Fantasy Tour de France 2012 Nearly Here!

There’s a few things that you can count on with cycling: It’s always a headwind. It will always rain the day after you clean your bike. You’ll get a flat the one day you forget your pump. And of course, in the weeks leading up to the Tour De France, there will be a big story about drugs.

This time it seems some guy called Lance Armstrong is in a spot of bother with the USDA. In fact he’s in 15 pages worth of bother, which if you have the time, makes for some interesting, if not particularly surprising reading. So it appears that Lance may have been doing a load of cheating, at a time when pro cycling was full of cheaters. 

But remember, he’s never failed a drug test. (unless you count that one he paid to get hushed-up - allegedly)

Anyway, enough with the bad news. The good news is that it’s nearly time for the 2012 Tour De France. This year we don’t even have to wait till July, as the race begins on June 30th. First there’ll be a prologue in the Belgian town of Liege, (of Liege-Bastogne-Liege fame). Then they’ll ride around France for a bit, doing sprints, going up mountains, time trialing and falling off. And at the end of it all, the surviving riders will find themselves in Paris for a bunch sprint and some prizes for the good boys.

Looks pretty easy to me. We can expect the teams to start announcing their Tour squads soon, and if you've been paying attention to the goings on at the Dauphine and Tour de Suisse, you might have a few ideas about who you’d like for your Fantasy Tour team. I know I've got a few riders penciled-in for the Bile Beans already, but we’ll have to wait till George gets the rider list up over at the Velogames site before we’ll know if the price is right.