Tour of California LIVE - Stage 1

Submitted by admin on Sun, 02/15/2009 - 14:44

Live race coverage

2009 Tour of California Stage 1, just before the town of Winters: Tyler Hamilton, Stuart O'Grady, and Lance Armstrong in the peloton on a miserable day in the rain. Photo sent mid-stage by wireless 3G card.
photo Copyright © Laura Alber/cyclingfans.com

Notes: (latest notes always appear at the top)

- Monday's Tour of California Stage 2 starts at 8:30am PST (11:30am U.S. Eastern, 17:30 CET).

- Leave it to Bernie (U.K.) to remind me (Chicago) that Johan Bruyneel once again is tweeting from the road in California. -Pete

- Finally, live images are available.

- Report from the road: Just spoke by phone with our photographer Laura Alber. She says Francisco Mancebo is riding along minutes ahead of the closest chase group with the biggest grin on his face. Laura and Carlos Rico have been sending in photos by wireless 3G card while driving. Will get something posted in a couple of minutes. -Pete

- Eurosport audio feeds are playing but Eurosport, like everyone else, are working without much in the way of images.

- U.K. correspondent Bernie S. reports: "Lots of people in Europe complaining on Forums they can't access Tour Tracker because of server taking its limit of 100,000. Taken me 3 attempts but I am in now listening to Frankie and Joe." Hopefully access will improve once cycling.tv and Eurosport coverage gets underway. (If they get images from the race and go on the air, that is.) Stay tuned.

- Added to our growing list of Tour of California Video Highlights below.

- We revealed in our pre-race photo gallery which team has a Hannah Montana poster in the team truck. (It's Garmin-Slipstream.) Our correspondent Carlos Rico reports that the team actually has TWO Hannah Montana posters in the truck. "The garmin tech declined to go on the record concerning their obvious affinity for the teen diva!"

- JoeE Silva and Frankie Andreu are live at the finish in Santa Rosa on the Tour Tracker. No images yet from the race itself, which just got underway. cycling.tv, Eurosport, and Versus Tour of California live coverage begin a bit later. (scheduled start times below)

Adobe Tour Tracker News

Allan Padgett, Adobe, creator of the Tour Tracker
Copyright © Pete Geyer/cyclingfans.com

I checked in with Adobe's Allan Padgett, creator of the Tour Tracker, after yesterday's prologue. The application, which has generated lots of interest on both sides of the Atlantic, was running great every time I checked in on it and I wanted Allan's take on the day.

"Yes, it was a great day. Paul Sherwen came up to me, gave me a big arm-hug and said 'The tour tracker was great today. There were lots of times during the broadcast where it was the best source of information we had. Keep it up!' Phil Liggett followed up with his own thanks as did the announcers at the finish line."

Allan was also approached by the man who owns the Tour of Ireland. So perhaps we will all finally get to watch that race online someday soon.

I asked Allan what was new with the Tour Tracker this year.

"The live time trial results is new this year. Actually hooked into the timing system of the race. Otherwise, well, pretty much every line of code changed in the past 6 months for the sake of design, stability and customization. I can now generate spin-offs in 10 minutes if need be - like the one I'm building for Paul and Phil tonight..."

Anyone watching the Tour Tracker early on yesterday should get the joke about Allan creating a spin-off for Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett. (The pair goofed around on the air for many minutes, with Paul talking in an exaggerated American accent....not knowing they were on the air.)

Allan also mentioned that the Tour Tracker ties into a new GPS system that is using the same RF network that the cameras are using..."so as long as there is video, there is GPS. In theory."

For more information about how the Adobe Tour Tracker works, check out my interview of Allan Padgett from last year.

Also, there is an interesting video demo of the Tour Tracker by Jen Taylor, Adobe Director of Product Management, here.

-Pete Geyer, Publisher, cyclingfans.com

Still to come: Our TOC Prologue photo gallery

photo Copyright © Laura Alber/cyclingfans.com

- We recommend you open our Twitter feed in a separate window now. If ever we have a server outage, we will update on Twitter and direct you to a live coverage page on another server.

- Tour of California live video of Stage 1 starts on cycling.tv at 2:30pm local time (5:30pm U.S. Eastern and 23:30 CET). Tour of California live coverage on Eurosport is scheduled to begin at 00:00 CET (6pm U.S. Eastern). Live TV coverage on Versus in the U.S. is scheduled to begin at 3pm PST (6pm Eastern).

- Welcome to our live coverage guide for the 2009 Tour of California.