Tyler Hamilton, an American rider who fractured his collarbone on the first day of the Tour de France, is now in fifth place halfway through the race. He is updating a blog of sorts and this entry is revealing:

I'm sorry if this journal entry isn't very riveting. We have CNBC on our televisions here at the hotel tonight and they are showing the previous week's worth of the Tonight Show and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It's been 7 months since I've seen American television so I'm having a hard time pulling myself away. It's good to have a few laughs... even if I have no idea who the guests are.

Our elite athletes are regular people, too. And I can understand the American television withdrawal, having once spent a full year out of the States and watching painful reruns of Ally McBeal from the show's last, dying years.