Oh wow...

[johnridley]

Even though I'm not at all a sports follower, I gotta say TDF just got more interesting. They just banned Ullrich due to doping. Armstrong is retired. This kind of opens up the field.
I still probably won't pay much attention to the race, but it should be interesting for those that do. I think it's better to have a close race among a bunch of teams that actually have a chance than to have a couple of supermen and then a flock of also-rans. But I know almost nothing about bicycle racing and don't really care to learn, really, so maybe I'm wrong.

Comments

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

The field was already wide open. It's just a little odder, because Ivan Basso is out, too. So the guys who finished 1-2-3 last year are all not riding this year (Armstrong retired; Basso and Ulrich were 2 and 3 in some order).

The odd thing about the disqualifications that were announced today was that there were no Americans on the list.

Another sad thing is that Alexander Vinokurov probably won't be able to ride either, because he changed teams over the winter, and five of his new team members *were* on the list, leaving him without a team. It's not yet clear whether the teams with disqualified members are going to be able to replace those riders, or are going to have to ride short-handed.

This is really annoying because they've had that list for *months* and they waited until the day before the start of the Tour to act. Bleah.