Nobody is more troubled by Lance 3.0 than me. As the operator of this website, the English-speaking world's most collegial forum for chatting and joking endlessly about cycling, the return of Lance Armstrong to the Tour de France represents the single biggest threat to our peaceful existence. Simply put, no rider in the modern era evokes such a wide range of opinions, and consequently disagreement. And sure enough, by the end of Saturday's opening stage (and three hours of TV coverage centered on Armstrong), the first accusation of "Lance-hating" had arrived in the comments. Time to set the record straight.

Two points, to get started:

1. This is a community blog, created by and for all of you, and consequently no principle could be more important than this: everyone is entitled to their opinion, and a certain amount of respect thereof.
2. Many or most of the arguments about Lance that I have seen stem from some amount of misunderstanding. The Podium Cafe, like any good cafe, has its share of regulars who speak to each other in the sometimes salty ways that old friends talk, with little concern for misunderstanding. With the arrival of many newcomers each July, some translation is in order.

With that, on the flip, I will attempt to summarize what I perceive to be the ways that people talk about and view Lance Armstrong here at the Cafe, with the hope that our usual freewheeling discussions can continue without anyone getting the wrong impression.

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Pretty predictable stage today, being a lumpy sprint stage on the race's opening weekend. Some years in the run-in or in the earlier phase of the stage when chasing down a break becomes more urgent, the sprint teams can get a little disorganized, particularly when nobody is sure who the favorite for the sprint is. Teams with lesser chances start looking around at someone who they think should be responsible for pulling. But with Columbia and Cavendish having established such a dominant reputation, when it came time to chase the inevitable break, Saxo Bank just pulled over and Columbia shot right to the front. Crazy finish with riders missing a turn, but the final-final was as predictable as ever. The results:

Stage 2 :: Sunday July 5, 2009
187km :: Monaco - Brignoles

First full stage of the tour, running from Monaco to Brignoles. If you were to look at the map, you would see that we're just a hairs-breath below the Cime de la Bonette-Restefond, Stage 16 of the '08 edition, as well as just south of the region of Cuneo, Italy from stage 10 of this year's edition of the Giro that ran from Cuneo to Pinerolo. We're heading away from that region, though, heading down the coast of the south of France a tad to Brignoles.

The stage looks quite lumpy actually, like all those lumpy Italiano tappes from a few weeks ago. Peak on the flip for a view of the goods.

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Another Grand Depart. And the ten trillion comments speak well of the enthusiasm around here. Not much to say about the race itself, being a short time trial and all. It was a bit technical, which affected a few guys pretty severely, but the rain held off, and in the end the leaderboard looks a lot like what you'd expect of a time trial:

1. Fabian Cancellara, Saxo Bank
2. Alberto Contador, Astana, at 0.18
   
3. Brad Wiggins, Garmin, at 0.19
   
4. Andreas Kloden, Astana, at 0.22
5. Cadel Evans, Silence-Lotto, at 0.23
6. Levi Leipheimer, Astana, at 0.30
7. Roman Kreuziger, Liquigas, at 0.32
   
8. Tony Martin, Columbia, at 0.33
   
9. Vincenzo Nibali, Liquigas, at 0.37
   
10. Lance Armstrong, Astana, at 0.40
    

Obviously that's your GC as well. Chat away!

[updated] Good catch in the comments: the two biggest losers today were Kim Kirchen (1.57 down) and Denis Menchov (@ 1.31). Neither of them should have had trouble with this course, so it begs a little sleuthing as to why they were so bad. Menchov's press people are saying he just had a bad day, after a month of no racing, which sounds plausible. As for Kirchen, I am not seeing anything yet. This is a pretty abnormal result, though he's had a pretty abnormal year.

Stage 1 :: Saturday July 4, 2009
15.5km :: Monaco

Well, that time is upon us, the first Stage Preview of the 2009 edition of Le Tour de France. We begin the July festivities in the Principality of Monaco, one of the few remaining City States left on the earth (can you name the others?) Monaco is the home of such natives as Boris Becker and Michael Rassmussen, bet you didn't know they were from Monaco!

Let's have a look at where we're goin and what we're gonna do...

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I'm not a huge proponent of running ad pics, but Nike sent this to me as a preview of their forthcoming promo campaign on Cavendish's behalf, at least in the U.K., and I thought it worth sharing. First, Nike generates some great images, with minimal emphasis on commercialism. And secondly... Nike is running a promo campaign on Mark Cavendish?

