Canadians rule at the Tour de France

Okay, not rule, not yet, but there are two Canadian riders in this year's TdF, starting in Rotterdam today and televised on the Outdoor Life network. That's two more Canadians than the entire World Cup. And now that the Black Stars of Ghana are out, who you gonna cheer for anyway?

Victoria's Ryder Hesjedal (at right, from last year's tour), who I interviewed for a recent Canada's History piece about cycling history, is up for his third consecutive Tour with the Garmin team -- and coming off stage wins in the tours of Italy Spain and California earlier this year.

Michael Barry of Toronto, a veteran of all the great road races except le Tour, finally gets his chance. He's been picked up by Britain's Team Sky to help pull Bradley Wiggins up to the front of the race.

Evidently Barry's new memoir Le Métier, is a terrific inside look at the world of professional cycling, not excluding for once the drugs. Maybe some Canadian publisher will pick up the Canadian rights if Barry does well, but there's a blog too -- though one suspects he won't be updating it much in the next 21 days.