American Leads Tour de France

That sounds like an old headline, but this time it's not Lance Armstrong. It's his good friend and former teammate, George Hincapie. Hincapie has started the tour like he wants to claim Lance's mantle as team leader. Yesterday in the prologue, Hincapie finished second by 73/100 of a second. Today, he finished well enough to give him the overall lead and the yellow jersey. But this race is far from over. Hincapie only leads by a few seconds over several rivals capable of winning, and there is over 2000 miles left to race [19 more individual races].

Thanks to a doping scandal that exploded just a couple of weeks before the race was to begin, it looks like this year's Tour de France is wide open. So far, the Spanish doping investigation has implicated about 50 riders. These riders, including favorites Jan Ullrich, Francisco Mancebo and Ivan Basso, were banned from this year's race. Another favorite, Alexandre Vinokourov, was not implicated in the scandal, but several teammates were, and the team did not have enough members to enter the race. That means four of the favorites to win the race have been withdrawn.

No one on America's Discovery team was implicated in the scandal. No Americans cycling for other teams were implicated either. Currently, Hincapie is in first place, and his Discovery teammate, Paolo Savoldelli, is in eighth place. Other Americans that are well-placed and have a chance to win are Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis, and David Zabriskie.

So there it is. Lance is gone, several other favorites are out, several Americans have started well, and there is over 2000 miles to go. It should be fun.