Allez Le Tour De France!

Stage 1...go!

The Tour de France have just rolled out of Vendeé and it is looking as iconic, serene and beautiful as ever. Let's take a look at who might feature today:

First of all we will see the new sprints system put into practice. As i write this the bunch (HTC, Garmin-Cervelo and Lotto) are chasing down 3 breakaway riders before the intermediate sprint, or maybe just controlling things at the front for the minor placings but then you know that because you're watching! That should become more exciting as we get further into week 1.

Then of course there's the thing everybody's talking about; the stage win and of course the first yellow jersey. Due to the lack of a prologue this year the two go hand in hand so this stage will be fought for with that extra bit of bite! A category 4 finish promises to mix things up a bit and we should see an interesting dash for the line. Who's in with a shout then? A lot of people, but I'll try and run through the favourites...

Phillipe Gilbert is my personal pick for the day. He couldn't have had this stage any more gift wrapped for him unless it was in Belgium! He will be wanting to showcase those new Belgian colours so expect to see him up at least somewhere towards the front.

Thomas Voeckler's team Europcar are based in this area so this stage is increddibly important for them. They showed they mean business as soon as the banner was cut when Perrig Quemeneur instigated the breakaway. So Tommy can certainly perform well on these short sharp climbs and you'll be seeing his tongue wagging style later.


Then in the event that any sprinters can keep up with the climbers of course they should desstroy the field at the line. So we're looking at riders like Matt Goss a.k.a 'the sprinter who can climb', Edvald Boassen-Hagen, maybe Mark Cavendish, Allesadro Pettachi, André Greipel and Tyler Farrar to name a few. The finish might favour a slightly stronger sprinter and in this event you'd be looking for world champion and apparent greek God Thor Hushovd and Tom Boonen.


There's plenty of other names such as Samuel Dumoulin, Johnny Hoogerland, Sandy Casar, Jose Rojas Gil and John Gadret (who won on a very similar finish at the Giro this year) who will all be looking for that coveted yellow jersey.


Exciting stuff and check back for reaction!

...

Well that was exciting wasn't it?! As predicted Gilbert destroyed the field and Hushovd was well up there, sprinting to 3rd, but there were a few suprises. Well I don't know who it was most suprising for, the riders or the man standing a bit too close to the road but with just under 10km to go a massive crash caused an even bigger split in the field that caught some of the favourites napping. This included....Alberto Contador.


Now a lot has been said about the weakness of this years Saxo Bank Sungard team but the strength of their leader has been enough to hush the critics. This however proved to be his downfall today as Contador was in completely the wrong position in the peloton. All the other favourites teams had moved their men up to the front in order to stay out of trouble but Saxo Bank were well down and asking for trouble. Well trouble they duly got. Another notable rider in this group was last years fourth place Samuel Sanchez.


There was another crash with just under 3km to go which involved almost all of the GC riders and a few of the picks for todays stage but they were fortunate enough to be given the same time as the main peloton and so it was only Cadel Evans (who put in a very late dig in the final few hundred metres) to gain from the day. 

Welshman Geraint Thomas also stayed upright and grabbed himself the white young riders jersey for the second yeah running, and coming into the TTT tomorrow could that turn into yellow? The intermediate sprint also livened things up although it was obvious that Mark Cavendish wanted to save energy and improve his chances of making it up the last climb (he was caught out in the second crash).


A very good start to the tour and the man of the moment is undoubtedly Phillipe Gilbert who has now not lost a race for an increddible 91 days!