Vive Le Tour! Tour de France 101

One of the best parts of summer is when it's once again Tour de France time, and I get to geek out on cycling even more than usual. Thank goodness for Versus channel, which lets us keep up with the action. I love it all- the riders, Bob Roll and Phil Liggett commentating, crazy naked Euros, and even the little jingle they play at the end of the broadcast when they show you the animation of the next day's route.

Most people don't realize that road racing is a team sport. A few years ago, I also thought it was just every man for himself. The truth is there is a lot of team strategy involved, and every rider on a team has his specific role, which is often one of sacrifice for the team's superstar.

I've been gradually learning the intricacies of road racing over my past few seasons following the Tour. One of the best ways to know something is to teach it, so besides just writing about what happened in each day's stage race, I want to detail an aspect about riding as a team that most people wouldn't necessarily know.

Recaps

The Tour began yesterday with the July 4 Prologue in Monaco. It was a time trial stage and Fabian Cancellara came out on top, which is not a big surprise since he's a time trial specialist. As an added girly note, Cancellara has taken over as my Tour hottie, replacing Tom Boonen (busted for cocaine too many times), and Ivan Basso before that (busted in the Operacion Puerto blood doping scandal).

Stage 1 was today, from Monaco to Brignoles, 187 km (about 116 miles). There were some rolling hills in the beginning, but the route flattened out made for an exciting sprint finish. The stage was won by consummate sprinter Mark Cavendish, from the Isle of Man, UK.

So after the first two days of competition, some of the individual standings are as follows:

1. Fabian Cancellara
2. Alberto Contador
6. Levi Leipheimer
10. Lance Armstrong

Today's Lesson: Domestique

In today's telecast there was great coverage of a domestique in action. A domestique (literally "servant" in French) is a rider on a cycling team who has a specific support role to help his teammates and the team leader. He may do anything from setting the pace, to leading a breakaway, to fetching water for his teammates.

The latter example is exactly what was shown today. A cyclist was pictured riding alongside the team car, fetching bottles of water- six in all- to carry and deliver to his teammates. He had one in each of his two water bottle cages, and two in each of his two jersey pockets. I always marvel at these guys riding alongside the team cars so closely, especially for a prolonged time, grabbing bottle after bottle of water. Even more impressive was that he would then need to catch up with his teammates to hand all the bottles off.