of events, but there were plenty of side stories as well. Here's my lasting impressions:

Lance Armstrong has been great for the sport of cycling. Regardless of what you think of the man, cycling is more important now than ever before and that's largly because of Big Tex.

Alberto Contador may be a great champion but he's still very immature and has much to learn. Look for Lance himself to be dishing out the lessons next July. El Pistolero shot off his mouth and his little toy gun plenty but many of those shots were backfires that we won't know the full affect until next summer.

Garmin and Columbia-HTC and in an all out battle. We saw plenty of fireworks from these two teams throughout France and the rivalry is just beginning. There are many questions surrounding these teams, will Wiggins, Millar and Cavendish all ditch for the Sky team out of Britain? Will Hincapie leave Columbia to go back to Lance and Johann? Will Vaughters really try to sign Alberto Contador into the squad and if so, does that mean the end of Christian Vandevelde's chances as a GC rider?

The Team Time Trial is a critical event. We can see from this year's race that Cadel Evans and Carlos Sastre, without a good TTT, were left adrift with no hope of returning to the front of the GC. Should Contador try to build a team around him ala Lance, he will have a hard time finding the firepower it takes to contend in the TTT and ultimately the Tour. ASO, the Tour organizers, now find themselves in an orchestrating position of deciding two options for two greatly different champions. The 2010 Tour without a TTT will favor Contador, however if ASO brings the TTT in for 2010, look out for Lance and the new Radioshack team to dominate next year's race.

The Tour is as popular as ever. The crowds in France this summer were massive and it made the event even more dramatic. Aside from the transgressions from a couple kids who used a pellet gun to shoot at the peloton, the crowds were largely well behaved.

The pressure of the AFLD and ASO in their fight against performance enhancement, has slowed the Tour to a more human level. This year's Tour looked better than last summer and looked better than the Giro from this spring. Danilo Diluca got busted for EPO in this Giro, what really? You don't say.... Meanwhile I didn't really have to yell at the TV for riders to breath, there was more pain and suffering in this Tour than I've seen in awhile. Quite a bit less robotic racing and that's definitely a good thing.

I'm looking forward to next July already. I am having less withdrawls from this year's Tour while really anticipating next summer. The Tour organizers really put on a great show and the sport seems to me to have stabilized a little. To coin a term I heard recently, bike racing looks fairly 'cleanish' to me right now, at least in France, and I'm more happy because of it.

And what about my picks? Well, not too bad. I hit Contador and Lance dead on in 1st and 3rd, and although I had Andy and Frank Schleck in 4th and 7th, those were two pretty good picks as well. My big surprise, just like everyone else..... Brad Wiggins, wow!! Way to go on that Tour! Congrats!

That's about it for today. VIVE LE TOUR!!