Radio Shack announced today that it will sponsor a new cycling team in 2010 featuring Lance Armstrong. A break from Astana, was widely expected for Armstrong, who is expected to build Team Radio Shack into a unit that can help him win an eighth Tour de France in 2010.

Here is a look at five things to expect from this new partnership:

1) Next year's Tour will be one of the most hyped in years. Lance Armstrong, returning to the Tour as a probable team leader for the first time since his run of seven-straight victories, facing off against the man he rode for this year, likely champion Alberto Contador. The two are said to have had "friction" during this year's race, which makes a head-to-head duel in 2010 all the more juicy.

2) Lance will ask for your phone number upon any autograph request. 

3) Team Radio Shack will be poaching talent, most notably from an already-struggling Astana. Expect current teammates Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner to join Armstrong at Radio Shack. No word on whether Howie Long will be invited. 

4) Either Lance or one of the team's other cyclists will live within five miles of 95 percent of Americans.

5) You'll forget that Lance Armstrong exists, until you need a cord to hook up your iPod to your car stereo.

Barring a major mishap, positive drug test or somebody switching around directional signs like in that one episode of 'Scooby Doo', Alberto Contador will be standing atop the podium as the winner of the Tour de France this Sunday in Paris. Contador leads his closest challenger, Andy Schleck, by 2 minutes and 26 seconds. It's an almost insurmountable margin.

With Contadro's victory a virtual certainty, it might be tempting to ignore the Tour de France for the next four stages. But here are four remaining questions that should draw your attention of the next four days:

1) Can Lance Armstrong still earn a spot on the podium? Armstrong's chances of finishing in the top three were hurt today when he fell to fourth place overall after working to help his teammate, Contador and slipping behind the Schlecks. Lance is 2:18 behind third place, so he'll need to make up time in Thursday's time trial to have a spot at the second place finish he still says is within his grasp.

2) Astana drama. In Wednesday's Stage 17, Contador made a climbing attack and, in the process, dropped teammate Andreas Kloden. The move apparently wasn't approved by Astana director Johan Bruyneel (even though Contador suggested it was). Armstrong wasn't pleased either, Tweeting:

"Getting lots of question why AC attacked and dropped Kloden. I still haven't figured it out either. Oh well."

Before the Tour everyone wanted to know whether Armstrong would ride for Contador. It seems that he has. Contador, on the other hand, didn't seem willing to ride for Astana.

3) Who wins Thursday's time trial? Expect a four-man battle between Contador, Fabian Cancellara, Bert Grabsch and Bradley Wiggins. Cancellara won the 1st stage of the tour, while Wiggins has been a surprise out of Great Britain.

3) Is this the last we'll see of Lance? It's doubtful. Armstrong has said he plans on riding in 2010 and will announce the creation of a new American-based team on Thursday, one in which he'll be the featured rider. (Take that, Contador!) And while that seems like a certatinty, isn't not guaranteed that Armstrong will ride next year. Anything is possible (injury, talking to Brett Favre, suddenly getting the urge to follow Phish around the country,) so it's worth checking out the final few stages on of the off chance that we see the final rides of the most prolific champion in Tour de France history.

Mountain stages of the Tour de France are most associated with the treacherous climb involved in ascending the soaring European peaks. But, as the old adage goes, what goes up must come down. And for as difficult as the climb is, the descent isn't to be taken lightly.

Riders frequently hit 70 km/h during downhill straightaways, which makes any obstacle in the road a very real danger. German cyclist Jens Voigt found that out the hard way today, as his bike hit debris in the road during the final downhill portion of Stage 16 of the Tour de France. The impact sent him skidding down the paved road for a few hundred meters. When he stopped, Voigt was bloodied and unconscious. (You can watch video of the crash here.)

After regaining consciousness, Voigt was rushed to her a hospital where he is alert but "shocked". The most serious injuries are to his face and elbow. Needless to say, his Tour de France is over, which is a striking blow to his Saxo Bank team.

