We’re live streaming with a show on justin.tv/austintexas now.

We’re working with Redbud Sports in Austin, Texas and the plans are to bring you many athletes and sports events around Austin. Also, you can see our feed at austincast.com

Video by Paul Walhus

 Lance does a question and answer session with Austin Texas fans before heading off to the final bike race of his career, a bid to win his 7th Tour de France in a row. The setting was Lance’s new health club.

Team Hotel San Jose is a new kind of racing team and sports club, led by athletes who are dedicated to serving the community by working with disadvantaged and at-risk youth, developing the skills of beginning and intermediate cyclists, and cultivating the most incredible regional racing team you’ve ever seen. The core team members are a motivated group of professional and ex-professional cyclists, cycling enthusiasts, and triathletes, who ride with respect for all, regardless of experience. We welcome road cyclists and mountain bikers, runners and multi-sport athletes, men and women, and girls and boys.

Here’s an excerpt, and I highly recommend you click on the link at the end to read the rest of the story, the comments especially.

Why Don’t Americans Suck at the Tour de France?

There’s something to be said for a sports event that lasts for 23 days, like the European month long vacations. 

from the very fine http://tdfblog.com

Michael Rasmussen’s tremendous breakaway win to La Toussuire, overshadowed by Landis’s attack the following day, shot him to the lead, and the overall win, in the climber’s polka-dot jersey competition.

Damiano Cunego, already a winner of the Giro d’Italia, takes the best young rider’s white jersey, just 38 seconds ahead of Marcus Fothen of Gerolsteiner. The pair were about 90 minutes ahead of the next competitor in the under-25 competition.

Saunier Duval’s David de la Fuente, the climbing jersey leader until Rasmussen’s big day out front, takes the overall “most combative rider” prize.

Landis took his final yellow jersey of the Tour with his daughter Ryan on the podium.

Post-race interview with Frankie Andreu: Landis says, “Right now, I have no intention of switching teams.” Leaves a little wiggle room, but sounds like the iShares team (as Phonak will be called next year) has its Tour captain for 2007.

Top 10:
1) Thor Hushovd, Credit Agricole, Norway, in 3:56:52
2) Robbie McEwen, Davitamon-Lotto, Australia, same time
3) Stuart O’Grady, CSC, Australia, s.t.
4) Erik Zabel, Milram, Germany, s.t.
5) Luca Paolini, Liquigas, Italy, s.t.
6) Samuel Dumoulin, AG2R, France, s.t.
7) Bernhard Eisel, Française des Jeux, Austria, s.t.
Anthony Geslin, Bouyges Telecom, France, s.t.
9) Alessandro Ballan, Lampre, Italy, s.t.
10) Peter Wrolich, Gerolsteiner, Austria, s.t.
Stage results

Overall:
1) Floyd Landis, Phonak, USA, in 89:39:30
2) Oscar Pereiro, Caisse d’Epargne, Spain, at :57
3) Andreas Klöden, T-Mobile, Germany, at 1:29
4) Carlos Sastre, CSC, Spain, at 3:13
5) Cadel Evans, Davitamon-Lotto, Australia, at 5:08
6) Denis Menchov, Rabobank, Russia, at 7:06
7) Cyril Dessel, AG2R, France, at 8:41
Christophe Moreau, AG2R, France, at 9:37
9) Haimar Zubeldia, Euskaltel-Euskadi, Spain, at 12:05
10) Michael Rogers, T-Mobile, Australia, at 15:07
Final overall standings

Yesterday, Floyd had what may be called the best peformance in Tour de France history.

The 30-year-old Landis, who said two weeks ago that he would soon need a full hip replacement, rebounded to ride alone to victory by almost six minutes in yesterday’s mountain stage.

The effort jumped Landis, who rides for the Swiss Phonak team, from 8 minutes, 8 seconds behind race leader Oscar Pereiro of Spain’s Caisse d’Epargne to third place, 30 seconds behind Pereiro and 18 seconds behind Carlos Sastre of CSC.

Landis performance was legendary, but he’s not satisfied. 

