Stage 2: Visé – Tournai

It was a stage of injuries, of sprinters, of chateaux and long breakaways, and a stage of rising above.  Stage 2 of the 2012 Tour de France from Visé to Tournai saw all the things we’ve come to expect from the paramount race of the world – pain, triumph, inhuman achievement and a gripping finish to keep us all guessing.

After the crashes and dramatic finish of yesterday’s stage into Seraing, the peloton started off slowly, savouring the beautiful panoramas and elegant cathedrals of central Belgium.  It was 22 kilometres into the stage before Anthony Roux of FDJ-BigMat attempted a breakaway and was quickly joined by Europcar’s Christophe Kern and Saxobank-Tinkoff Bank’s Michael Morkov, wearer of the polka-dot jersey after his participation in yesterday’s breakaway.   The three rode rapidly away from the peloton to build up a lead that reached around eight minutes, Roux leaning on his handlebars as though for a time trial to avoid using his broken left hand, the result of one of yesterday’s crashes.

The young Frenchman wasn’t the only rider putting on a brave face for the stage.  World time trial champion Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) was also in considerable pain from a fractured scaphoid in his left hand which had caused temporary doubt as to whether he would start the stage.   The German’s Tour de France certainly hadn’t improved, with a puncture in the prologue time trial preceding the Stage 1 crash which left him in a plastic brace.

The breakaway trio’s lead had dropped down to 6’15” as they passed through the city of Namur and began the climb up to the King of the Mountains point at the Côte de la Citadelle de Namur, a Roman-era fortress sitting at the top of the winding cobbles.  Morkov dashed ahead of Kern and Roux to take the single point on offer, extending his lead over the polka-dot jersey competition to three points.  Objective achieved, Morkov assumed a position at the back of the leading group and let the French pair do the work for the rest of the stage.

The gap quickly receding, the idle peloton realised they’d left it too late to catch the breakaway before the sprint point at Soignies, allowing Kern, Roux and Morkov respectively to take top points, and instead prepared to sprint for 4th place.  The teams of the sprinters, already with a rider each at the front to do the pacemaking, sent up their leadout trains to contend for the vital green jersey points.  Liquigas-Cannondale’s train was pulling for Peter Sagan, but Australian outfit Orica-GreenEDGE once again slipped sprinter Matthew Goss up the side to take the win ahead of Mark Renshaw (Rabobank) and Mark Cavendish (Sky).

Intermediate sprint aside, the race continued west across Belgium as the lead group’s advantage slowly ticked down.  As the peloton loomed behind, Roux decided that the attitude of the day was ‘never say die’ and attacked again with 31 kilometres to go, an action that earned him the Combative Rider award for the day, while Kern and Morkov were swallowed up by the quickly-moving peloton and promptly spat out at the back end.  As the pace increased, the hopeful teams of the sprinters moved to the front of the peloton for a second time and began preparing their sprint trains for the battle royale that was to be the stage finish.

At the rear of the peloton, though, Argos-Shimano’s sprinter Marcel Kittel was having trouble.  While his team led the peloton charging towards Tournai, Kittel was falling off the back of the main field, his expression strained.  Despite the help of teammates Kittel was unable to keep in touch any longer and dropped off, victim of a stomach bug, surrendering his chance at the day’s stage win.

The front of the peloton barely noticed his absence, flying towards the finish at nearly 70kph, scooping up the still-fighting Roux along the way.  The key sprint teams of Liquigas-Cannondale, Lotto Belisol, Orica-GreenEDGE and Sky Procycling were jostling for position as King Albert II of Belgium, as keen a cycling fan as his countrymen, waited for the riders at the finish.  Though Lotto Belisol appeared to have the win lined up neatly for Andre Greipel, Liquigas-Cannondale’s Peter Sagan clinging to his back wheel, the aptly-named ‘Manx Missile’ of Mark Cavendish shot past Greipel to take his 21^st Tour de France stage win, Orica-GreenEDGE’s Matt Goss again slipping up the side to take third.

The win has done little for the overall standings, Peter Sagan taking the green sprinter’s jersey the only change in the classifications.  Tomorrow the Tour heads into northern France and more medium mountains, a newfound battleground for Sagan which may enable him to consolidate his lead on the maillot vert.

Stage 15 - Limoux => Montpellier

My least favourite stage - a flat one.  Give me a good old mountain climb anyday, or a nice gripping time trial so I can count the seconds.  But a flat stage?  Nothing - on a good day nothing - happens until the very end, and then only for a few seconds!  Oh, to be in the Alps already!

But the flat stages are still important, even for the GC riders.  On a stage like today's, the challenge for the GC riders is to stay up the front and stay safe, a task that Cadel Evans says is enormously difficult when you don't have a team to help you as he does now.  With the sprinters jostling for position and the other GC riders trying to stay near the front, simply staying on your bike all stage can be the hardest thing you do.

Would it surprise anyone if I said there was a breakaway?  Very early on one of FDJ's favourite breakaway riders, Mickael Delage, bolted for it, followed by four others including the Tour's youngest rider, Anthony Delaplace.  The peloton were unconcerned, happy to let the other riders have a play while they concentrated on staying out of trouble for yet another stage.

They couldn't be too complacent, though, and after a while two of Cav's teammates came up to do the pace-making and hold the escapees at an acheivable distance of three minutes.  This also placed them in a good position to help Cav take top points available at the intermediate sprint point afterthe breakaway of five had gone through with Delage taking maximum points.  Philippe Gilbert and Jose Joaquin Rojas also followed Cav across the line, keeping themselves right up with the Manxman in the green jersery competition.  After this HTC continued to keep up the pace, with Leopard Trek and BMC rendering assistance in the interests of their GC riders as well.

The breakaway was holding its own until Katusha's Mikhail Ignatiev shot off the front at 22 kilometres to go to try and make it on his own.  Niki Terpstra of Quickstep decided to join him and indeed, soon left Ignatiev for dead and went on his own at 6.5 kilometres to go, but if there's anything the Tour has taught us this year, it's that a breakaway that fights within itself and doesn't work together has no hope of staying a breakaway until the stage's end.  Predictably enough the peloton caught Ignatiev and the three others and brought Terpstra back to within 12 seconds by the five kilometre mark.

Then with both Terpstra and the finish line in sight, Gilbert decided it was a nice day for a ride and brought Terpstra back into the fold as he went for the victory, followed by Anthony Roux (FDJ) and Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil).  But a determined Team HTC with a hot-shot Cavendish just raring for a race had already called dibs on this stage, and Gilbert and entourage were quickly outpaced as the Highroad train steamed into the town of Montpellier and very neatly delivered their green man to the finish line, well clear of Garmin-Cervelo's Tyler Farrar and Lampre sprinter Alessandro Petacchi.  Another victory on a platter for Manx missile Mark Cavendish.