Since beginning the Tour de France on July 4th, Lance Armstrong has updated his Twitter page more than 225 times, an average of 14 times per day. That's a pretty impressive total considering that he spends most of his day taking part in a grueling 2,141 mile race. (In comparison, I've written 88 Tweets since the same date and the closest I come to a mountain stage is climbing the steps from my mother's basement to get some more Doritos from the pantry.)

I don't follow many athletes on Twitter because they rarely say anything interesting (and, when they do, it tends to be underpunctuated and overcapitalized), but I subscribe to Armstrong's feed because he's an entertaining read and occasionally writes some pretty insightful things about the Tour (and some less insightful things about his iPod).

If you're not among the 1,484,311 people following @lancearmstrong, here's a brief sampling of what you've missed over the past two weeks, broken down into one of eight categories:

Celebrity name-dropping:

Btw, sorry we were late for the sign on this am. It was Stiller's fault!!

My good bud Jimmy Buffet is our guest in team car 1 (with johan) today for all you parrot heads.

Robin Williams stopped by the bus after the finish. He's doing great and got his health back 100%. We made a vid I'll post later. Too funny.

What's it like to watch TV in Europe:

Unreal. The Wimbeldon final is not on TV here in France. Bummer!

Laying in bed here in Switzerland and Meet The Press is on. How cool is that? Miss Tim Russert tho.

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After more flip-flopping than a fish out of water, the International Cycling Union (UCI) has lifted its misguided communication ban for Friday's 13th stage at the Tour de France. Team directors and cyclists will now be able to communicate via the radio earpieces seen above.

Earlier this month the UCI said it would prohibit communcations during the 10th and 13th stages of the race. The ban met with wide disapproval from riders and teams who use the earpieces to strategize and keep abreast of race conditions. The thinking behind the ban was to introduce more spontaneous and traditional racing. 

Lance Armstrong was on the Motorola teams of the mid-1990s that pioneered radio communications. Naturally, he was vigorously opposed to the ban and correctly predicted its reversal earlier this week. Armstrong seemed most concerned with how the lack of earpieces makes it harder to avoid crashes.

Whatever you think of the earpiece debate (which usually pits old school vs. new school), this particular radio ban was misguided from the start. Instituting a major rule change for two of the 21 changes would be like Major League Baseball declaring that catchers can't give signals to a pitcher in the 4th inning of every game. To fundamentally alter the dynamic of a competition from day-to-day was illogical at best and asinine at worst.

If the UCI wanted to ban communications, it should have done so for the entire Tour. Arbitrarily deciding to ban two stages was an invitation for riders to ride cautiously on Tuesday, publicly disaparage the rule afterward and force the lifting of the ban for tomorrow. That's exactly what happened. Now, the UCI will find it nearly impossible to bring up a radio ban again.

The Tour de France is a sports photographer's dream. The ever-shifting backgrounds (from cities to farms to mountains to fields) provide a compelling canvas on which to shoot and the results are some of the best sports pictures of the year.

One of the most popular annual shots captures the peloton riding through fields of sunflowers, as it did today:

These photographs are kind of like the ones you see every year of the cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. Because the pictures have been taken so many times by so many different people, it's rare to see something new and innovative. But that doesn't take away from the beauty of a well-crafted snapshot.

And if you've ever wondered what it looks like from the cyclists point of view, wonder no more:

On this Bastille Day it was a Brit who had the biggest celebration in France. And it left many cycling fans feeling cold.

After winning today's 10th stage at the Tour de France (as expected), British cyclist Mark Cavendish crossed the finish line as he was taking off his glasses in a manner that appeared to be more taunting than celebratory.

The new Oakley shades were given to Cavendish recently and he said he wanted to get a green jersey to match their color. Or maybe he wanted to look at all the riders in his rear view. Or maybe he was simply looking in the glasses to see his reflection, as Mark Cavendish always seems to be quite impressed with himself, but for good reason.

This is the third stage win in the 2009 Tour de France by the sprint specialist and seventh overall, thus putting him one off the record for a British rider (held by Barry Hoban). 

