It was actually very exciting. The Tour appears only to be broadcast on the Outdoor Life Network, which I no longer get ever since Charter went digital (I still get about six Armenian-language channels and Lifetime, though. I thought life was going to be fair.) Besides, I'm on a business trip and don't even have Charter cable... not that they carry OLN anyway.

However, I sort of liveblog-read the end of the race by going to the official site, clicking on Newsflashes, and repeatedly reloading every minute or so. It was pretty amazing to watch the Armstrong group reel in first Jan Ullrich then the two leaders... and then at the last second, Armstrong broke away in a sprint, chased by Basso. I couldn't see, of course, but the impression I got was that Lance Armstrong won by less than a bike length (he and Basso got the same time, except for the bonus).

If Basso had won and Armstrong come in third or later, then Basso would have been less than a minute behind Armstrong -- too tight for comfort! But as it ended, Basso is now 1:25 behind, which is still tight but not nail-bitingly so.

I think Ullrich is out of contention even for second place at this point, being nearly seven minutes behind Armstrong. Even if Lance crashes so bad he's out of the race, I don't think Ullrich will be either the winner or the runner up.

It's interesting (at least to me): there are a number of sports that I enjoy watching when some big event comes along, but which I don't follow in between: fencing, curling, cycling, soccer, weightlifting, Olympic-style wrestling (both flavors), some others that don't spring to mind. But there is no sport that I just routinely follow the way some people follow basketbrawl or basebrawl.

I wonder whether there are not two but *three* types of people in the world:

1) People who just plain don't like sports;

2) People who have some number of sports that they follow religiously -- sports pools, memorizing stats, knowing the names of players on "enemy" teams, watching the off-season exhibition games, &c.;

3) Peripatetic fans like me, who become rabid about a particular sport during a particular event... then more or less forget about it until the next big event.

Thoughts?

Dafydd