If you want to read a great cycling bloggers rundown, check out Martin Dugard’s blog, here’s a tidbit from that blog entry:

“That he did. Per his style, Landis didn’t explode away from the peloton in the manner of most breakaways. Rather, he gradually left a yellow jersey group containing Oscar Pereiro, Cadel Evans, Andreas Kloden, and Denis Menchov. He tiptoes away like a cat burglar, as if afraid of drawing attention to himself. Landis then began an 80-mile individual time trial, constantly dousing himself with water on this humid mountain afternoon, at one point pulling so far ahead that he was the virtual leader of the race.” . . .

Ah… but when Floyd crossed the line today, fist thrust into the air and a scowl on his face, Amber Landis jumped up and down. “Oh, baby!” she screamed, fighting back tears. Only this time they were tears of joy. And, if I am to be honest here, I was a little misty, too…

So tomorrow the stage is a little on the downhill side, a 120-mile run from Morzine down into Macon. Teams might try to take a little bite out of Landis, hoping to gain a few seconds on him before Saturday’s time trial. With Pereiro (with whom Landis ate breakfast this morning, just the two of them) 30 seconds in front and Sastre 18 seconds up, Landis is close enough that a powerful time-trial Saturday will likely win him the Tour.”

Like I said, it’s a great blog entry from a guy who was sitting watching the race with Amber Landis.  http://blogs.active.com/dugard/ 

This race, can you believe it, could go right down to the Champs Elysees on Sunday.

At yesterdays mountain stage, Landis lost 10 minutes to Perreiro for an overall deficit of 8 minutes.

Coming into the final mountain stage today, no one expected Landis to be in the top 5 fnish let alone the maillot jaune (yellow jersey), but after todays incredible breakaway from the peloton, Landis managed to build up a 7 minute lead which he held on till the finish of the 200.5 km mountain stage with steep ascents amounting to upto 10 degrees in the final 20 kms.

Today’s stage was an awesome comeback by Landis, who had been written off by the Frech Press sometime back, when he held the yellow jersey, as some one who wasnt really worthy of it.

Like the OLN announcers said, Landis seemed like a man possessed. He didn’t know what went wrong yesterday having cracked in the final 20 kms losing a huge 10 minutes. He made no excuses and today he was the man to reckon. 

As of today Perreiro leads in the general classification, with Sastre 12 seconds behind and Landis 30 seconds back. So who’s it going to be? Saturday’s time trial should tell the tale of this year’s Tour de France.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video of Lance at the Espy’s

Alp d’Huez – the first major climbs of the Tour de France

So today is Alp D’Huez and I’m watching on OLN.  This is Floyd Landis chance to put his stamp on the Tour de France.  But there are many challengers.  Usually, the Tour the winner of today’s stage goes on to win the Tour de France.

• Mason Arnold, Austin Organic
• Tom Brown, Stuffopolis
• Neelan Choksi, Solar Metric
• Nickie Freedman, The Legal Lady
• Bijoy Goswami, The Human Fabric
• Joel Greenberg, Friends Talking
• Steve Harper, The Ripple Effect
• Daniel Hedrick, Esoterika
• Scott Ingram, Network in Austin
• Alan Kleymeyer, Kleymeyer
• Jon Lebkowsky, Weblogsky
• Steven List, Looking in Blind Spots
• Brian Massey, Customer Chaos
• Enrique Ortiz, Mobility
• Ryan Pitylak, Bootstrap Student
• Pat Scherer, Tech Marketing
• David Swedlow, Metastorming
• Tee Double, HipHop Bootstrapper

TourWatch 2005, a television viewing party for the Tour de France, will be held in Austin, Texas at Central Market from July 2 though July 24. Central Market is at 4001 N Lamar in Austin, Texas.  The event website is http://touroftexas.com

The Friday June 24 issue of Austin’s major metropolitan newspaper has an article called Central Market to be Lance Central.  The Austin Statesman site is doing a comprehensive Tour coverage section.

The Austin Podcasting Network TourWatch 2005 is being produced by the Tour of Texas  The event sponsored by Grande Communications,  Circuit City, Trek Sports Drink, 24 Hour Lance Armstrong Fitness Center, Central Market, the Spring, and the Tour of Texas (coming in the Fall, a bicycle adventure excursion around Central Texas).   

The TourWatch 2005 will  be showing the Tour de France on two 61″ large screen, high definition televisions compliments of Circuit City. The TourWatch 2005 crew of podcasters, radio announcers and telecasters will bring your their own commentary and spin on the Tour which will be broadcast at the event and podcast over the Internet. 

