The Lance Armstrong effect is evident on Versus
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The Amgen Tour of California will have plenty of great cyclists, including two-time defending champion Levi Leipheimer, European sprint stars Mark Cavendish and Tom Boonen plus enigmatic Floyd Landis, the defrocked Tour de France winner making his comeback after a two-year doping suspension. But the expanded, live coverage of the Feb. 14-22 California race by cable channel Versus might just be because Lance Armstrong is racing.
This will be Armstrong’s first U.S. road race since his retirement in 2005.
The original plan had all-live coverage for the weekday stages, and one hour of live coverage and one hour of taped-delay coverage during the weekend. Now Versus will have all-live coverage of everything but Saturday’s prologue. Calling the race will be the team of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, most well known as the voices of the Tour de France coverage.
This will be the most live coverage of the race since its inception four years ago.
Here’s the Versus schedule:
Feb. 14 Prologue -- Sacramento (live/same-day delay) 2 p.m. PT
Feb. 15 Stage 1, Davis to Santa Rosa (live) 3 p.m. PT
Feb. 16 Stage 2, Sausalito to Santa Cruz (live) 9:30 a.m. PT
Feb. 17 Stage 3, San Jose to Modesto (live) 2 p.m. PT
Feb. 18 Stage 4, Merced to Clovis (live) 1 p.m. PT
Feb. 19 Stage 5, Visalia to Paso Robles (live) 1 p.m. PT
Feb. 20 Stage 6, Solvang time trial (live) 1 p.m. PT
Feb. 21 Stage 7, Santa Clarita to Pasadena (live) 2 p.m. PT
Feb. 22 Stage 8, Rancho Bernardo to Escondido (live) 2 p.m. PT
-- Diane Pucin