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June 29, 2009
Tour de France 2009 in Google Earth
Once again, Thomas Vergouwen is the first to send GEB the complete tracks for the 2009 Tour de France for viewing in Google Earth. The organizers did not release the full details on the routes of the stages until recently, so it took longer then usual for maps to be created. The race begins this Saturday - July 4th. Thomas describes the situation and provides lots of details on each stage of the race at his web site, and he provides both Google Maps and the Google Earth file on the routes.
Viewing the Tour de France routes in Google Earth is one of my favorite examples of the power of Google Earth. With GE's 3D terrain, you can tilt your view and truly get a feeling of how challenging this race really is - even if you have never been to see it in person. Just load Thomas' file for the 2009 Tour de France in GE 
. Then, make sure you tilt your view I'm hoping there will be some more real-time tracking this year that will let you watch the position of some of the racers in Google Earth as they go along.
Posted by FrankTaylor at June 29, 2009 8:25 AM
Comments
Posted by: steephill at June 29, 2009 3:30 PM
Tour de France will come to Barcelona this year. I am looking forward to see them.
Posted by: Carl at June 29, 2009 3:32 PM
English translation: "Nice work Thomas! And full details ... I extracted the mountain stage Pontarlier-Verbier and I put a little video animation on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onyVutrfBzA"
Joli travail Thomas! Et plein de détails... j'ai extrait l'étape de montagne Pontarlier-Verbier et j'ai mis une petite animation vidéo sur Youtbe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onyVutrfBzA)...
Posted by: Reynald at July 1, 2009 5:17 AM
Does it work for you? GE's been loading that file for ages, but nothing happens.
Posted by: zimmi at July 5, 2009 9:21 AM
Great job to Thomas, i read yesterday in the newspaper a second tour the France route on google earth, they was made already on may, and also a nice job to him. http://www.earthview.nl/route_le_tour_de_france_2009_nieuw_primeur-t8181.0.html
Posted by: Willy at July 9, 2009 7:51 AM
Hello. I am very glad to see so much interest in Le Tour de France. I know this may sound like an over-ambitious goal, but I want to win this incredible bike race. I am only 16 so I have a while to train and get some quality gear together. However, I really need the support of others, like you, in order to complete such a task. On my blog, http://anyone1can1do1it.blogspot.com/, you can follow my journey from a mere student to the winner of Le Tour de France. The blog isn’t much as of now, but I will post daily, and you will no doubt see dramatic improvements. Thank you for taking the time to read this comment.!
Posted by: Marshall at July 28, 2009 4:50 PM
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As another viewing option, we have individual google maps of each stage with an option to download each stage kml file for viewing in Google Earth. Each map is accompanied by a detailed stage preview. For example, here's the Stage 1 Preview translated into multiple languages:
http://www.steephill.tv/2009/tour-de-france/previews-results/stage-01/
Previews for all stages can be found under the preview links in the race summary table on our main page: http://www.steephill.tv/tour-de-france/