Sport and Cinema.com

Today was a sad day in the history of the Tour de France. Bad luck and age caught up with Lance Armstrong today to leave him 13′26″ off the lead. Compounding his trouble on the cobbles in stage 3, Lance fell 3 times today and at age 38, he just didn’t have the gas to rejoin the leaders. Regardless of the falls, Lance really didn’t have what it took to keep pace on the climb as teams Sky and Astana held a fast tempo up the high mountains. The other contenders, Contador, Evans, Schleck and Menchov were able to stay together. Notably, Lance’s teammate Levi Leipheimer was able to stay with the leaders, and leave team Radio Shack with a shot at the podium.

The 2009 Tour de France is far from over. Today’s stage 16 didn’t play out as you would expect. Saxo Bank tried to attack Alberto Contador with no success. In the biggest surprise of the day, Lance Armstrong was able to bridge the 30+ second gap Saxo Bank opened on the weaker riders.

In a tour that has been defined by the hundredth of a second, Alberto Contador took the overall lead by 1:37 over his teammate Lance Armstrong in Stage 15 of the 2009 Tour de France. In the first stage to finish on a mountaintop since Stage 7, Contador showed why he is called the best climber on the professional tour.

With Stage 1 in the books, who would have thought that Lance’s 10th place finish would be only 4th place for Team Astana. Alberta Contador is on great form, and his climbing abilities in the past tours should make him a formidable foe.

One of the sporting world’s great annual endurance events begins anew. Running from Saturday July 4th to Sunday July 26th, the 96th Tour de France will be made up of 21 stages with 180 riders hoping to complete a total distance of 3,500 kilometers (over 2,170 miles).

What a climactic close to the 100th anniversary of this prestigious bike race as Russia’s Denis Menchov survived a fall on a rain-soaked final stage to win the Giro d’Italia in dramatic fashion in Rome on Sunday.

Searching for his third Grand Prix victory and first here, the Rabobank rider seemed to have the world’s second-biggest stage race in his grasp with a 20-second lead before Sunday’s 14.4-kilometer time-trial, but the conditions quickly turned hazardous making Rome’s slippery cobblestones even slicker.

Michele Scarponi of the Diquigiovanni team won the sixth stage of the Giro d’Italia on Thursday as the race crossed into Austria.

Scarponi, who won March’s Tirreno-Adriatico stage race, finished the 248-kilometer (154 mile) stage in five hours, 49 minutes, 55 seconds. Scarponi was part of a five-rider breakaway that led the race for most of the day before the Italian dropped his companions and rode alone across the finish line. Danilo Di Luca of Italy held on to the overall leader’s pink jersey after finishing 36 seconds back.