Author: broderic

Tomorrow’s stage is the first individual time trial of the Tour. It is expected that the main contenders for the Maillot Jaune are to make their moves. They’ll try to gain as much time tomorrow and then hold off and onto that time during next week’s mountain stages in the Pyrannees and the Alps. Good luck to them.

Yet, it has been interesting so far. The most surprising is the fact that a world chanpion, Tom Boonen, is in yellow. This hasn’t been done since Greg Lemond did it a long time ago. Booned is a sprinter. He’s in yellow. He has not won a stage yet. Today should’ve been it, but he lost again to the mad Austrailian sprinter, Robbie McEwan. McEwan leads in the green jersey race on points. He’s already won a stage at this year’s tour in a big bunch sprint. He looks and moves phenomally fast. Sprinters are the scariest mothers in the peleton. No fear just go fast. Anyway, Boonen missed being a yellow jersey stage winner, and tomorrow he may just lose the yellow. He’ll just have to settle for working to get the green off of McEwan.

The rest of the tour is going as planned. The days are flat, there’s a breakaway, it’s chased down and then the sprint to the finish. Except for stage 3, Esch-sur-Alzette to Valkenburg. This “flat” stage had a cat 3 hill at the end of 200 km of riding. The Caulberg is only 800 meters, but has a 7% grade. Steep. And it probably hurt the sprinters, because a surprise winner of the stage was Matthias Kessler.

It’s been amazing so far. A tour without Lance. It’s been interesting and hopefully the next two weeks will be awesome.

Not much to say about the first stage of this year’s tour. George Hincapie, an American, from Team Discovery Channel, a team mate of Lance’s during his 7 year reign is in yellow at the end of the day. I liked how Phil Liggett put it as Hincapie gains a few seconds in an intermediate sprint to claim the maillot jaune, “Cheeky.”

Anyway, the big news is that yestarday’s proluge winner who started out in yellow goes down with a bad laceration after the bunch sprint. It looked nasty on tape as there was a lot of bleeding for Thor Hushovd. I hope he’s okay and can continue with the race tomorrow and contend in the next three weeks.

Here’s some links to some blog commentary for those who need it:
Velo Gal’s blog
Caroline Yang Photography

Oh and if you can find it, pictures of the podium girls are well worth it. They are some hot french babes. My favorites are the girls that present the stage winners, because they wear white tops, navy skirts and nice heels. MMMM. Podium girls, I salivate over.