Mad, bad and dangerous to be in

 A review of week one (and a bit) of the Tour de France, up to the first rest day and it’s business as usual, only more so...

As if determined to hang on to the black skull and crossbones jersey as the sporting event that ‘goes up to eleven’, to slightly misquote Nigel Tuffnel, the Tour de France continues to cross the line between genius and madness like it’s the pedestrian crossing by my local newsagents.

Before it even started, you got a sense that all would not be well over the 3 weeks of sporting sadism that is Le Tour.  At a slightly surreal ‘introduction to the teams’ held in what appeared to an old Roman amphitheatre, defending champion* Alberto Contador was roundly booed.  Why?  Well it’s all in the asterisk.  After last year’s Tour it was revealed Contador had failed a dope test.  The Spanish cycling authorities accepted his claim that it was due to eating some contaminated meat and cleared him to race on.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) weren’t so easily satisfied and wanted a new hearing before this year’s Tour.  Lawyers for Contador got the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing postponed, so he’s free to take part this year, but nobody knows if he’s the defending champion or not!

So before a wheel’s been turned the Tour is already mired in controversy.  Even by their own high standards of farce this is pretty good going.  The shame of it is that it is such a monumental achievement just to complete the Tour, let alone win it, that the riders deserve better.

This year over three weeks they’ll cover over 2,000 miles in 21 stages, with just two rest days, taking in the Alps and the Pyrenees, before the survivors reach Paris.  It is quite insane and part of me can see how tempting it must be to take something to dull the pain and keep a rider on the road.  In all honesty I wouldn’t want to try it without drugs!

Drugs and professional cycling have a long history of course, Contador and Alexander Vinokourov (who’s back after serving a drugs ban) are just the latest in a long line.  But the fact that they don’t seem able to hold the unquestioning loyalty of fans who used to enjoy the likes of Marco Pantani (I include myself here) without questioning too deeply how they did it, is at least a sign of some sort of progress.

In the past it seemed from the outside that a doping ban was viewed as an occupational hazard.  But if it means your whole career is tarnished and you will never get credit for your achievements...  It’s a big ask to get rid of something so ingrained, but with young riders and new teams coming into the sport who understand the PR value of riding clean, perhaps progress is gradually being made.

Enough of the soapbox.  Week one has already surpassed all expectations as the greatest soap opera in sport continues to outdo itself. 

Instead of the normal start with a prologue time trial stage one got straight into road racing in the Vendee, a mere 118 miles.  With almost 200 riders, first day nerves and narrow exposed roads, the inevitable mass crash happened when a spectator standing too close to the edge of the road caught a passing member of the Astana team.  Down went half the field.  It happens.  But what normally does not happen is the defending champion* gets caught behind the crash and loses almost one and a half minutes on the General Classification.

It should – according to the experts – get wiped out in the mountains, but the fact it happened at all was the first hint that all may not be well at Contador’s new team Saxo Bank, now minus the Schleck brothers.  The stage was won and won well by Belgian Philippe Gilbert, who might not win the race overall, but looks like a Green jersey contender.

As is becoming traditional Mark Cavendish had a misfiring start, but he seems to need people to start doubting him, so he can prove them wrong. Don’t bet against stage wins (plural) for the Manx Missile – in fact do bet on just that.  I’ll put him down for 4 stages now.

Stage two was a short team time trial – it’s when they wear the aerodynamic helmets that make them look like smurfs.  Or something out of a Pet Shop Boys video.  Garmin-Cervelo came home first to put Thor Hushovd in yellow, from BMC, who put in a surprisingly good showing to pip Sky and HTC Highroad.

Sky’s performance was enough to see Geriant Thomas in the white jersey as the highest placed young rider (under 25) and HTC seem to have their train ready to role and might have finished even higher if Bernie Eisel hadn’t lost his bike from under him on virtually the first corner.  Saxo Bank failed to convince again.

Stage three was 123 miles of fairly flat racing with a slight uphill finish – to deter the pure sprinters?  In fact the sprinters don’t seem to quite know what to make of the race this year.  With a revised green jersey points competition putting more emphasis on one intermediate sprint each day, as well as points at the finish.  Initially no one seemed to want to stand up and say ‘I’m going for the green jersey’ with Cavendish summing up the mood when he claimed that if it comes along all well and good, but only as a by product of stage wins.

