The Tour de France - The First Half

It's been an interesting and exciting Tour so far.  Here are some random thoughts on the winners, losers, and interesting moments for each stage to date.

• Stage 1.  The bus gets stuck at the finish line, Kittel wins and Argos-Shimano get the first yellow jersey, and big crashes.  If there was ever a case to be made for race radios, this was it.  The Orica GreenEdge bus got stuck under the finish banner.  The officials decided to move the finish line to 3 km out.  Then they decided to move back after some of the teams had already started winding up for the sprint, and there was the inevitable big crash.  Tony Martin went down hard as did Ted King.  Contador and Sagan also went down.

• Stage 2.  Bakelants (Radio Shack-Leopard) managed to hold off a hard charging field to take a solo win and yellow by a single second.  A great ride.
• Stage 3.  Simon Gerrans outkicked Peter Sagan at the finish to win the stage.  Pretty cool!
• Stage 4.  The Tour moved from Corsica to Nice.  Orica GreenEdge wins the team time trial and Gerrans gets yellow.  This sort of makes up for the bus incident.  Ted King, injured in Stage 1, missed the time cut by 7 seconds.  The officials did not make an exception.  This stinks.
• Stage 5.  Cavendish gets his first win in the 2013 TDF.
• Stage 6.  Another sprinter's stage and Griepel gets his first win.  Gerrans loses yellow to his teammate Daryl Impey, South Africa's first yellow jersey holder.
• Stage 7.  Sagan finally wins a stage.  It looks like he has a lock on the green points jersey too.
• Stage 8.  First day in the Pyrenees and Sky dominates.  Mark and I cycled up to the top of the finishing climb at Ax 3 Domaines.  This is a rather short (7 km) but very steep climb.  Richie Port did a great job of setting up Froome for the win.  The Belkin team did okay as did Valverde.  Evans was over 4 minutes back, Hesjedal over 8 minutes, and Van Garderen over 12 minutes.

• Stage 9.  If Saturday's stage was Sky's day, Stage 9 was definitely not.  Porte went from second to 33rd place and Kiryienka didn't make the time cut.  This was a hard day with five major climbs.  Garmin blew the race apart on the first climb with repeated attacks isolating Froome.  Porte got dropped, and Movistar road tempo to make certain that he didn't get back up to help Froome.  Daniel Martin attacked near the top of the last climb and was joined by Fuglsang.  Martin took the win.  Go Garmin!  I am still not sure why Movistar or Saxo Bank didn't attack Froome more on the last climb.  Froome was by himself while Movistar had four riders, Belkin three, Saxo Bank and Katusha each with two.  Okay, so you don't send off your GC guy, but the others could have attacked and the GC riders could go if Froome cracked.  Froome is good, but he can't cover everything.  Andy Schleck is also showing signs of life.  It was interesting to see the start in Saint Girons.  Lot's of cool bikes!

• Stage 10.  Kittel wins again and Tom Veelers goes down in the sprint.  Many are blaming Cavendish for taking Veelers down.  At first I thought that this might have been the case, but after looking at the videos, I think Veelers was a fault.  Veelers was one of the leadout men for Kittel and pulled off to the left, but the road was curving to the left.  At the last moment, Veelers drifted slightly to the right.  Cavendish was simply following the road when he leaned into Veelers.  Veelers should have pulled off to the right or much further off to the left.  Cavendish could have avoided contact, but this would have taken him out of the sprint.  Watch the video and decide for yourself.
• Stage 11.  Tony Martin wins the time trial, Froome extends his lead, and Cavendish gets urine thrown at him.  I am glad the Martin won.  He seems like a genuinely nice guy.  Unless Froome has a really bad day in the Alps or on Mont Ventoux, he is going to win.  No matter what you think of Cavendish, he didn't deserve this sort of treatment.

Of the original 198 riders in the race, there are 182 riders left.  Riders out so far:  Kiryienka (Sky) and King (Cannondale) both missed the time cut. Van Den Broeck (Lotto Belisol), Shar (BMC), Bouhanni (FDJ), Bouet (AG2R La Mondiale), Noval (Saxobank), Gutierrez (Movistar), Bagot (Cofidis), Bono (Lampre-Merida), Dennis (Garmin), Vandervelde (Garmin).  Astana has lost three riders to injury including their GC man Brajkovic.