I don't know why, it just is...

I don't know why, but I didn't get interested in the Tour Down Under 2008. OK, I watched the last stage live and enjoyed it, but somehow - and promising sprinter Andre Greipel won it overall BTW - it just didn't get me in, not in that stage-by-stage build-of-tension kind of way. Lack of decent race-splitting hills, perhaps? Same guy winning - seemingly - every day? I may have well been watching Big Tom clean up, as always, in a small, rich desert nation somewhere.

But the lesser-ranked Tour de Langkawi in Malaysis is a different kettle of fish. The sprinters are under the hammer already. Stage 1 - a 19-man break succeeds, only to see Sprick step away 3km from the line to grab the stage and the overall. Stage 2 saw a 2-man break, a pursuit, a likely catch foiled and another split winning the day with Jeremy Hunt taking the win. Well it seems pretty lively to me.

Protour: Tour de France out, Tour Down Under in

Bizarre. But true! The Tour de France (and the other grand tours of Italy and Spain, for that matter) has excused itself from the ProTour, and the Aussies are in instead. Of course it's meaningless outside of recognising the very real break in relations between the grand tour organizers and the UCI, but it's fun to play with the idea that the Tour Down Under has replaced the TdF... from CN: The first non-European ProTour event status has been awarded to the the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, Australia the UCI announced on Thursday. The South Australian race will kick off the 2008 ProTour calendar on January 22. With the exclusion of the Grand Tours from the ProTour calendar, the UCI will now focus more efforts globally, and the Australian race is the first beneficiary of the new direction for the series.

Tour Down Under result

Just finished watching the TDU on TV. It was McEwen, Renshaw (against the barriers, protesting - but why go there??) and Davis in the final stage. Martin Elmiger from AG2R takes the overall win in the 9th Tour Down Under by just three seconds, his sprinting making the diff.