Your TDF Learning Moment: "Col du Galibier"

If you're like us, you just can't keep your Alpe D' Huezes and your Mont Ventouxes (Vonteaux?) straight from your Plateau d'Beilles and your Col d'Izoards.

In the interest of helping Fracophobes worldwide, we're hereby launching a new service: We'll give you a few memorable tidbits about every major mountain stage in the remaining weeks of the TDF, along with a handy mnemonic device to help you remember forevermore.

You'll be the life of the cycling party -- or the castigated know-it-all prick-- every July!

The Col du Galibier has been climbed almost 30 times since it first appeared in the tour in 1946. Most recently, it was supposed to feature in the 1996, but because of bad weather, the stage was shortened to a non-mountain sprint in the lowlands. Bjarne Riis won the stage and took the yellow jersey all the way to Paris. Given Riis's recent admission that he was on dope for that championship, we might well wonder if his drugs would have been good enough to get him into yellow had the stage taken place as planned.

"Galibier" means "please put one more sausage in the pan" in French. Here's how we remember the word and the stage:


Grenoble is nearby
Alpine acme of the tour
Leave your dope at home
Instead
Bring
Ipod
Euros and a drinkable
Rosé (Rosé is cool again, dude!)