Thanks to Bike For All for this

Seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong was famous for his inch-by-inch recce of key Tour de France stages. Using plots created by Google Earth users it’s now possible to be a virtual Lance, scoping out the route from a virtual helicopter.

The complete route of this year’s Tour de France has been mapped in Google Earth. You can zoom in to the Paris finish and pan/tilt around the mountain roads. When the race starts in July some Google Earthers plan to track individual racers as they complete the daily stages

Last year, shortly after Google Earth was released, some Tour de France fans in the Google Earth Community put up the complete route of the 2005 race. The race was still going on while they were completing it.

This year, the complete course has already been mapped in Google Earth.

Go to www.gearthblog.com download a ‘network link’ for your Mac or PC. Place this in your existing Google Earth folder, if you have already downloaded the application.

Once the link loads, you will see the route details for each stage. For more details open up the folder and turn on each stage’s placemarks showing the checkpoints.

Google Earther Frank Taylor said:

“In the 2005 Tour de France there were some attempts to actually track some of the biker’s in real-time using network links in GE. I hope we’ll see more of that. Also, I was hoping someone will link to web cams at strategic points showing the racers.”