It's July and time for the Tour. While Lance Armstrong may be the favorite, anything can happen and it almost did on Stage 1 where there was a mass crash right before the finish line. Lance went down but was unhurt. Others were not so lucky and have had to pull out of the tour or are riding injured. Tyler Hamilton (USA) rode Stage 2 with a broken collar bone. These early stages are not indicative of who the real leaders will be. Wednesday is the Team Time Trial which will start separating the men from the boys. It won't be until the mountain stages that Lance will make his move. Until then it's his team's job to keep him close to the front and to keep him safe. If the Prologue time trial is any indication, Lance's team, US Postal Service, is in good shape. Only one team had more than one rider in the top ten. US Postal Service had three in the top ten. But, as Lance says, anything can happen. Let the games begin.

Here is a good site for following the Tour: VeloNews presents Tour de France '03

Update: jaypea, of dumbmonkey, just sent me a site to the BBC Tour coverage. It seems to be better. I really like how the list of stages clearly shows the mountain stages. The all important mountain stages. They seem to have timlier results too.

BBC Tour de France 2003

Cooke clinches stage two
Stage Two: La Ferté-sous-Jouarre - Sedan - 204.5km.

Australian Baden Cooke produced a stunning sprint finish to win the second stage of the Tour de France.
[...]

Defending champion Lance Armstrong finished in the main bunch and recorded the same time as Cooke.

Overall standings:
1. Bradley McGee (Aus/FDJeux.com) 8 hours 58 minutes 28 seconds
2. David Millar (GB/Cofidis) at 0:04secs
3. Baden Cooke (Aus/FDJeux.com)
same time
4. Haimar Zubeldia (Sp/Euskaltel) at 0:06secs
5. Jan Ullrich (Ger/Team Bianchi) same time
6. Jean-Patrick Nazon (Fr/Jean Delatour) same time
7. Victor Hugo Pena (Col/US Postal Service) 0:10secs
8. Tyler Hamilton (US/Team CSC) same time
9. Andy Flickinger (Fr/AG2R) same time
10. Lance Armstrong (US/US Postal Service) 0:11secs
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Tour Route Guide

Armstrong's French Rule
At 31, American Goes for a Record-Tying Fifth Straight Tour de France Title

At the start of this year's centennial Tour de France race on Saturday, America's four-time winner and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, at 31, remains the overwhelming favorite to score a fifth straight victory, which would tie Miguel Indurain's record for consecutive wins and cement Armstrong's place among the pantheon of cycling greats.

But this year, unlike the past Tours he has singularly dominated, Armstrong will have to fend off a series of challengers. There are some longtime rivals, a onetime teammate and a host of younger riders, some of them Spanish climbers, all of them in their twenties, who are already jockeying for position in what many believe will soon be the post-Armstrong era.

Armstrong comes off a strong win in last month's weeklong Dauphine Libere race, but that win also gave opponents a glimpse of a potentially vulnerable champion; for the first time in memory, he crashed in a race. Armstrong was back on a new bike in seconds and suffered only stitches in his elbow, but later conceded he was aching in the saddle. The crash, his age, his willingness to admit to feeling the pain, all have potential rivals circling in the belief that Armstrong's long dominance of the Tour may be coming to an end.
[more]