Fun for a Monday... We've heard a lot about what the top shelf riders are expected to do at the Tour. Is this supposed on-bike prowess reflected in a suitably kick-ass web presence?
Carlos Sastre.com
For: Full palmares list... this can be exceptionally difficult to find for Tour GC guys who've been sitting in an occasional race all year. Also, click on "Season" and "Biography" for some nice first-person reporting.
Against: I hit English and it gave me Spanish. Also I'm pretty sure he stole his logo from Burning Man.
Rating: 8.5
Alejandro Valverde
For: See "against"
Against: He doesn't - gasp! - appear to have a website! There's a Fan Site that got stopped last year. Doesn't sound good.
Rating: -1.0 (marked down from 0 on the off chance Valverde's lawyers closed down the fan site)
Update [2007-7-3 10:41:7 by chris]: DZI located this site, which looks more like an encyclopedia entry than anything personal, and has no English. Whether it's his site or a fan's is unclear. Also, it wouldn't load most of the pages.
Updated Rating 1.0
Alexandre Vinokourov.com
For: Not a flash site, which seems to be the format of choice. So it's easy to use and pass on links. Comprehensive palmares, though only thru last year. Nice ad for the Kashechkin site, which is kind of cute.
Against: Not well updated, a common plague among athlete websites. And no original text from the man himself. Classic pay-someone-to-make-me-a-website job. Does he even know about it?
Rating: 4.5
Levi Leipheimer.net
For: Video! Levi himself welcomes you inside. Also you can check out his Garmin Edge output stats from his win on Mt. Ventoux last year. His wife stumps for a charity dedicated to kind treatment of animals. Some schedule info.
Against: From the country that got the Internet started, there's a copyright warning from his legal team. Not well updated. The fact that everything's in the third person might tell you why.
Rating: 6.5
Denis Menchov
For: Untainted by the internet, Menchov enjoys a certain blissful web-innocence.
Against: Unless it's all in Cyrillic, he doesn't have a website.
Rating: INC
Cadel Evans.au
For: Hey, real information! That's less than two years old! Evans appears to update his site with his latest training notes. It's actually pretty lengthy and detailed, and only about a month out of date (understandably). And what he doesn't get to, you can still read about in Chiara's corner, run by a rather attractive blonde woman I assume is his wife, who was posting from the Dauphine! If this keeps up during the Tour, Chiara's posts will be worth checking for.
Against: Another Flash site. Not much beyond training and race notes.
Rating: 7.5
Mick Rogers.au
For: Um, nothing?
Against: The words "The requested website is currently unavailable" say it all.
Rating: 0.0
Andreas Klöden.com
For: Hm, either he's hired people with the instructions to write in the first person (swish!) or he actually posted as recently as last Monday. His bio and palmares are reasonably up to date as well.
Against: I'll overlook the lack of English - he has every right to speak his own language and shunt us off to Google Translations to decode him. But the picture of him in T-Mobile duds... bad form. Dude, you changed sponsors 10 months ago.
Rating: 7.0
And the winner... and still champion? Danilo DiLuca!