Voeckler fails to win stage, fans not disappointed

Almost from the moment the sun came up ushering in the new day yesterday it was apparent that it was too hot for outdoor human activity. The actual temperature did not approach the highs set earlier but the air seemed almost drinkable. Any movement out into direct sun under these circumstances immediately produced the question, "Why?"

And the answer was pretty obviously well, I guess not then. I settled in for a long morning of TV and carried it over into the early afternoon seeing two of the most remarkable events I have ever witnessed on TV.

The first produced a TV moment which will live forever, forever, in the minds of bicycle racing fans as a "media car" ran down the leading group of le Tour de France. You cannot make it up. It is the sort of thing perhaps thought possible on Snelling Avenue or Ottawa Beach Road but certainly not in the lead group of the most famous bicycle race in the world. A car ran down the leaders? Surely not. But surely so and that was arguably not even the most spectacular crash of the day. The most spectacular crash produced a broken femur from flying, yes flying, into a tree and another bicyclist described by one who barely avoided the crash "spinning on the road like a cartoon."

Our favorite French bicyclist barely managed to avoid going down in the car induced crash. He continued to lead the breakaway all the way until the last couple hundred meters of the race when he was passed and the stage victory was claimed by another. But the combination of his pluckiness and the carnage in the main peloton caused by the other crash somehow, improbably, puts Voeckler into the race lead and the yellow jersey.

Also of great interest and causing much hilarity for TOPWLH and I were the two naked guys with reddish banners held over the naughty bits seen very near the 200 meters until the sprint point marker. One guy had his dark colored shorts around his ankles and the other had thrown his perhaps khaki colored shorts behind him just as the breakaway (and the cameras) arrived. I manipulated the tape backwards and forwards and we had a rousing good laugh.

The other event started before the bicycling was complete so I had to watch the first bit on split screen. I set up the laptop in the same viewing area as the TV and watched the football on-line on something called espn3.com. After the bicycling was over I moved to HD for the rest of the football. One of the things I like about soccer is that a game is pretty reliably over in just under two hours. With added extra time required after a 90 minute tie, this one was almost three hours. But at the very end occurred one of the most dramatic moments ever seen in any sport, any game, any time, anywhere.

Not only was the regular 90 minutes long gone, the 30 minutes of added extra time (a.e.t.) were also gone and the game was in the limbo of referee discretionary time, known in football as "stoppage" time. A.E.T. is 30 minutes divided into two 15 minute halves. It is very rare for more than a minute of stoppage time to be added on the end of each of those abbreviated halves. There isn't enough actual time in 15 minutes for delays of the sort that lead to time being added. Incredibly the fake injuries and other delaying tactics of the team leading by 2-1 led to the addition of three minutes. And even then nearly two of those three were gone when in the 122nd minute of a normally 90 minute game Megan Rapinoe launched a long left footed cross from well out. Perfectly, absolutely perfectly placed, the ball arrived at the far post beyond the defensive efforts of Brasil's central defense and the keeper to find Abby Wambach, shoulders squared to the goal, rising to meet the ball with an emphatic header to score the goal to bring her team back to equal.

There is a reason they play these games and there is a reason we watch. The games can often be anti-climactic, even dull. But when something like the Wambach goal happens, well, that's the reason we watch. It was an amazing moment, a shout out loud moment, an all time highlight.

We rode today but left in the morning to avoid what promised to be another day of too humid. We got in a nice ride, pausing near Island Lake for an obligatory photo of the Guest Rider.It may be a rest day for le Tour but we ride for exercise and we were both happy to have the opportunity to log a few miles.