Fly the 2006 Tour route without leaving your computer

Google Earth Blog | Tour de France 2006 in Google Earth

Earlier this month, I mentioned that a 2006 Tour route map was underway for Google Earth.

It's done. The entire route of this year's Tour is now available for download. It's an amazing demonstration of what Google Earth can do, as you can tilt and zoom to get an idea of a course's elevation profile, overlay roads to plan a Tour trip, and easily pick out intermediate sprints or mountaintops.

It's both convenient and awesome.

Harry Love, who participated in last year's Google Earth map, has posted a number of suggestions for how people can extend on this year's map, including geotagging photos at sharing sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video, using the "tdf2006" tag, and, for riders and teams, providing data feeds that could integrate with the course map.

Above is a still from Stage 15, which finishes atop Alpe d'Huez.

(Spotted at Bikeforall.net.)