Tour de France fans can now track the progress of the cyclists, with Google Earth.

Everybody knows the popular Google Earth, a free virtual globe program offered by Google that maps the entire earth by pasting images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe. Also, everybody knows, or at least heard of the popular international cycling competition held in France.

Probably, most of you have already guessed what the two above things have in common. For those of you who didn’t, here goes: Tour de France fans can now follow the progress of their favorite completion via the satellite imagery of Google Earth. This can be achieved with a simple download which provides a detailed map of each of the 20 stages (and prologue), complete with all the key parts of each stage, the intermediate sprints and the climbs.

This initiative is not new, as last year, shortly after Google Earth was released, a bunch of Tour de France fans in the Google Earth Community put up the complete route of the 2005 Tour de France. This year, the complete Tour de France 2006 course has already been mapped in Google Earth well ahead of the July 1st start.

Google Earth is available for free at our download section.