The Tour de France recently concluded with Carlos Sastre of team CSC-Saxo bank winning the final yellow jersey in Paris. For many people the Tour de France is the only bike race they may have heard of and that is likely due to that guy named Lance who won seven in a row.
However, there is a whole world of bike racing out there at various levels and disciplines and here is just a little taste of where you can go to find out more if you are interested. I follow road racing so will focus on that but there are Mountain Bike, Cyclocross and BMX specific sites and reports out there if that is your thing.
Most of the teams that race the Tour de France are the top level elite Pro Tour squads (actually there is a question as to whether there is going to be a ‘Pro Tour’ next year - but that is another story). These are teams like CSC-Saxo bank, Columbia (formerly T-mobile/High road) and Astana. They have multi-million dollar budgets and consist of about 25 riders whose talents are divided between climbers, sprinters, time trialers, roulers and all-rounders. These are the major league of cycling.
There is a second level of teams, the pro-continental teams, that have slightly lower budgets and fewer riders but some of these can hang with the big boys and get invites to the Tour due to strength of their results in other high profile European stage races. Teams such as Garmin-Chipotle and Agritubel. These are like baseball AAA minor league teams.
However, the vast majority of professional cycling teams in the U.S. and Europe are classified as continental teams. These teams usually have relatively small budgets and anywhere from 5-15 riders. They tend to race mostly in their home country but sometimes get a chance to race overseas. A DotBike member, Adam Myerson, who lives in Fields Corner races on just such a team, Time Pro Cycling. Time Pro Cycling is in its first year with a professional license and is focused on developing up and coming talent by mentoring young racers with more experienced riders. Adam (check out his blog here) is one of those more experienced racers and currently he is leading in the USA Criterium Series (which is pretty awesome if you ask me).
Then there are those who like to race for the fun and fitness but don’t make their living by racing. There are clubs in the area including the Blue Hills Cycling Club who support this type of rider.
Aside from the links to the teams and organizations above there are some great web sites that will allow you to follow lots of bicycle racing at all levels.
There is the VeloNews website with a bit of a focus on american racing, Cycling News based in Australia (I think) which is entirely on line and has pretty comprehensive race coverage and the Bicycling magazine web site which is more of a general bicycling information site but does have some race coverage.