Rupert Guinness is in France covering the Tour de France, again. Rupert is a legendary cycling journalist who often rides with the Eastern Sydney Cycling Club. Rupert has a wealth of cycling knowledge and will be blogging about his Tour de France experience on the Sydney Cycling Club website - http://www.easternsuburbscyclingclub.com.au/GUINNESS/6%20July.html
An extract of his first blog entry can be found below. Keep an eye out for his posts, it will be well worth following:
He has just Well, its day three of the Tour de France and already I have been reminded of why you have to prepared for the unexpected - in and out of the race for that matter.
As I am writing these words, we have just left a petrol station cafe on the auto route just outside Marseilles where stage two to La Grande Motte began. But with left with another experience to add the many that you tally over the years of following the Tour - in this case one where the gas station owner used an iron bar to bash someone who thought none too wisely about stealing two empty water containers! The incident happened after several minutes of argument over the merit of customers having to pay for their petrol before they buy (which we questioned as well - between ourselves though). But no one was ready for this client to test the station owner's patience by running off with the containers. With the incident over, we thought best to pay up and leave, fearing the issue was not over.
Just a few observations - looking good here are Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador and Cadel Evans. It is early days yet, but they will be in the fray. I really do believe Armstrong can win it, and will wait until the last week before laying his cards on the table. I just can't figure that he would come out of retirement and train for the Tour just to play second fiddle to Contador on Astana. A guy who is a seven times Tour champion is not an athlete who settles for second best. I also believe that Contador will start strongly - he has already. But I suspect he will have one very bad day, and that the constant speculation over his......
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