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.

Stage 10 - Aurillac => Carmaux

Finally, a 'good' stage on the Tour de France - because no-one crashed out!  It's a little bit sad that this should be dubbed a 'good' stage and not a 'normal' stage on the Tour.  While there was a crash, it was comparatively small, and everyone got up and rode away.  One of the 'uninjured' teams in yesterday's round-up is also off that list now - Leopard Trek had their first piece of bad luck when several of their riders when down in a crash 11 kilometres from the start of the stage, but apart from a few scrapes and bruises all are well.

But that crash was the incentive for the breakaway, using the moment of confusion to leap off the front of the peloton.  Saur-Sojasun's Anthony Delaplace was up there again, along with Remy Di Gregorio from Astana, another team that has changed tactics to breakaways after losing their team leader, and four other riders.   Newbie Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil) made his prescence felt, taking all the King of the Mountains points to prevent anyone else encroaching upon the lead of his teammate Johnny Hoogerland in that competition.

The peloton raced through the intermediate sprint, Mark Cavendish once again showing his dominance in that discipline, before settling itself into a steady rhythm with HTC-Highroad and Europcar making the pace.  They were later joined by the teams of the sprinters such as Omega and Garmin to try and bring the breakaway back before the sprint finish of the stage.

They reeled in the breakaway with around 30 kilometres to go, Marcato trying to hang on until he'd crossed the final time and claimed the final mountain points. But the peloton was too strong riding uphill, and collected the 27-year-old, who won himself the red number of the most combative rider for his efforts.

It wasn't until around 10 kilometres from the finish that anyone made their move.  The golden boy of this year's Tour, Belgian Philippe Gilbert, raced off the front of the peloton, along with the Tour leader Thomas Voeckler, Cofidis' Tony Gallopin, Quickstep's Dries Devenyns and Tony Martin of HTC-Highroad, who was 6th in the GC.  This caused a bit of panic for the peloton, who didn't like the thought of Martin, Voeckler or Gilbert quite so far ahead, even when 'far' constitutes 11 seconds, so there was some frantic pace-making from the teams of the leaders which saw them finally reeled in around five kilometres from the end.

Then the sprinters began to come forward, HTC's lead-out train taking prominence despite being shorter than usual - Matty Goss, Bernhard Eisel and Mark Renshaw were dropped on the climb up the last hill.  This meant that Mark Cavendish went for the sprint from further back than usual.  Appearing from behind the wheel of a Liquigas-Cannondale rider, the Manxman went like crazy as usual, Omega Pharma-Lotto sprinter Andre Greipel on his wheel.  In the last 100 metres Greipel came up beside Cavendish, and finally had his victory over his rival by pipping Cav for the win by a wheel.  Thor Hushovd also made it over the climbs to finish fourth in the stage.