National Championships

So it's national championships day, a day where national pride kicks in and suddenly the entire rule book of cycling is thrown out of the window. Forget teams, alliances and working for your leader...this is every man for himself, battling to be able to pull on those home colours and represent your country around the world. So results are still coming in but lets have an early look at who did what:

Probably the most successful team of the day were Leopard-Trek with Frank Schleck retaining the road race jersey in his and their home race in Luxembourg. Spartacus (a.k.a Fabian Cancellara) retook the Swiss national champions jersey that he wore in his increddible 2009 and spring classics 2010 seasons. Robert Wagner also won a suprise win in a bunch finish in Germany from more formidable sprinters such as André Greipel and John Degenkolb.

Elsewhere world tour leader Phillipe Gilbert finally took the Belgian title and Tommy Voeckler tried but couldn't chase down breakaway specialist Sylvain Chavanel for the red, white and blue tricolour.

Now it was fairly apparent that Team Sky were going to dominate in Britain with the only other pro tour rider being Mark Cavendish who was always going to struggle with no team mates to back him up. This ultimately proved to be the downfall of the Manx Missile as he punctured, making any attempts at the jersey futile and so he abandoned. A 12 man group went away, half of which were clad in black and blue and from there-in nobody could touch them. This group was whittled down to just 3. Thomas, Kennaugh (the top 2 from last year) and one Bradley Wiggins. Experience proved to be the winner of the day as Wiggo, not wanting to leave it to the gamble of a sprint, attacked in the final few km's and when you're the beating Fabian Cancellara in time trials...no one is going to catch you. So the team leader showed who's boss to take the stripes and continue his amazing run of form that gave him his biggest major win at the Criterium Du Dauphiné recently.

Now with these races being so different to the formats of normal stage races, you might think that you couldn't forsee much from this weekend but Wiggins showed he is still smoking and must be bursting with confidence for the month ahead, Gilbert also looks to have carried his form and will be exciting us all from stage 1 and Chavanel will be trying to impress the home crowds by taking the Mailot Jaune once again.

It's certainly building nicely...