The man in yellow:

Ok girls, as a little gift for you all, today I've decided to publish two posts in less than 12 hours of time. After telling you about my Maturità adventures, in fact, here I am talking about the Tour. Are you happy? Of course you are! So, let's write a few random observations of mine about the first stage of the French race.

First thing to notice about this year Tour is the fact that the riders started their adventure from Passage du Gois, a passage in the sea that appears just twice pro day. In 1999 the riders had to face this path in the middle of the sea during a stage and that caused a true carnage: lots of people slipping and crashing, riders getting retired, GC contenders losing 6 minutes from Armstrong.
Today luckily nothing serious happened, also because the race actually started as soon as the riders hit the solid French asphalt after leaving the slippery sand behind them.
Dad was slightly disappointed by that and complained about the lack of the 'true' Passage du Gois for a while. My uncle, on the other hand, kept on calling me to tell me that Frank Schleck had just fallen into the sea. His jokes worked 2 times, but then I started watching the race and he couldn't take me in anymore.
To say the truth, however, one rider (André Greipel) did fall while riding on Passage du Gois, but his crash didn't have any consequence.

As soon as the race started, three brave riders (Roy, Westra and Quemeneur) became the first breakawayers of the 2011 Tour. They were caught with 18.5 kms to go, after a big effort by Omega-Pharma Lotto.

Talking about Omega, two things to say: firstly, Jurgen Van De Walle is a hero; secondly, Gilbert should have dyed not just his hair, but also his eyebrows.

Talking about Van de Walle, some of you may wonder why I consider him a 'hero'. Well, the reason is simple: he crashed heavily in the middle of the stage, but in spite of that he pulled in front of the peloton all day long. Simply amazing.

Talking about Gilbert, instead, I must say I do like his idea of dying his hair blonde. But still, I believe he should have dyed his eyebrows too.

Still talking about hair, everyone saw the pictures of Thor Hushovd wearing a wig during the TdF presentation. As predictable, that has already become one of my personal highlights of this year Tour.

Remaining in the Garmin team, here's one thing I didn't know about David Zabriskie: he's become a vegan and now he's following a vegan diet. That means he can't eat meat, eggs and fish and that he can't even drink milk. And in spite of that, he's taking part in a hard race like the Tour: amazing.

Anyway, back to the competition. The stage was actually pretty boring in its first part, so the chronists had a lot of time to talk about the riders taking part in the race. In that way I could discover the existence of Yohann Géne, the first rider from Guadeloupe to take part in the Tour.

The stage became much more interesting in the last 10 kms. At that time there had already been some crashes, one of which involved also Nicolas Roche (another one instead involved poor Linus Gerdemann). Then, with 8.5 kms to go, Maxim Iglinskiy hit a female supporter who was standing on the edge of the road. The collision was very strong (I really do hope that supporter is fine) and it caused a big crash, which involved guys like Sanchez, Kreuziger and Contador. Other riders instead managed to remain at the head of the race. Amongst them there were los Schleck, Basso, Evans, Wiggins and Radioshack's dynamic trio fomed by Leipheimer, Kloden and Horner (the youngest one amongst them is 67 year-old Kloden). Immediately after the crash, Radioshack began pulling hard, helped by BMC. Luckily, this time no one talked about fair play, although an Italian chronist compared the developing situation with Chaingate (that man had to comment the race for 6 hours, so I'll apologise him for this).

With 2 kms to go, then, there was another crash, which involved also Ivan Basso and Andy Schleck. Luckily for them, their final delay was neutralised by the jury, since their crash took place with less than 3 kms to go.

After that crash, the fight for the main positions began. Trofimov tried to surprise anyone, but the first real attack was Cancellara's one. Fabian was followed just by Gilbert but, when he realised that Philippe was on his wheel, he stopped his attack. PhilGil instead continued his action, which brought him to win the stage and to get the yellow jersey. Second in the stage was a super Evans, third was Hushovd.

After the stage, an enthusiastic Gilbert looked simply overjoyed on the podium, where he couldn't enjoy (for the first time in the season) the company of his son Alan. However, I think it's just a matter of time before we see Gilbert jr. back on the podium with his dad.

Talking about los Schlecks, Frank crossed the finish-line with 6 seconds of delay from Gilbert, whereas Andy crossed it 1' 20" after the winner, together with Contador, Basso and Samu Sanchez. However, as already said, Andy and Basso's delays were neutralised, since they were caused by a crash that occured in the last 3 kms of the stage. Contador's delay instead was registered so that, right now, Andy Schleck has 1' 14" of advantage on the Spaniard. Considering that OGL lost last year Tour because of 39", I think he can be satisfied with this result and with the fact that, this afternoon, Contador was never in the first part of the peloton. A bad sign of form, or a simple coincidence?

(pic by Bettini)