About TdFblog

What is this site?

TdFblog is my attempt to keep up with all the news leading up to the Tour de France, the biggest race on the pro cycling calendar. I'm especially focused on American riders and teams, and on making the Tour accessible to American audiences, although Lance Armstrong's 7 wins have made that less necessary.

I think of it as “TV Guide for the Tour de France:” There’s a lot of Tour coverage out there now, and I’ll try to point you to the best and most current news.

I also do some news gathering of my own, attending and photographing big races with Tour-level pro riders.

I welcome reader submissions via e-mail of links, photos, or other content.

Who runs the site?

Frank Steele. I’m an Atlanta-based technical manager, with experience at Coca-Cola, CNN.com, and a couple of small startups.

Who pays for the site?

The site pays for itself, primarily through advertising.

How did the site happen?

In 2002, I occasionally posted about the Tour de France on my personal weblog, Nicest of the Damned.

One morning in 2003, I noticed the Linux box hosting that weblog (in my home office) was getting hammered, and discovered I had the #1 Google hit for “Tour de France updates” (still do).

About the same time, SixApart announced a beta test of their new hosted MovableType platform, TypePad. Since I know what’s involved in supporting 7 x 24 systems, I was jazzed to see a system with 80 percent of MovableType’s power, but with somebody else on the hook for keeping the servers and network running reliably.

I signed up for a TypePad beta account, spent about 45 minutes putting the site together, and started posting.