To the US audience -- and by this I mean the mass-market audience, which isn't quite the same as us hardcore fans -- Cavendish has a chance of catching on. Not a great one; being British is a benefit compared to other European nationalities but a far cry from American. But a chance. Nike are keying on his mouth, and his blazing speed, sort of a trash-talking Usain Bolt on wheels. Unfortunately for Cav, the void created by Lance Armstrong's retirement is currently being filled by... Lance Armstrong. But that's a temporary fix. I suspect to the British mass-market audience this could be rather huge. For the same reason Cav can't draw Americans in like Lance, I would assume Lance never quite lit up the U.K. the way Cav could.

As for Nike, I'm curious to see what they have in mind. Their forays into cycling have been disappointingly limited to following Lance around. That said, the sport gave them plenty of reasons to fade from the scene in the years 2005-8, so perhaps their campaign signals a new confidence in the sport. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but after the last decade new sponsors, particularly of this cachet, are a big deal. I love the "Green is my Yellow" tagline to the video on the flip. After a few decades of being force-fed the yellow jersey, these mass markets might need a little educating on what the maillot vert means, lest people start scoffing at how Cavendish hasn't won on Mont Ventoux.

As a Northwesterner, I can't also help but notice that Nike and Cavendish's primary sponsor, Columbia Sportswear, are neighbors in Portland, OR. I've written in the past about the strong identity cycling has carved out in Portland, so I note with much interest the harmonic convergence here, and make a big mental note to keep an eye on where this is going. Perhaps being the world's best team and rattling off 80 wins a year will get you some love from the U.S. of A. after all. OK, enough unanswerable questions from me. On the flip, an interview with Cav.

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Time to take a look at the twenty teams, one by one, hazard a guess at their overall goals for the next three weeksand try to analyze whether they'll actually accomplish any of them. Buckle in, this will take a few minutes, even before Tourbecco has his say.

[Aside: my wife works in a rather youthful office environment, and she informs me that the way to sound hip is to add the word "-sauce" to the end of various epithets. "Dorksauce" or even the more positive "coolsauce." Here at the Cafe we like to stay connected to the young folks (as long as they stay off my lawn), so please bear with me.]

AG2R

Key guys: Cyril Dessel, Rinaldo Nocentini, Vlad Efimkin

Objectif: Stages; Efimkin's GC placing.

Can they do it? Sure, they've done it before. Efimkin emerged on the cycling landscape by taking the lead in the 2007 Vuelta for a while and reinforced his grand tour chops by finishing 10th in last year's Tour. For my money their double-attack where they ran Tadej Valjavec and Efimkin together to take ninth and tenth on GC last year looks more impressive than this year's solo GC approach, but they burnt out Valjavec this spring, and with a 9th in the Giro and 7th in the Tour de Suisse it looks like a good choice. Efimkin and Dessel have Tour stage wins among their palmares, and Nocentini makes a living at the business end of moderately hard bike races. The call: suavesauce.

Tourbecco's Team Motto: "Building a great French team, one Eastern European at a time."

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In case you're new around here, let me emphasize that this is a community blog. Were it otherwise -- say, a soapbox for Ursula, Majope, Gav, me and others -- well, it would still kick some ass, but not as much. No, our strength is our chorus of voices. In that spirit, I am announcing a group preview project:

Tell me why -- and why not -- your favorite rider will win the Tour de France. We'll get around to power polls later in the race, but let's take a good look at all the favorites. Notice, that's the favorites, and your favorite: this project is intended to cover the guys worth covering, but reasonable minds might differ on who they all are, and anyway if there's a guy you just really want to write about as a GC contender, have at it. This post will serve as the master locator, and as new Why Not Me?s come in they will be linked to here. The candidates:

• Alberto Contador
• Lance Armstrong
• Levi Leipheimer
• Cadel Evans
• Carlos Sastre
• Denis Menchov
• Robert Gesink
• Andy Schleck
• Frank Schleck
• Luis Leon Sanchez
• Kim Kirchen
• Mikel Astarloza
• Christian VandeVelde
• Roman Kreuziger
• Linus Gerdemann
• er, Tom Boonen
• Bradley Wiggins!
• Filippo Pozzato
• Thomas Voeckler
• Daniele Bennati
• Fabian Cancellara

As new names come in, I'll add them. And to establish the template, I'll go first. You go next: make a fanpost, and tell us why your guy will and/or won't win. Follow the Andy Schleck version, above. I will link your post to the list here. This invitation/challenge is open to everyone, from the editors to someone who just created a login this morning. Have at it!

UPDATED! Well, this has turned into one of the more spirited efforts in PdC history... inside of 18 hours and you guys have fairly well flooded the site with rider previews. Sure, they tend to get a little less serious as you get further down the list -- another PdC tradition. Awesome job either way. Let's finish this off. I am removing a bunch of the earlier ones from the front page and reposting the full set of links instead, for organization's sake.