We recently attended Tour de Georgia cycling race in Georgia. The inaugural event marks the return of true stage racing in the U.S. Something not seen since the Tour DuPont in the early '90s. The initial site was developed by a rather savvy group out of Atlanta (ant farm interactive). Although the site contains all the core elements, it tries to impress too much.

First off a Flash intro. Like all Flash intros, cool to watch the first time, if you have the time, the plugin etc. Then it becomes old the next time and we're searching for the 'skip intro' button.

Interior design features consistent global and local navigation. Sidebar links to Cycling 101 and a Glossary are good ideas, especially when educating the many visitors who may know nothing about the sport of cycling. Course maps are animated, which once again, catches the eye the first time, but if you are visiting the site frequently to follow the race, it gets in the way.

Link off the home page for Tour de Georgia merchandise goes to a page with no co-branding, it's a scary looking store. Also once you leave the home page and navigate around the site, there is no link back home, the user is forced to use the back button, often repeatedly.

Pop-ups are used for the photo gallery, which has become almost a standard usage. One strange thing is the 'downloadable' photos which are offered in PC or MAC format. They are JPG files that are either zipped (.zip) or stuffed (.sit). But the compression offers little file size savings. So why zip up a single photo?

Results are now online, but usually not in a timely manner, but that's not the purpose of the site. CyclingNews.com offers the most up-to-the-minute coverage of all major cycling events, so that's where we went for our results. As an aside, VeloNews.com also covered the event, but it's sad when a web site based out of Australia (CyclingNews) does a better job of covering a US cycling race, than a US based site (VeloNews.

I understand though that one major goal of the site may have been to attract sponsors, and there is nothing a would-be sponsor will fall for more, than a slick looking web site.

All in all, Ant Farm does some cool stuff, and I like there logo.