The Giro d’Italia, the second biggest stage race in the world, and the Amgen Tour of California, North America’s biggest stage race, will be the source of a lot of channel hopping between Universal Sports and Versus. And downhill followers got an extra dose with the World Cup action from Slovenia, where Rachel Atherton and Greg Minnaar took top honors. You could watch it live, if you were awake, on Freecaster.tv.

This year’s Giro is providing some of the best day-to-day competition any stage race has witnessed in some time. The Amgen race just started earlier today and not much happened apart from a minor late-stage crash. After more than 100 miles, the leader and the rest of the riders finished separated by a whole 10 seconds. The result was understandable: Early stages typically are pretty tame, and hey, we’ve ridden much of Day One’s Cali route and by Northwest standards it is F-L-A-T.

There are numerous marquee racers in the Amgen Tour, however, including Lance the King and Mark the Mouth Cavendish (today’s winner), so let’s hope for some fireworks in days to come.

Full results (Lance is 69th, heh) here.