Like the guy loathe the guy...Lance Armstrong is back and its good for cycling. I was sceptical when he announced his comeback that it would fizzle out like many other great athletes before him. The way he preformed at the Tour Down Under was a sign that he isn't that far away from being in race winning form again. It would have been easy for him to cruise around in the bunch for a week using it as a training camp with a focus on keeping the sponsors/charities happy off the bike.
Every time the race got hard though he was always at the front of the race driving it which was pretty impressive to see. I don't know how that will translate to winning grand tours again but his power numbers are right up there apparently. I do think he will turn heads again at the Tour of California in Feb and then I'll be interested to see how he goes in the Giro.
Either way...its good for cycling. There were almost 800,000 people watching the TDU, double last year. We also got 30mins of highlights each night with the last stage live, the only other race we get live coverage for is the tour.
A quick bit of history about the Tour down Under. Adelaide used to have a round of the formula 1 which the last to Melbourne 12 years ago. They held a poll to see what the people wanted it replaces with and they voted for a cycling tour, which was pretty cool and its grown into a pretty cool event to have all the Pro Tour riders down this way....us kiwis should think of something cool to get them down here like some 1 day races or nice training camps down south...just a thought
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SkySport have confirmed there is full coverage of the Tour of California this year too. Delayed coverage of Stage 1, then live after that. Finally we might get cycling into the mainstream media. In the meantime we are trying to fill that void at www.roadcycling.co.nz. Just came back from the media throng at Tour Down Under. Great fun!
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