The Discovery Channel is sending a 3 person crew to produce a documentary on the TourWatch 2005 Event and on Austin’s support of Lance in the Tour.  Austin’s KEYE TV 42 will be doing a special newscast to be called “Austin Prepares for the Tour” on June 23. Newsweek will be featuring a piece on Austin’s TourWatch 2005 in the June 26 issue.

TourWatch 2005 will feature a daily podcast and radio and tv show spots with many local celebrities from the sports, fitness, radio, tv, blogging, podcasting and entertainment communities. 

Representatives of the local bicycling, swimming, running, triathlon and fitness communities are going to have tables at the event where they will give out information on upcoming events (eg. marathons, bike races, etc).

The podcasters will be interviewing local Austinites who are following the race and will be doing interviews with Tour enthusiasts around the world via phone and skype.  The interviews will be carried over the PA System at the event and syndicated over the Internet in the form of podcasts which Tour followers will be able to subscribe to.

If you want to be a podcast star, come by our podcast table at the event, and we’ll set you up behind a microphone and help you create your own podcast.  Or we’ll interview you if you are a Lance fan or Tour de France enthusiast. We’ll be doing video interviews for television and video podcasts in high definition tv.  So if you want to be a tv star, come by our booth and record an interview or do your own little show. Sponsorships are available for this event, call 512-699-4000 for details. 

Contact: Paul Terry Walhus 512.699.4000 or Stephen Dulaney 512.785.4701
email: touroftexas@touroftexas.com website http://touroftexas.com      

About 3–4 weeks ago we launched a site call http://web2.0slides.com and it got a surprising instant response.  It’s a slide show of 1,400 of the top new web 2.0 web sites.  Within two days of in house launch, we started getting blogged, listed, rated, linked to and buzzed about and we couldn’t figure out why.  Then we realized it was because we were getting noticed in referral logs by the web masters whose sites we were showcasing in our slideshow.

We’re planning several major releases of http://web2.0slides.com , http://tagslides.com and http://sportslides.com which will expand the idea of web2.0slides into all other major topics and categories that we can develop.

If you’re skilled in php, mysql, javascript, iframes, flash and have an understanding of new web 2.0 technologies, social networking, social bookmarking (a la http://stumbleupon.com , http://del.icio.us http://technorati.com and are knowledgeable about the blogosphere contact us!

Take a look at who is linking to us!

About 3–4 weeks ago we launched a site call http://web2.0slides.com and it got a surprising instant response.  It’s a slide show of 1,400 of the top new web 2.0 websites.  Within two days of in house launch, we started getting blogged, listed, rated, linked to and buzzed about and we couldn’t figure out why.  Then we realized it was because we were getting noticed in referral logs by the webmasters whose sites we were showcasing in our slideshow.

We’re planning several major releases of http://web2.0slides.com , http://tagslides.com and http://sportslides.com which will expand the idea of web2.0slides into all other major topics and categories that we can develop.

If you’re skilled in php, mysql, javascript, iframes, flash and have an understanding of new web 2.0 technologies, social networking, social bookmarking (a la http://stumbleupon.com , http://del.icio.us http://technorati.com and are knowledgeable about the blogosphere contact us!

Take a look at who is linking to us!

Lance Amstrong News on our Blog – The “docureality” show produced by the Discovery Networks Travel Channel will air on Thursday night, Dec 22 on channel 58 (Grande Communications) and channel 33 (Time Warner).

Many local Austin media outlets carried coverage of this event. On the last day of the Tour de France several thousand people showed up to cheer Lance on and sign several giant yellow cards that the Outdoor Life Network brought to the event.

Here’s the email from producer Bill Delano about the event

Hey Ya´ll~ Tune in tomorrow night for my first film, “Chasing Lance: a Fans Story”!!! Its a great show, was a thrilling adventure and will forever stand as testament to what two friends can do with a camcorder, computer, and a dream.

Here’s the TV Guide sum up: Join five Americans on an emotion packed thrill ride as they chase the Tour all around France supporting their hero in his seventh and final ride. These are true fanatics who do far more than vacation, they redefine what it means to be a true Fan.

Let everyone know and check it out on the Travel Channel on Thursday, December 22 at 8 and 11pm EST (7 and 10 pm CST).