Day 2 and stage 2. The Team Time trial. After the madness of stage 1 with riders falling off bikes in the neutral stage, yes Mr Greipel, I am looking at you, and a load of other crashes, we have the pre race favourite already behind by 80 seconds after a spectator got a bit to close to the flying peleton. Gilbert continued his red hot form to win the stage by 3 seconds from Evans who’s team rode like champions to keep him out of trouble. Could this be Cuddles year?

The other thing of interest from stage 1, the intermediate sprint. It was excellent to see the teams all jockey for position at the intermediate point, even though their sprinters were racing for 4th place at that point. Here is what Cavendish Tweeted after the stage…

“Think it’ll be hard to adapt menality to intermediate sprints. SO different than sprinting at end for win & hard to sprint for a minor place”

My stage 1 highlights :

– Greipel dropping it in the neutral zone.
– Matt Keenan talking about oysters 4 times in 45 minutes.
– Vanendert’s failed bunny hop and subsequent heavy stack about 70kms into the race.
– The intermediate sprint. That is really going to shake things up for the green jersey this year.
– The mayhem when the spectator got cleaned up and slowed up Contador.
– Team BMC getting to the front to protect Evans
– Gilbert’s finish
– Evans finish

The TTT is on a flat 23km course. With Team Saxo Bank to lead off, Contador could end up even further behind with all the other GC teams able to see what Saxobank does.

So, after 5 hours sleep, I will have some breakfast, do some odd jobs about the place and then off on the bike for Day 2 of the norbs Tour de France Challenge.