Today gave the lie to that.  While Cavendish is undoubtedly focused on stage wins and he clearly finds it hard to motivate himself for a sprint halfway through a stage, finding himself well placed in the main peloton Cavendish showed his desire, bumping, boring and briefly using his head to maintain his racing line when pressured by Thor Hushovd.

Cav won the sprint but later had the 10 point taken away by race officials as he and Hushovd were disqualified from that sprint.  Which seemed a bit harsh.

Meanwhile, race leader Hushovd turned domestique to lead out Tyler Farrar for the stage win.  His first Tour stage win and he also became the first American to win on 4th July.  Wonder if we’ll get a French winner on Bastille day?

Suddenly Garmin-Cervelo have stage wins on consecutive days – having never won a stage before – oh and Hushovd stays in yellow.  No overall change as Cadel Evans remains second by a second and Geraint Thomas leads a trio of Sky riders in the top 10.

Just 106 miles for stage four, with a short but significant uphill finish, so not a day for the sprinters.  In fact it turned out to be the first sighting of the race favourites in direct combat.  As expected Contador attacked hoping to take a few seconds out of his rivals, despite being involved in another crash earlier in the day. 

Andy Schleck’s lack of response to Contador’s attack either showed great confidence or a worrying sign of things to come in the mountains.  Cadel Evans, whose BMC team have consistently kept him on the front and out of the trouble that’s plagued Evans in the last couple of Tours, was much more impressive in taking Contador’s wheel and piping him on the line to the stage win.

Bradley Wiggins moved up to 6th overall while Geraint Thomas kept the white jersey and Hushovd defended the yellow far more comfortably than most people predicted. 

Meanwhile the crashes that are becoming a feature of the opening week continued, a broken collarbone meaning the retirement of Radio Shack’s Janez Brajkovic today.

Stage five was another hundred mile plus day with a less than flat finish, but HTC Highroad brought Cavendish to the front and in an impressive display even by his standards, the Manxman beat the well fancied Philippe Gilbert to clock up his sixteenth stage win in just four Tours.  To make it an even better day the judges recognised Cavendish was baulked by Tom Boonen and José-Joaquín Rojas at the intermediate sprint.

Still don’t think Cavendish will get green in Paris, but he will get more stages for sure.

Crazy crash of the day goes to Saxo Bank’s Nicky Sorensen who had his bike whipped away from him by a passing motorcycle cameraman, leaving the Dane to bounce into a roadside picnicking family sans bike.  I’m not making this up, honestly!  Well you couldn’t could you?

Overall standings much the same with Thor ‘the God of thunder’ (as ITV4’s Phil Liggett likes to call him. Repeatedly.) in yellow again by a second from Evans and Sky’s trio of Wiggins, Thomas and Edvald Boasson Hagen maintaining their top ten places.

Stage six clocked in at 140 miles of alleged flat roads, making it the longest stage of the tour and while not the toughest, well let’s just say if I had to ride one stage so far – give me the team time trial at 14 miles every time!

Despite the peloton bringing back the expected escape for a sprint finish, Cavendish did not feature prominently, giving an opportunity to his lead out man Mark Renshaw – himself no mean sprinter – who was beaten on the line by Edvald Boasson Hagen.  The young Norwegian giving Sky their first ever stage win and with Thor Hushovd again defending the race leaders jersey, they’ll be dancing in the streets of Oslo, to abuse an old cliché.

Stage seven was another 200km plus stage, that’s somewhere north of 135 miles in old money and it managed to sum up the triumphs and disasters of week one.  Cavendish grabbing a second stage win, almost as expected, such is the pressure he rides with, but Brad Wiggins grabs the headlines, for all the wrong reasons, crashing out of the tour with a broken collar bone.

To add insult to injury, as the Sky team waited by the roadside, in the vain hope of being be able to escort Wiggins back into the peloton, they also lost their top ten placings and Thomas effectively relinquished the white jersey.  Meanwhile Thor ‘The god of...’ yes OK Phil, he’s a large Norwegian, get over it.  Where was I?  Oh yes Thor Hushovd was still in yellow and the rest of the General Classification remained pretty much unchanged.

A week may be a long time in politics, but in bike racing the world can look very different in just 24 hours.  But as Wiggins was whisked off to hospital – he later gave an understandably off the wall interview straight after being discharged ‘I’m jibbering now’ he admitted, probably due to being pumped full of morphine – Tom Boonan was also abandoning as the result of injuries sustained in a crash on stage six.

