What was meant to be another normal, easy day in the Tour has once again turned into tragedy as only the Tour can. It's beginning to prove as it does every year that a normal day in the Tour de France is actually the most abnormal thing that can occur.
It did start off normal, at least - the customary breakaway with the peloton in no hurry to catch up. But 90 kilometres in, after comments to his DS from other riders, numerous trips to the team car, painkillers and struggling the whole way, Tom Boonen (Quickstep) hung up the dossard (race number) for this year's Tour. Suffering a concussion and a lot of grazes and bruises from the stage in coastal Brittany that took down numerous good riders, Boonen felt that he couldn't finish the day's stage. "I was wondering, 'who am I pleasing by continuing?'" Boonen is quoted as saying by Cyclingnews.com. "Not myself, that's for sure."
A few people were surprised when Jeremy Roy from FDJ launched himself off the front of the peloton, thinking that he surely couldn't be trying to bridge the seven-minute gap to the breakaway in front. But the cognoscenti knew that the day's stage would pass by Roy's house, as he'd written in his blog the night before, and as the cameras followed him Roy stopped outside a house on the very outskirts of Saint-Armand-Longpre to hug friends and family.
The feared winds began hitting the peloton soon, and the effect was clear. I guess it was too much to hope that a single stage of the Tour could go without a crash, especially in the first week, and the first one came at 48 kilometres to go. No one was seriously hurt, though several strong riders including Roman Kreuziger from Astana had some hard riding to catch up.
But the worst was yet to come. In another of the gruesome crashes like the one that took out Radioshack's Janez Brajkovic two days ago, a huge fall in the middle of the slow-moving peloton took out a number of well-known riders including Chris Horner and Levi Leipheimer from Radioshack, Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) and Tyler Farrar, the sprinter from Garmin-Cervelo. But the biggest loss of the day was Sky team leader Bradley Wiggins, who also came down in the fall. Wiggins was holding his left arm tenderly and wincing as the team doctor examined him, and it was later confirmed that Wiggins had broken his left collarbone. He was immediately withdrawn from the race and put into a race ambulance, leaving the six-odd Sky riders waiting to pace Wiggins back into the main peloton to try and bridge the almost four-minute gap as they dealt with the huge blow to their team. FDJ rider Remi Pauriol also broke his collarbone and did not finish the stage. Pauriol brings the list of riders no longer competing to eight overall.
That was not the end of matters. The massive crash in the middle of the peloton split it right down the middle. What looked to be only 60 riders made it to the front peloton, while another 80 who had crashed or been blocked by the crash chased them three minutes behind, with many other riders individually or in small groups trying to make it back to one of the pelotons.
And after all that drama the stage had yet to be decided! By this point, however, it was down to what front-pacing team HTC Highroad know best - a straight-out sprint. And after a dubious first few stages the American team had their famous lead-out train in perfect working order. All nine riders, unaffected by the crash, made a perfectly straight, even line at the front of the main peloton, with Mark Cavendish sitting in ninth place and every other sprinter in the world trying to get on his back wheel. But there is never any point trying to compete with the entire HTC lead-out train, and Mark Renshaw and compatriots made it easy for Mark Cavendish to take his 17th Tour de France stage victory, on the same finish line where he took his first victory in 2008. Needless to say, Cav was ecstatic, but "gutted" to hear about fellow Brit Brad Wiggins' withdrawal from the race.
Nothing to report on the top three GC contenders, but as the saying goes, at this point no news is good news. Knowing what separates GC riders from the rest is their climbing ability, it's likely Cadel Evans (BMC), Alberto Contador (Saxobank-Sungard) and Andy Schleck (Leopard Trek) will sit tight until the Pyrenees, where no one can ride quite as fast as they can up the mountains. Right now their main job is to stay at the front of the peloton and keep safe, though Cadel Evans is clearly feeling in brilliant form at the moment and may not have ruled out the possibility of another stage win, especially with Contador still giving fans no reason to believe that he is entirely the man who has won this race three times before. Is he still that man, or has Contador peaked already?
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