Here’s a look at Tour de France performance through stage five by country of origin, for countries with over five riders:

I put this forth not to emphasize how well the U.S. is doing so far, but to ask about France. What is up with the host nation performing the worst of all the major contingents?

My initial theory was that the weaker, local teams would be predominately French, and would drag down the average. But there are few French riders performing well. Only six French riders are in the front half of the field (94th place or better). In contrast, fifteen Italians are doing better than average, as are eighteen Spaniards.

We shall see how this plays out after the weekend in the mountains. But this could be embarrassing for the hosts.

Technorati Tags: France, Tour de France

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 at 8:00 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Cycling, France, We Taunt You. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.