There's a great deal to cover, which I hope to get to over the next 24 hours. This includes various spring post-mortems, kicking off our Tour de Romandie coverage, and starting to look ahead to the Giro d'Italia. A few notes for now...
- Today we will introduce the Vredestein Prize, and announce the first of two winners. The Vredestein Prize comes in the form of a pair of Vredestein Fortezza Tricomps, donated to the Virtual Directeur Sportif Competition by Vredestein. Two sets. As you can see from the link, this is a very generous donation.
The Vredestein Prize will be awarded to the VDS team in the lead after the Classics Season (which ended Sunday), and a second one awarded to the team in the lead on August 24... after the Tour, the Olympics, and the Summer Classics, but before the D-Tour, Vuelta, Worlds and Fall Classics. Each winner will be offered a pair of these tires... but not everyone needs tires, so the winner will be given a choice of some pro tour shwag instead, from TC's "Door Number Three" box of goodies.
- Remember, the deadline for entering the Giro d'Italia Virtual Directeur Sportif Competition is May 2. Friday. In three days. Noon Pacific.
- On blogging this week, I often hog some of the more fun topics here (ask Mr. Van P, I was known to take my ball and go home as a kid), but I want to remind any and all that you can post all those essays, tributes, odes, historials, previews, handicaps, etc. that are filling up your brainpan right now. I write what I want, but if you write the same piece and it's a good read, I'll promote it. The more voices, the better. A good example: Put em in the gutter's post immediately below.
- Speaking of promoting posts, I can't promote Sui Juris' photos of the Tour de Georgia Stage 7 sprint without shrinking them to fit the main column... a heinous crime. So I'll leave them where they are, recommend you look at them in their full glory, and take this time to publicly thank Mark for his excellent, tireless, and much-appreciated work on the TdG last week. Feel free to hijack the Stage 7 diary to tell him so.