Allez!

Well, here I am - slacking again. I took a brief break to check out yesterday's results of the Tour of California and now I feel compelled to put some pictures on the blog. The Tour of California is the biggest bike race on American soil this year featuring some of the most important names in cycling - Paulo Bettini (the current world champ), Ivan Basso (who is now the leader of Lance's old Discovery Team), Levi Leipheimer (an American who is currently leading the race), etc. etc. etc. It's kind of a big deal. And our itty bitty little Grand Rapids pro team - Michigan's ONLY pro team - is there and making a pretty good showing among many of the current protour names. The race is a stage race which means that it's run over a series of days and for the first three days, one of the Priority Health riders (Ben Jacques-Maynes) was in third place in the overall standings. Not too shabby, although sadly he fell to 38th yesterday and lost three minutes on the leader. Ah well, I'm still really proud of these guys and wanted to post a few pics:The guy on the far left is Brian Sheedy, a local from Rockford (and a super nice guy) who took the King of the Mountains jersey in the prologue of the race. The other jersey colors are the same as they are in the Tour de France - green is points leader, yellow is overall race leader (Levi Leiphiemer) and white is leading young rider (under the age of 25).The results of a nasty crash - this is Emile Abraham, a new team member and the highest ranking Trinidad/Tobago - born cyclist in the world. Unfortunately, he was not able to finish yesterday's climbing stage within the given time limit and was pulled out of the race.

Go to either Cycling News or Velo News if you want to slack off like me and follow along with the race.