Right & Wrong Journal

[note]An epiphany — if you cur­rently just read/​view the main­stream media you prob­a­bly don’t know but about half of any entire news event that’s being reported, unfor­tu­nately. The main­stream media all ‘copy’ just about the same AP or Reuters head­lines and the first 2–3 para­graphs in which they all then repeat over and over again until you are com­pelled to tune it it out… fully believ­ing you have absorbed all that you can take. So read on…[/note]
The Tour de France is the world’s quin­tes­sen­tial long dis­tance bicy­cle race around France (& neigh­bor­ing coun­tries). The old­est (106 years), inter­na­tional race estab­lished in 1903 by Henri Des­grane, a French cyclist & jour­nal­ist, takes place over three weeks and tests a cyclists abil­i­ties to com­pete in a vari­ety of cycling tech­niques includ­ing indi­vid­ual & team sprint time tri­als, moun­tain climb­ing, and flat rac­ing spread over a num­ber of stages or legs between two rac­ing points for a par­tic­u­lar day. Col­ored jer­seys are awarded at the end of each day long seg­ment or stage with dif­fer­ent col­ors sig­ni­fy­ing dif­fer­ent cycling achieve­ment awards. When a sin­gle rider is enti­tled to more than one jer­sey, he wears the more pres­ti­gious and the sec­ond rider in the other clas­si­fi­ca­tion wears the jer­sey of this (less pres­ti­gious) clas­si­fi­ca­tion jer­sey. Yel­low, Green & White w/​Polka Dots are the color jer­seys to watch for. They sig­nify the lead­ers of the var­i­ous stages and the over­all leader. Ordi­nar­ily, the Tour fin­ishes with a time trial on the penul­ti­mate (next to the last ), day, decid­ing the race win­ner before what is largely a cer­e­mo­nial ride into Paris on the final day, but the 2009 Tour de France will have a tough moun­tain stage on its penul­ti­mate day in a tradition-​busting inno­va­tion that could either make or break Lance Armstrong’s pos­si­ble win­ner come­back., depend­ing on how he holds up to what once was his strong stage where he did bet­ter than the rest of the rid­ers. Age and the time Lance took off in his first retire­ment are his Achilles heal here. Another break from recent tra­di­tion is the use of com­mu­ni­ca­tion head­sets the cyclists have used in the past to stay in touch with their team tracker vehi­cles. The 2009 Tour de France has banned their use, but on Sat­ur­day Arm­strong men­tion to an inter­viewer that he would be using his cell phone to dis­cuss strat­egy and intel­li­gent reports on his rivals con­di­tion etc.

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