Skip to main content

2019 Le Tour de France

Ah, Summer! Bicycling magic is renewed for millions when the familiar voices of Phil Liggett, Bob Roll, and Jens Voight grace the television airwaves broadcasting Le Tour de France  (Le Tour).

The 106th edition of the Tour de France celebrates 100 years of the maillot jaune (yellow jersey), and this year's race honors Eddy Merckx with its Grand Departure from Brussels.

Le Tour 2019 kicked off on Saturday, July 6, with three weeks of racing, including five mountain top finishes and a total of 3,460 kilometers. That’s the distance from our house in Vista, CA. to Elkhart, Indiana -  2,150 miles!

When you have the audacity to believe you’re an accomplished bicyclist, tune into NBCSN Sports broadcast of Le Tour in July (July 6 - July 28, 2019). Quickly humility sets in. This year marks the 106th Anniversary - 21 stages and only two, yes two, rest days - of this classic race that tours the French countryside with the finale in Paris on the Champs-Elysées.

Race favorite, 
Mark Cavendish, will not be competing in this year's Le Tour. It is the first time Cavendish will miss Le Tour de France since his debut in 2007. He has won 30 stage races in his professional career. Eddy Merckx holds the record with 34.

Dare I say it – Le Tour can inspire even casual riders, take their bicycles from the garage, dust them off, inflate their tires, and hit the streets. It’s amusing to see people pretend, they are in Le Tour, competing for the coveted yellow jersey.

After watching the exciting conclusion of Le Tour’s stage two, we were inspired to hit the roads early and log a few kilometers, a mere 42.8 (26.6 miles). I had to laugh, it's the one day in July that we will ride more miles than the Le Tour participants. Stage two was the Team Time Trial of 28 kilometers.

So, get inspired, tune into NBCSN Sports, hit the roads this summer, and log a few Kilometers. You’ll be glad you did.

Comments

Most Popular of All Time

We Need Awe More Than Ever

In this episode, Why We Need Awe More Than Ever Yesterday morning, I slipped into the cool stillness of my backyard before dawn. The air was crisp, the silence deep—broken only by the faint rustling of leaves and the familiar calls of birds waking early. Then I looked up. A thin crescent moon hung low in the east, with Venus just above it like a shining jewel. The sky was clear and full of stars, and for a moment, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: Awe! For thousands of years, the heavens have carried on their steady dance, untouched by human noise. No ruler, no election, no breaking news has ever changed their rhythm. And yet here I was, tempted to reach for my phone—to trade the eternal for the urgent. Instead, I stayed. I watched the moonrise, the sky slowly lighten, and the world around me stir. Ducks passed overhead in a loose V, hummingbirds zipped past to visit their feeder, pausing mid-air as if curious about me sitting so still. Little by little, the static in my mind f...

The Birth of a Cubs Legend

In this episode, The 162-Game Exhale — and the Birth of a Cubs Legend There’s a hush in the baseball world on Game 162 — a collective breath drawn in and slowly released. Scoreboards stop flipping. Dugouts empty. For six months, the game has been our steady heartbeat, pulsing from the cherry blossoms of Tokyo in March to the crisp, playoff-charged winds of late September. And now, as the regular season exhales, baseball fans everywhere pause to absorb the story we’ve just lived. For me, that story has been deeply personal. This season unfolded in the rhythms of my daily life. It was the summer soundtrack echoing beneath the constant turmoil of politics and sensational headlines. It was a handful of carefully chosen ballpark pilgrimages stitched together with countless nights in front of MLB.TV. And at the center of it all, for a lifelong Cubs fan like me, it revolved around one name — a young center fielder who turned hope into history: Pete Crow-Armstrong. The 2025 season didn’t begin...

The Pessimism Aversion Trap

In this episode, The Pessimism Aversion Trap Picture this: a room full of bright minds nodding in agreement as a bold new strategy is unveiled. The slides are polished, the vision is grand, and the future, we're told, has never looked brighter. Everyone beams—because who wants to be the one to say, "Um… this might not work"? Heaven forbid someone spoil the mood with a dose of reality. Better to smile, add a buzzword or two, and march confidently toward disaster. That's how the Pessimism Aversion Trap works. Even now, I can still hear the sound—a high-pitched shriek and a digital hum, followed by the slow, rhythmic clatter of data pouring from a 5¼-inch floppy disk. It was the late 1980s, and my makeshift home office (our living room) was dominated by what felt like a marvel of modern engineering: a used Tandy 1000 PC with not one, but two floppy drives. To top it off, we purchased a 'blisteringly fast' 300-baud modem—which, for the uninitiated, could downloa...

The Friday Morning Pause

In this episode,  The Friday Morning Pause: When My Brother’s Bookshelf Called Me to Stillness We live in a world allergic to stillness. Our mornings begin mid-sprint—thumbs scrolling before our eyes even open. The impulse to jump into the digital chaos is immediate. But sometimes, stillness finds you . It was early Friday morning. We’d arrived late the night before, stepping into the cool air before the day turned hot. Half-awake, I reached for my phone—emails, headlines, social feeds waiting like a morning buffet of distraction. We were in Cuba. No Wi-Fi. No 5G. No password. Just stillness, disguised as inconvenience. Instead, I caught sight of something unexpected: a small stack of books on my brother’s TV shelf. My brother and his wife are powered by perpetual motion. They are the definition of overscheduled and overstimulated. Yet there it was: Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday, quietly mocking my scrolling habit. The irony was perfect. I put my phone down—a small, delibe...