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[Supermercado]

It ended 2 hours ago but it's now official: Lance has won the Tour again and is now retired. I watched all but two stages of this year's Tour and I must say, Lance dominated. He got his jump on his rivals right from day one, taking second in the first time trial and never looked back. He took over the yellow jersey in the team time trial when fellow American and the yellow jersey wearer at the time David Zabriskie fell about 1.5km from the end, and held it until Paris with the exception of one day when Jens Voigt had it because Lance let him go since he was going to be a threat in the mountains the next day. Lance dominated in the Alps and Pyrenees as usual and won yesterday's final time trial by :23, securing his victory.

Talk about going out on your own terms. Good job, Lance.

[LostArtofRolando]

True that, you've done it in style, and made even the crazy Texans down here appreciate a sport like cycling.  He's sure to get a nice welcome back in Austin, and back in the country period.  Good job, congrats, and itll be a long time until we see someone who may come anywhere near your record again.

[elmono311]

Yeah, I saw that before the Pocono race started

[Supermercado]

Good job, congrats, and itll be a long time until we see someone who may come anywhere near your record again.

If ever. Lance and his team changed the way riders prepare for the Tour, so if everyone's preparing with the sole purpose of winning the Tour, no one may ever challenege the old record of 5, much less Lance's 7. There are a couple young riders now that could win a couple Tours with the right training (and one of them is on Lance's team, and I think Lance has said that he's going to help manage the team, so Popovych has that big advantage of being Lance's hand-picked successor) and the right team. Both those guys (Basso, who finished 3rd last year and 2nd this year, and Popovych who finished 12th I think, in his first Tour) have good teams behind them, so I might be watching for one of them to win it next year. Gotta watch out for old Jan Ullrich, though. He's 32, a previous Tour winner, and he'll want to go out on top like Lance did in the next couple of years. He's been runner-up four times, and has a 3rd and 4th place finish in addition to his win in 1997, so he's always in the mix and it would just take one break to fall his way for a win.

I think I'll be watching next year even without Lance riding.