26 nations represented in this years Tour de France
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- July
- 6
The Tour continues to grow and reach new audiences internationally. Yesterday two counties showed themselves on them on the world stage. Jussi Veikkanen became the first Finish rider to wear the polka-dot
jersey for best climber. He’s a former mountain bike racer like so many other riders in the pro peloton and is 28 years-old and rides for the Francaise des Jeux team.
Finishing fifth yesterday was one of the two Japanese riders in the race Yukiya Arashiro of the BBOX Bouygues Telecom team. Japan has a great history in track racing and has world class 
sprinters, but has never done well on the long road courses.
The top ten finishers yesterday were from the following counties; France had three of the top ten, with one each for the following: Great Britain (Isle of Man), USA, Norway, Japan, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands. These represent eight of the 26 nationalities in the race. The USA has seven riders and Canada one this year.
This entry was posted
on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 7:53 AM by Randall Wolf. 
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