Bike Hugger 

I totally agree with your assessment of the commercials and am tired of them already.  How am I going to survive 17 more days?  Thank goodness for rest days.

I do find the Bacardi mojito commercial to be catchy.  Do the mojito!
http://www.bacardimojito.com/home/loop.mp3

Cross-posted from my comments on tdfblog.com:

Great comments. I don’t watch Versus anymore. I hate their backwards ad, I can’t stand the cage fighting commercials, they take too many commercial breaks, and I don’t like the new addition to the commentating team. I really miss Phil and Paul though.

On the other hand, the Eurosport UK coverage is quite good. Few commercials on their coverage. So few that you hardly even notice.

David Harmon does a good job of commentating and rarely mis-identifies a rider, and Sean Kelly has some interesting comments.

Eurosport does have a woman covering the event, pro racer Emma Davies Jones. Honestly, I haven’t been very impressed with her so far. They ask her to go out and check people’s bikes and gear, but she herself admits relative ignorance for all things tech.

All in all, I’ll take Eurosport over Versus anyday, but a team of David, Phil and Paul would be like a dream team of TdeF commentators.

did Lance really turn his back on the sport? I mean, sure he doesn’t race anymore, nor is he there in the team car everyday.  but the ASO didn’t invite his team and they really don’t like him.  i interpret his absence as a statement.  i mean, if a group of people that you helped popularize to a new demographic pummeled you with criticism and suspicion for years…and yet you held steady and stuffed it over them for 7 years…but in effect helped them anyways (the Tour did enjoy good ratings)...well, you’d probably want to step away from that too.

besides, Lance has his cancer foundation and other things to do…like Kate Hudson, Sheryl Crowe, proabaly one of those Olsen twins…hell, maybe both.  And so what if he’s not at every race his old buddy Johan brings the boys to?  Maybe it’s no good for rider morale.  I imagine they get right knackered slogging it thru the grand tour grind, and then a superstar shows up to give a peptalk in between jogging on the beach and bouncing the blonde du jour:

“Good job, boys. Make sure you get to bed early for tomorrow’s ball-buster stage. Now excuse me, Ashley wants to go to the discotheque.”

It’d probably be poor consolation to weary cycle-soldiers that the man only has one nut left.

By not fielding a team of any sort after losing their title sponsor and not finding another one, yes I think he and the company that ran the team (Tailwind) did turn their back on the sport. That doesn’t diminish his championness at all and it’s not really a diss from me; it’s more, “now that’s interesting.” There wasn’t a good climate for Lance’s org to land sponsors, but there is for Vaughters and Slipstream. Maybe they’ll come back and I hope they do. I sure miss the San Fran Grand Prix, for example.

Also note that they removed David Millar (the post-suspension *clean* incarnation at that) from that overplayed “take back the tour” commercial.

Craig Hummer will be gone next year.  The way they covered Bobby Julich pre-Tour, I would not be surprised if he has an outstanding offer to join the crew.

How is everyone else getting through hours of coverage every day?  I don’t know how to coax my TiVo into doing the prime time “enhanced” edition instead of the live coverage in the morning, but that’s OK because I would’ve missed Vaughters drop the f-bomb.  What I won’t miss from him are all those turtlenecks.  I have to run through all but the last 10-20k in the slowest fast-forward, only hitting play for some of the pre-race when something particularly interesting happens (crashes, new features, interviews, anytime Chuck Norris’ worst nightmare, Jens Voigt, is on-screen).  By the time I get home, I’m tipped off to most of the other stuff anyway.  We’ll see how that goes in the mountains when Phil and Paul dig deep into their playbook of expressions and reminisce about riders of yore.

The companies sponsoring the bad ads, GM & BUD.  Both grew and prospered with obesity trends… sickening.

I just found out today that the TV in our break room at work has cable (including Versus), so I can watch at least the last few km’s.  For the rest of the time, I’ve been listening/watching Eurosport online.  (I really wish I could get Eurosport on my DirecTv.)  Their coverage is good, plus it’s really impressive to have David Harmon translating things on the fly when they do interviews with non-English speaking riders and staff.

They should let Vince from the Sham-Wow commercials take Hummer’s place. He’s already got the headset!

“You followin’ me camera guy?!”

I totally miss Al Trautwig.  And the only thing I like about Bobke is that he’s known as Bobke, and the fact that they poke fun at his vintage 7-Eleven video on a regular basis.

Add Autozone’s “car v. bike” ad to the shit list. What is that about?  Did autozone’s ad buyer think that people watching le Tour like bikes and maybe would rather ride their bikes that fix up and old car?

I actually like the Trek commercials this year (especially the one with the older triathlete).

The Saab commercial is so terrible I’m tempted to write them an email.  I actually stopped waking up early… so I could skip the commercials.  Zabel should not be in the take back the tour commercial, either. 

I think people have mixed feelings about ‘take back the tour’ ... I sometimes wonder if supporting the tour is more of a “Give ASO more power so they can continue to feud with UCI”.  Frankly, I think those 2 organizations are as screwed up as the dopers.  I’d like to see them both banned from organizing races for a year or two! :D