Le Tour de France! July is the month of the tour, which is an annual male multiple stage bicycle raceprimarily held in France, while also occasionally making passes through nearbycountries. Like the other Grand Tours (the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta aEspaña), it generally consists of 21 or 22 stages over a little more than 3 weeks. This year's edition will be an almost totally French affair, dropping into Spain for a brief 15 km or so during a Pyrenees mountain stage. This year favorites like Simon Clarke, Peter Sagan, Julian Alaphilippe, and Mark Cavendish are returning for another go around. Running from Saturday, July 7th to Sunday, July 29th 2018, the 105th Tour de France will be made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,351 kilometres. Cycling was once the king of speed, before automobiles becamecommon. The race was first organized in1903 to increase sales for the newspaper L'Auto, and is currently run by theAmaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which also runs other major cycling races, andvigorously defends its own business, often to the detriment of fans and theirown cyclists. The race has been heldannually since its first edition in 1903 except when it was stopped for the twoWorld Wars, and today begins its 105th edition. The Tour is a UCI World Tour event, which means that the teams thatcompete in the race are mostly UCI WorldTeams, with the exception of the teamsthat the organizers invite. In almostall recent editions of the race, the big finish has been on the Champs-Élyséesin Paris. This year, because of vaguelyrationaled motives, eight riders will ride for each team instead of nine. Nothing like providing a fresh challenge. It is, though, a much beloved annual festival of cycling, and should provide hours of television viewing and reading for fans of road cycling and sports mad junkies like some viewers of this space. Enjoy, and bon Tour! FRANCE beats Uruguay. In a quarterfinal game yesterday, the truly great Uruguay team wasbested by France 2-0. Although Franceclaims not to be as Soccer mad as its neighbors, preferring to express fandomfor Rugby and Tennis, and let's not forget Petanque, organized of the Tour deFrance started the opening stage early today, so they could be finished beforeany of the World Cup games. In the otheropening day match of the Quarterfinals yesterday, South America was againsaddened by the victory of Belgium overBrazil, 2-1. Today's games featureSweden vs. England, and hosts Russia vs. Croatia. Semifinals begin on Tuesday. In Men's Tennis, Wimbledon is in the Round of 32 today, withthe Round of 16 to begin on Monday. Don'tworry sportsfans, Zverev, Nadal, and other Tennistas well known to readers ofthis space are still involved. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
