On Saturday, Dutch cyclist Laurens ten Dam became the latest Tour de France rider to earn semi-household name status for crashing, after he took a face-first dive in Stage 14 and finished the day’s effort with a mangled grill. He not only finished the stage but he was able to bounce back and start Stage 15 the next day with no problems other than a mild inability to eat food. Unfortunately, whereas Johnny Hoogerland’s barbed wire tangle last week earned him intermediate “that’s pretty metal” status, we can’t yet afford ten Dam the same luxury.

It turns out that ten Dam has a bit of a reputation for accidents. In addition to this weekend’s spill, ten Dam missed last year’s Tour de France because of a serious accident at the 2010 Tour de Suisse, in which he broke two vertebrae, fractured his wrist and chin, and suffered a severe concussion. Only a few months before that, ten Dam crashed and injured his hip and head in the final stage of the Ruta del Sol. In 2009, ten Dam was part of a big crash at the the Vuelta a Espana race, as he injured his back but was able to continue on.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you see Laurens ten Dam riding a bike, cross the street.

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Site note: The Dugout should be back today. Restocking new computers with programs necessary to create an esoteric baseball webcomic is harder than you’d think.

Sports

The Best and Worst of the Milwaukee Brewers First Half - Miller Park Drunk apes the Best and Worst of Raw format without my permission and makes me wonder if my sports news would be best reported this way. I’m not sure I could do this about the Indians. My Best would be “everything” and my Worst would be “nothing, shut up”. [Miller Park Drunk]

The Ridiculous Argument About What Is Or Isn’t A Sport - I thought this argument ended when you left high school and didn’t have to hear teen girls defend cheerleading. Apparently somebody thinks soccer isn’t a sport because they don’t like it, which is seriously a great qualifier for adults who use words. I don’t like celery, so celery isn’t a food! It’s a mineral! [A Slice of Bacon]

The Rock Responds to John Cena - CM Punk called some people in Australia “homos” and it necessitated an apology and a formal statement of regret from WWE. A major Hollywood Disney movie star cuts a 15 minute promo about how John Cena deepthroated a bunch of dudes in college (that is also transphobic, hateful toward fat people and the abstinent, and sort of racist) and nobody gives a crap. Because he’s cool! Yay the Rock! [The Wrestling Blog]

Kevin Love & Blake Griffin Square Off in an Intense Jenga Series - I am fairly confident that I could beat both of these guys at Jenga. And “Last Word”, if they know what that is. Oh, and Scattergories. [Smoking Section]

With Leather

@Storytime with Gilbert Arenas - A free Slurpee promotion from 7/11 becomes a call for racial equality. Did you know that if you live near a bunch of other races you can’t be racist? Did you know that athletes should probably not have Twitter accounts? [With Leather]

The 82nd MLB All-Star Game in Pictures - In case you missed it (and chances are, you did) relive the majesty and wonder of a mid-season baseball game that barely matters. The pictures are really cool, at least. [With Leather]

Whoops - Watch the biggest boob moment at Fenway Park since Roger Clemens retired. [With Leather]

A Look at Tour De France Crashes - Nothing makes French bike riding more awesome than dumping the riders into a ditch and slashing them mercilessly with barbed wire. Also, please view this gallery and see what cycling does to human legs so you will NEVER CYCLE EVER. [With Leather]

Not Sports

Diablo Cody is Polishing the Evil Dead Remake Script - I’m sure this won’t end with a teen girl pretending to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer against a bunch of rapist trees at all. Chances of a “barking up the wrong tree” joke have risen to 100%. Why are we letting Suicide Girls make movies, again? [Gamma Squad]

Real Housewives of the Bible - Slightly less sacrilegious than an episode of “Superbook”. At least this one doesn’t suggest that Original Sin could’ve been prevented if a boy from the future had just properly winded his Christianity robot. [Warming Glow]

The Kid in the Clover Grill - The companion piece to any of those stories where athletes are suddenly concerned about gay marriage, Jason Fry writes about the beauty of being able to change your mind. [Jason Fry]

Tom Green Invented Planking in 1994 - … you know, in case you need any more evidence to prove what you’re doing is dumb. Ten years from now some jerk on the Internet is going to put his ass on a Swedish guy and post it online like he made it up. [Uproxx]

Ever since Lance Armstrong decided to retire from Tour de France competition, nobody in America has cared much about the biggest event in cycling, with the exception of Tom Danielson and Christian Vande Velde, but 17th and 19th place ain’t going to cut it, fellas. However, this weekend gave us a few crashes to tickle our appetites for destruction.

