Stage 3 - Thor Scores More In Tour Points War

Before we take a look at what happened on today's stage, lets have a quick round-up of the fall-out from all those crashes yesterday. There's a nice piece here, telling us what the riders and directeurs made of it all. So who's out? And who's struggling on with injuries that the rest of us would use as a nice excuse for some time off work?

Victim number one is Christian Vandevelde, who has had a right shitty time of it on big stage races recently. Last year he crashed-out on stage 3 of the Giro, this year he crashed-out on stage 3 of the Giro and now he's out on stage 2 of the Tour...... which is really stage 3 if you count the prologue. I think he should stick to one and two day races from now on. As you can see he's off home now, with 5 stitches in his eyehole and a glum look on his face.

Also a non-starter today was Niki Terpstra, but he's ill rather than being another crash victim. In the down-but-not-out category are Robet Gesink, Tylar Farrar and Robbie McEwen.

So while yesterday's splits and crashes came as a bit of a surprise, today we were expecting trouble and we weren't disappointed. It was no shock to see experienced Classics contenders like Cancellara, Hushovd and Evans in the lead-group, but there were a few surprises too. Young Geraint Thomas was right up there and has proved to be a great Fantasy Tour investment. He now lies in second overall and will swap his GB national champions jersey for the best young rider jersey.

If anyone was concerned that Andy Schleck looked to be hurt yesterday, there was no sign of it today as he hung on in the front with team-mate Cancellara. Frank Schleck wasn't so lucky however and took a spill that put him out of the race with a broken collar-bone.

Also down and out was David Le Lay from AG2R. But no one picked him, so we don't care. In the end the stage went to Thor Hushovd, just ahead of Thomas and Evans.

Thor's now got the green jersey, and rightly so I'd say. After working hard to stay out of trouble yesterday and leaving all the other points competition hopefuls behind, he was proper screwed when no points were awarded. Fabian Cancellara regained the yellow jersey, so I expect the Saxo Bank mechanic is getting that yellow bike out of the team-truck as I type this.

Back behind the main group there were splits aplenty, Contador, Menchov and Wiggins seemed to finish pretty well, while Armstrong and Basso lost a bit of time. It probably won't count for much come the mountains, but you never know. Word is Lance had a mechanical, as did ex-yellow jersey Sylvan Chavanel. Lance was talking up his chances of sticking-it to Contador on the stage beofore the start, but I guess he didn't have the balls.

There's still a frustrating lack of any new Velogames scores. I hope they show up soon, as I'm sure my 1-2 today must count for something. In the meantime, I've made a bit of a spreadsheet thing that I will try and keep up to date with scores and withdrawls. It's not much fun to look at, it's all names and numbers and stuff..... not nearly as cool as the Wordle thing that Clive made.

The riders should have an easier time of it tomorrow. It's a nice short, mostly flat, stage that should end in a bunch sprint. It could finaly be time for Mark Cavendish to get a stage win, but he'll have some work to do if he's going to get that green jersey off Hushovd.