Cavendish Wins Stage 5 at The Tour de France

Posted • July 8, 2010 • 2 Comments

HTC-Columbia’s Mark Cavendish Wins Stage 5 and You can follow The Tour with Bing Maps

If you have been reading my blog for a while you are aware that I am a cycling aficionado.

Stage 5 Thursday, July 8 Épernay – Montargis 185 km and more champagne is on tap for the riders as they traverse the Champagne region on their way to the finish in Montargis.

I have been getting up early each morning of the Tour de France and pulling for Lance Armstrong and Team RadioShack. They spent the day under the radar as an exciting stage 5 wound up with a wild sprint to the finish in Montargis.

Mark Cavendish out sprinted the likes of Tyler Farrar, Alessandro Petacchi, Robbie McEwen, and Thor Hushovd to win his eleventh stage at the Tour. Cav tearfully climbed the podium to accept his accolades.

Bing Maps Brings You the Tour

Bing has a “Map App” that provides a wealth of information about “the Tour,” which includes stats and standings by stage as the race travels its ups and downs from Rotterdam to Paris. You will need to have Silverlight installed.

This app is designed to help you visualize the overall race, the stages (stages tab + numbers) and how variables such as weather & elevation (elevation profiles) will impact each stage. Results will be updated along the way in the ‘Results’ tab.

If you go to bing.com/maps/explore there is a group of icons at the bottom left hand side of the page. On the extreme right of these icons is the one marked “Map Apps”. If you click that you’ll find 19 applications that run on top of Bing.

Some of the available Bing Map apps include:

• Twitter Maps
• World Cup
• Local Events
• Distance Calculator
• Todays front pages
• 2010 Tour de France Route

When you click on the 2010 Tour de France Route button you will get the Bing Tour de France central screen.

From this screen you have plenty of options to follow the Tour your way.
Not only do you get an elevation map…you get a regular map with the course marked out and a current position marker.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
Of course you get access to the full compliment of TDF information like:

• Welcome Information
• Details on Stages and Prologue
• Results
• Stage distances
• It’s all there in that small pane

Bing was the first to have the most complete maps-based coverage and perhaps most complete coverage overall, other than the official site itself.
Here is their disclaimer.

Content provided courtesy Podium Café (Copyright 2010)
The opinions expressed by the representatives of Podium Café are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Microsoft or any employee thereof. Microsoft is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by Podium Café.

Google also offers their own map-based Tour tracking, with an emphasis on the HTC-Columbia Team. HTC is one of Google’s Android OEM partners.

I hope you are enjoying the Tour as much as I am.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Terms related to this post:

Comments