A very crashy Tour

A 3-day weekend of riding and waking up early to watch the Tour de France reminds me that it's time for my annual Tour post. After all the hype & endless repeating of the Lance vs. Contador feud from the 2009 Tour, July 2010 is finally here. On Saturday the Prologue began in Rotterdam, proving to be no surprise that world champion time trialist (and hot Swiss guy) Fabian Cancellara needed no motor in his bike to crush everyone's time. Resplendent in yellow, and congratulated by Eddy Merckx, Fabian and the rest of the field rolled out today on Stage 2. But wait! I forgot all about Stage 1. What a mess. As all the teams fought to get their leadout men to bring their sprinters to the front, the twisty turns to the finish resulted in total chaos. First Adam Hansen and Mark Cavendish were caught up in a crash on a sweeping right turn, and then as everyone wound up within 1k of the finish, a massive pileup ensued. Caught up in the melee was well, pretty much the entire peloton. Poor Tyler Farrar had his rear derailleur torn off by locking up with the bike of an AG2R rider, who did not seem happy about that at all. A stage win by an American sprinter on the fourth of July would have been sweet. I'm sure Tyler could have achieved that goal had it not been for the craziness resulting in the massive crash. As it turns out, once again Alessandro Petacchi emerged from the chaos unscathed to storm across the line, much the same way he did in the Tour de Suisse when Cavendish and Haussler were caught up in a crash.

Anyway back to stage 2, Brussels to Spa. What seemed like a decent entry to the Ardennes ended up being absolute carnage. I've read the tweets, the blogs, and the articles, seen the videos, and watched the coverage on Versus. Apparently a moto crashed trying to avoid a fallen rider, and resulted in oil being spilled all over the road. This turned the descent of the Stockeu until "complete and utter chaos" with riders all over the road. Seeing the pictures of torn jerseys, bloodied faces, elbows and legs, just makes me ache. These guys, at least the ones who have not had positive x-rays for broken bones (Christian Vandevelde has 2 broken ribs and is out of the Tour) will be at the starting line tomorrow. Even Lance has road rash from a crash. Most of the GC guys hit the deck today at least once.

So I'm basically just rehashing everything that has already been broadcast and written. And there are some saying that this type of course should be reserved for the Spring classics and has no place in the Tour (Chris Horner, for one). I would have to agree. The Tour is difficult enough every year, why make it even more treacherous than it already is? These guys are away from their families, train for years to be there, spend every night in hotels, ride over 100 miles a day and burn thousands of calories. I for one don't want to see them bloodied and injured on the roads, that doesn't make it more exciting. What makes it more exciting is the suffering sure - but suffering like seeing a break that actually makes it to the finish, like Sylvain Chavanel's courageous ride today. That man deserves to be inyellow. Suffering like the contorted face of Jens Voight fighting to bring his teammates back to the main group after the crash. Suffering like the consecutive leadout men who pull off when their job is done and hope their sprinter is the first across the line.

I will get up at 5:30am to watch the Tour each day, then read about it on Twitter and all the internet articles, then watch it again in the evening. I'll talk about it with anyone who knows enough about cycling but I won't tolerate anyone who thinks that the Tour is easy. It's a pure sufferfest.

It sure makes it hard to predict any winners from the GC contenders with this type of start to the Tour. I do think that Lance will do well on the Pave' tomorrow, as will all the teams whose main guys ride the Spring classics. I wish Tom Boonen was there, as he'd really love it, even after his losses to Cancellara in both Flanders and Roubaix this year. He's Belgian, he lives for the cobbles. Contador may dance on his pedals and fly up the climbs but I don't see him doing well on the bone-jarring cobbles. I hope to hell it doesn't rain though, or it will be a total mess.