Crappy coverage of the Tour de France brought to you by OLN

This Blog is turning into a place for me to complain! I have waited with great excitement for the 2005 Tour de France. Lance is going for win number 7, and I think he can pull it off. So starting at 7:00 this morning I started watching the pre-tour coverage. This was all fine other than the commentator Bob Roll, who even raced the tour four times in a previous life, yet he still sounds like a total hick redneck every time he says, "Tour DEY FrAAnce." Total jackass! So for starters I thought I would go to OLN's web site and check out the pre-ride hoopla. The web site is down....Still is. So finally around 9:30 the actual racing begins, and so does the "digital noise" and dropped signal. During the pre-race show OLN kept touting how they had even launched a new satellite to better cover the tour. So as the race progresses the dropped audio, video and digital noise continues to get worse. The excitement factor was great, but I was so frustrated I was sreaming at the TV. You could tell that it was on OLN's side because the comercials were just fine. By the time Lance got started the signal was bad more than it was good. I missed watching Lance's passing of Ullrich (got part of the replay though), and just as he is coming to the finish line the screen goes blank and the audio gone. 30 seconds later it comes back, still dropping in and out. I couldn't find out if he pulled it off! At the last time split he had 3 seconds on Dave Zabriskie and was in 1st place. It wasn't until almost 10 minutes after it was all done that the offical tour website was updated to show he finished 2 seconds behind Dave Zabriskie. It was bitter sweet for me. Dave Zabriskie races for Team CSC, and wasn't expected to be a contender. He aslo happens to be from my home town of Salt Lake City, Utah...Cool to see a local boy do well. His teammate Ivan Basso, and T-Mobile big boy Jan Ullrich were expected to do well and are well over 1 minute behind the pace! Lance is looking strong and I think is going to put on a great show this year. Go Lance! Wear Yellow!