Cavendish has cultivated his reputation as a so-called "bad boy" of cycling with antics like this in the past. Last year Cavendish earned the enmity of Mario Cipollini by racing past him with one foot off the pedal. And in the Giro d'Italia, an Italian sprinter called Cavendish "disrespectful".

Fans were equally as amused by Cavendish's antics today. A majority of the comments left on the cycling blog Podium Cafe after the stage were anti-Cavendish, including a few that came up with interesting acronyms for his nickname "Cav". The general consensus: Cavendish is too cocky for his own good. But, unlike others, at least Cavendish can back it up on the bike.

He's as much a part of the Tour de France as time trials, mountain stages, yellow jerseys and podium girls and is probably more recognizable to cycling fans than a majority of the riders in this year's race. He's Didi, the guy with that huge bike who dresses up like the devil and jumps up and down like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. Even if you've watched little of the Tour over the past 16 years, you've probably seen him on the course, gesticulating wildly while holding his three-speared pitchfork. So who is he and, more importantly, what's his deal?

Didi is Deiter Senft, a 56-year old German who modeled himself as "El Diablo" after hearing of an archaic cycling term used by television announcers:

They always called the final kilometre of a criterium [stage] the red devil's lap. I never saw a red devil, so I became one.

(The only time the phrase "red devil's lap" appears in the Lexis-Nexis perdiocials database is when it's used to reference to Didi's story, so take that for what it's worth.)

Didi travels to most stages of the Tour with his enormous bicycles  (he's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having built the largest bike) and sets up a few kilometers out from the finish. (He says he'd like to be closer to the finish -- or the red devil's lap -- but police and race organizers won't let him.) Sometimes he'll paint forks and cyclists on the road with white paint, but only if local police allow it. Then, he waits for the riders and chases them, but stresses that it's never intended to be bothersome. Sure it's not, Didi.

He says he is able to pay for travel through sponsors and usually camps out in his car before each stage.

We're not even halfway through this year's Tour de France, but that hasn't stopped Lance Armstrong from publicly discussing his plans for next year's race. Eat your heart out, Brett Favre.

When asked by a French TV station about whether this would be his last Tour, Armstrong replied:

"Probably not. Probably not. Maybe one more Tour."

Oh, Lance. No, no, no. And you had been doing so well!

As the ambivalence (and, in many circles, downright annoyance) with Brett Favre's retirement melodrama has proven, sports fan begin to resent athletes that lead on the public with ambiguous plans and statements about their future. Nobody expects Lance Armstrong to be 100 percent positive about his plans for 2010, but we also don't need to be dragged through the decision making process with him.

A simple deflecting of the question ("right now I'm focused on 2009") would have sufficed. Instead, Armstrong left the door open for a return, instantly drew comparisons with Brett Favre and turned focus away from his remarkable start to this year's race. If he continues to hedge on his plans for next year instead of making definitive statements, Armstrong runs the risk of turning into an athlete that sports fans are sick of hearing about (a la Favre or, three years ago, Barry Bonds). 

This is particularly aggravating because Armstrong handled his first retirement and current comeback gracefully, making his plans known before the 2005 Tour de France (which he won) and not waffling about his decision in the following months. When the comeback was announced earlier this year there wasn't much fuss, just a simple statement.

Armstrong needs to follow that playbook rather than taking a page from Favre's.

To merely say that today's seventh stage of the Tour de France hits the mountains doesn't do it justice. Sure, we know that the riders started in relatively low-lying Barcelona and then ascended into the peaks of the Pyrenees, climbing 6.5 miles at a 7.1 percent grade. But to visual learners like myself, those are just words on paper. I need rudimentary, not-to-scale line graphs written in German to help me imagine what that's really like. Thankfully, the Associated Press helps out:

Wow. That's like AIG's one-year stock chart in reverse.

The finish line is almost 10 times higher than the start, and riders have to scale almost 1,300 meters in the last 30 kilometers. I'm not sure my car could do that.