You ladies are very kind , but all I did was copy & paste the article ! I was glad to find a description of the track events because I had no clue what they were about.

So who shall we be rooting for?

I'll start...

For the road race, since I assume the certain loyal deputy yadda yadda yadda will have a fairly, ahem, vocal cheering section, I will be shouting out for the (slightly) lesser-knowns {flinging a 5-pound bag of salt over my shoulder ... um it's the left one, right??}

Go Bobby! (pedalfaster, feel free to join in anytime ) He's found a great team but his contract goes only to the end of the year so a good result would really help matters - I especially hope he kicks some serious butt in the ITT. He's had some tough breaks over the last few years so it would be super if he could shine here. As far as I can figure his main competition in the time trial will be Ullrich (unless he's already hit the Krispy Kremes ), Kloeden, Vinokourov (looking very good right now coming off his injury earlier this season), Cancellara, and, if he's back on form, Tyler - who evidently pulled out of the Classica San Sebastian because his back wasn't fully recovered yet so he's a big question mark.

I'll also be rooting for semi-local boy Levi Leipheimer, his contract with Rabobank also ends this year so I hope he can secure a good contract either staying w. Rabobank or moving on to greener pastures. There's been some talk about him going back to postal/discovery but it's all just talk. Since he's only competing in the road race, presumably all the guys will be working for one leader (George or Tyler?) but Levi had a habbit of going out on breakouts, so maybe he'll have one that actually sticks...?

For the women, I'll be rooting for Dede Barry, who earned the distinction of cycling goddess for life in my book for winning a world cup race a couple of years ago on a lugged steel bike custom made by her father-in-law, how cool is that ? She also took the time to finish her degree before completely devoting herself to racing (another example of a women racer who puts a high priority on education, which I admire).

I'll also be watching out for Nicole Cooke, the phenomenal young British cyclist. She had knee surgery earlier in the year and came back to win the Giro d'Italia Femminile.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the beyond-phenomenal Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli who won the French road championship this year and will be competing at her 6th Olympics... at the age of 45.