Sky were having to come to terms with having lost their team leader, when Wiggins was supposedly in the form of his life.  Well, things couldn’t get any worse... could they?

The eighth stage proved a welcome return to racing, not without a few mishaps, moving into the Massif Central and producing a breakaway win for Rui Alberto Costa of Movistar.  It was a win that was greeted as a change of luck for a team who have lost one team member to a freak domestic accident and have another one in hospital and just out of a coma.

But this is the Tour de France.  Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find Costa and his brother failed a dope test last year.  It was only a ‘mild stimulant’ and the brothers ban was reduced in the light of their claim that it was included in a food supplement.  Hmm...

Stage nine and any lingering whiff of drugs scandals past was knocked clean off the agenda in the carnage crashes, abandonments and the first major shift in the General Classification.

The bare bones of the stage were a win for Luis-Leon Sanchez of Rabobank in a small breakaway, from Thomas Voeckler, who also took over the yellow jersey.  The Frenchman had shown an endless and at times almost comical appetite for attacking off the front in the previous couple of days and was a deserved and popular winner.  Although since James Richardson pointed out that he’s a Harry Enfield lookalike I can’t take the bloke seriously.

Voeckler took so much time out of the field that on the General Classification he was now almost two and a half minutes ahead of Cadel Evans in third, stage winner Sanchez separating the two of them in second overall.

But even a Frenchman in yellow still wasn’t the headline story of the day.  More crashes.  Bad ones.  Alexander Vinokourov missed a corner and broke his leg.  In the same incident Garmin-Cervélo’s Dave Zabriskie and Omega Pharma Lotto leader Jurgen Van den Broeck  also left the Tour by ambulance, with a broken wrist and shoulder, rib  and lung injuries respectively.

But even worse was one of the moments for which this tour will be remembered.  A French TV car, trying to keep pace with the breakaway, swerved to avoid a tree and sideswiped Juan Antonio Flecha of Sky, falling heavily he in turn took out Johnny Hoogerland who summersaulted into a barbed wire fence, shredding his legs.

Miraculously the pair finished the stage, both in bad shape and well behind the main field.  A clearly stunned Hoogerland even picked up the king of the mountains jersey, due to the points he’d racked up in the stage prior to crashing.

Stage nine is followed by a –much needed – rest day.  Whether Fletcha and Hoogerland can be patched up to continue remains to be seen, but noises coming out of the Sky bus indicate that they are not ruling out legal action against the driver of the French TV car.  It’s about the only legal case I can see anyone connected with Rupert Murdoch standing a chance of winning right now.

So nine stages down, Voeckler leads but it is the received wisdom that will not last in the mountains.  The Schleck brothers are well placed and have kept their powder dry, but can Andy ride away in the mountains?  Not sure I’m convinced yet.  Alberto Contador’s been getting caught in crashes, doesn’t seem to be getting the support of his team and is rumoured to be carrying a knee injury.  He doesn’t look in good shape at all.  But is it all kidology?  Only in the mountains will we know for sure.

Which leaves us, of the pre-race favourites still in the race, with Cadel Evans best placed and finally with a team able to ride for their leader, he looks the best bet unless a real wild card can emerge and without a strong team around you, that’s a very big long shot.

So I’ll join the Evans bandwagon.  After all, he has George Hincapie on his team and George is a man who knows how to work for Tour winners, having been Lance Armstrong’s wingman.

Ironically Hincapie may yet make headlines for a different reason, as he’s rumoured to have given a statement to US authorities investigating the long

whispered allegations of doping against Armstrong.  Don’t hold your breath on that one, but who’d have thought it – drugs in cycling. 

Oh dear... right on cue, since writing the above Russia's Alexandr Kolobnev of the Katusha team has tested positive for a banned substance.  The usual denials followed, but if the B sample confirms it, he’ll be thrown off the tour, sacked by his team and apparently fined five times his salary.

But will it stop it?  I doubt it, but at least Kolobnev is a little known rider, lying 60th or so in the race.  If Fletcha and Hoogerland roll out on Tuesday to continue the Tour then they are the real story, demonstrating the both the crazy demands of the Tour and the insane bravery of the riders who take part in it.

As Mark Cavendish tweeted; ‘You want to know the sick thing about the Tour de France? I'm rather quite tired, yet GC riders haven't 'really' started yet.’

And we haven’t even started in the mountains yet!