Stage 1 - June 29th 2013
How is this to kick off the 100th edition of the Tour de France: the Orica-GreenEdge bus gets stuck under the finish line banner. The finish line was then moved to 3km back when the peloton was 15km away. It was then moved AGAIN to the actual finish line when the bus got cleared in time. With all the confusion, there was a tremendous amount of crashes. In fact, two of the best sprinters, Mark Cavendish and Peter Sagan hit the ground, and it was Marcel Kittel who won the stage, and who wore the first yellow jersey.
While riders were indeed hurt, they all finished the stage, and the finishing times were neutralized because all the events. All of the riders started stage 2.
Stage 2 - June 30th 2013
Although there were no bus crashes today, the brutal mountains hit the peloton hard. It's not usually on the second stage that riders get isolated and dropped from the main group. However, the stage played into Radioshack Leopard Trek's plan. Maybe Jan Bakelants isn't RSLT's GC contender, but he won the stage, and is now sitting 1" ahead of 92 riders. He looks pretty happy to be in Yellow. Let's hope RSLT can defend it.
Stage 3 - July 1st 2013
Today we had our first 2 DNFs, Yoann Bagot, who got food poisioning, and Andrey Kashechkin. Even with all the crashes on Stage 1, we've only just now started seeing DNFs.
Today's sprint finish showed the world that Peter Sagan can be beat, when Simon Gerrans crossed the finish line a split second ahead. However, the consolation prize for Sagan was the Green Jersey. He was finally able to secure more sprint point than Kittel.
I am wondering what Sagan is growing on his face though. It's not that I don't like it, I mean it does make him look older, but I just don't feel that it fits him.
...maybe in a few more days, I'll bring you up to speed again. But for now, you have to deal with my very random blog postings.
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