Yesterday, a crash in the race’s 9th stage seemingly ended the career of Alexandre Vinokourov, above, who was famously banned after testing positive for PEDs at the 2007 Tour de France. He retired shortly after that ban, but then decided in 2009 that he didn’t want his career to end that way. Instead, it has apparently ended with a broken femur. But that’s arguably better than Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Belgium, as he was also involved in yesterday’s crash and is currently in the ICU with a shattered shoulder, collapsed lung and three broken ribs.

“Jurgen needs to stay two or three more days in intensive care,” team doctor Els Lemmens told Belgian television. “We have to make sure that his breathing problems don’t get any worse. We were worried about his abdominal pain because we feared a ruptured spleen or liver but that has turned out not to be the case. Everything is under control now.” (Via Cycling News)

Meanwhile, Spain’s Juan Antonio Flecha was sideswiped by a TV car during yesterday’s stage, causing him to collide with Dutch racer Johnny Hoogerland (new favorite name – Ed.), who in turn crashed into a barbed wire fence and suffered a series of lacerations.

Images after the jump, might be a little unsafe for the easily squeamish.

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That one bicycle race in France is happening right now. It’s the one where they literally tour the country, oh, what’s it called again? Anyway, our not-quite-fallen hero Lance Armstrong hasn’t been doing so hot. He’s not even the fastest rider on his team, and the one that is, Levi Leipheimer, is more than five minutes off the pace.

His entire team, in fact, is riding in a way that indicates they are primarily focused not on sheltering Leipheimer but on winning the team classification — a ranking based on the times of the first three riders of each team who finish each day. If RadioShack maintains its 4:10 gap over Caisse d’Epargne in this category, they will get to stand in front of the crowd during the awards ceremony in Paris and earn 50,000 euro. –MSNBC.

I really don’t know what any of that means, other than “no eighth Tour de France win for Lance Armstrong.” But if there’s a silver lining to mediocrity, it’s that people stop accusing you of cheating. Of course, there’s a better way–just don’t go to France. The French don’t really know what it means to work at anything. Just think of all the caffeine that they waste in a given day.

Alberto Contador won the Tour de France for the second time today, capping a dominating three-week performance.  His Astana teammate, some guy named Lance Armstrong, finished third.

Over nearly 3,500 kilometers and 21 stages of races over three weeks, Contador repelled many challenges in the mountains, excelled in the two time-trials — winning a pivotal race against the clock in the 18th stage — and won the first Alpine stage.

Contador, the 2007 champion, also had to battle a rearguard action [hee hee! - Ed.] within his Astana team, where the comeback of Armstrong to the Tour after 3 1/2 years of retirement raised questions about who would be the team leader. [source]

This concludes With Leather’s cycling coverage until next year, unless Armstrong bangs Megan Fox or someone tries to have sex with a bicycle.  Hey, don’t scoff.  It’s happened before.

Tragedy struck the Tour de France this morning when a woman was hIt and killed by a police motorcycle.

French police say she was struck Saturday while trying to cross the road in Alsace in eastern France during the 14th stage…. [T]he motorcycle driver was from a unit of the Republican Guard and could not avoid hitting the woman. The driver was helping supervise the race.

The driver fell off his bike, which then hit and injured two other people. Their lives are not in danger. One of the injured was a mother with a child in her arms, but the youngster was not hurt.

Yeesh.  A sad day for the Tour, and a bad way to start the sports weekend.  And it’s not helping that the banner image is riddled with factual errors.  For starters, there was no bicycle involved in the accident.  And the vehicle that struck the woman was a motorcycle, not a car.  And the driver of the motorcycle was a police officer, not a cat.  Although that last point can be kind of confusing, since the French are pussies.