1. Alberto Contador won the Tour de France by over 4 minutes over Andy Schleck (2nd) and teammate Lance Armstrong (3rd).
2. Mark Cavendish won SIX individual stages, but missed the green jersey, which went to Thor Hushovd.
3. The summit finish on Mont Ventoux did not provide as much drama as the Tour organizers had been hoping for.  Contador had gotten into some mountain breaks in the previous stages and put time in on everyone.  He also won the last ITT, which was mildly surprising.  By the time they reached the base of Ventoux, all Contador had to do was match any accelerations by Andy Schleck (which he did) and he had the tour in the bag.
4. Lance Armstrong demonstrated good form, especially toward the end of the tour.  He was able to hold off Frank Schleck for 3rd place with a good TT performance and by marking Frank Schleck on the slopes of Ventoux.
5. Contador demonstrated super fantastic awesome form.  He made winning the Tour by 4+ minutes look very easy.  Some suspect him of doping, but I am witholding judgment until there is actually some evidence to implicate him either way.
6. Armstrong and Contador hate each other.  This was demonstrated through Lance’s passive-agressive Twitter postings, Contador’s lack of consideration for the team (though Contador claims otherwise) and both of their post-tour remarks.
7. Armstrong is going to start his own team next year, Team RadioShack Texas Fried Chicken America Lance Armstrong.  I can name at least one person who will *not* be on the team.
8. Mark Cavendish is kind of an ass.  But he did apologize to Thor for his inappropriate remarks, so as far as I’m concerned (a) it’s water under the bridge, and (b) when you’re as good as Cavendish you can afford to be cocky.
9. The Schleck brothers are awesome.  They’re funny guys and great cyclists.  Frank won an Alpine mountain stage, and the scene at the finish line was fantastic.
10. The 2010 tour is going to be filled with drama.  Probably more drama than bike racing, to be honest.  Armstrong will be 38 and probably a bit stronger than he was this year.  He’ll be angry at Contador for being a good cyclist.  Contador will be 27 and in the prime of his career.  He’ll be hard to beat by anyone, even a motivated Lance Armstrong.

Here’s what happened: a breakaway of 12 riders gets away, including George Hincapie, who rides for Team Columbia. Hincapie is only 5 minutes and change off the yellow jersey. The breakaway gets a maximum lead of 8+ minutes, putting Hincapie in the virtual yellow jersey. While this is happening, Astana is riding on the front, setting what appeared to be a medium tempo–neither gaining nor losing ground on the breakaway.

With 50k to go, AG2R, the team of the yellow jersey, moved to the front and tried to up the pace. Unfortunately, they struggled and as they approached the finish line, Garmin and (oddly) Columbia set the pace.

In the end, Ivanov, the Katusha rider, won the stage.  Hincapie finished soon after with the rest of the breakaway, and 5+ minutes ahead of the peleton.  Nocentini saved his yellow jersey by 5 seconds.   Columbia’s efforts on the front to set Cavendish up for a sprint were for nothing as Cavendish ended up losing all his sprint points due to a positioning penalty

After the stage, the high school drama began:

• Hincapie blamed: Astana, for setting tempo and needlessly contributing to the chase of the breakaway
• Armstrong blamed: Garmin, for needlessly pushing the peleton toward the end
• Johan Bruyneel (Astana’s GM) blamed: Garmin, for the same reasons as Armstrong
• Johnathan Vaughters (Garmin’s GM) said: he wanted his guys on the front to avoid any back-of-pack shenanigans that have been commonplace in this year’s tour

Basically, everyone claimed that they would have loved to see Hincapie in yellow, but no one (not even his teammates) did much to help him out today.

My take on all of this is that Astana did actually contribute to the chase (despite Armstrong’s comments to the contrary).  Their “false” tempo was basically maintaining the gap between the break and the peleton.  What they could have done, if they really wanted Hincapie to get yellow, was to let AG2R take over the pacemaking much sooner, allowed them to blow (AG2R doesn’t have the firepower to bring a 12 man break back 8+ minutes), and THEN set the “false” tempo to the finish.  That would have been more effective, I think.

Also, I’m not buying Vaughters’ explanation for why Garmin was on the front late in the race.  The Garmin riders could have been *near* the front, but not *on* the front if they wanted to avoid crashes late in the race.  I’m calling BS on Garmin’s strategy.

Lastly, Columbia majorly screwed up today’s stage.  They neither got Hincapie his yellow jersey, nor Cavendish his green jersey.  Now Hincapie is pissed and Cav is almost out of the green jersey competition entirely.  Not a good day for Columbia.

Today’s stage 12 was unusual in that the breakaway (omigosh, wait for it) stayed away!  Evidently the sprinters’ teams were not interested in exerting themselves before the upcoming difficult stages.  Cavendish remarked after the stage that he’s now concentrating on winning the sprint in Paris, which is an understandable goal.  Nicki Sorensen put together a great attack with almost 5k to go and soloed to the finish.  Very nice.

Unfortunately, Levi and Cadel lost some GC time due to a crash late in the race.  Hopefully they can get their act together for the last week and a half of the race.

You could have fooled me though.  It was just like every single other flat Tour stage: a breakaway of between 2 and 9 riders gets away at kilometer 0, attains a lead of between 3 and 11 minutes, is brought back by the peleton with between 1 and 20k to go, and a sprinter named Mark Cavendish wins the stage.  Today it was 4 riders, 4 minutes, 2k and Mark Cavendish.

We have another thriller of a stage tomorrow, and another no-radio stage on Thursday.  It’s looking like my call of eleven stage victories for Cav may just come true at this rate!

Today’s stage featured another gutsy breakaway performance, this time from David Millar. He had a minute solo on the peleton with 10k to go, but got caught with 1500 meters to the finish. Too bad really, he was riding very strong and it would have been a great moment for him.

At any rate, the stage went to the sprinters, where, on the uphill finish, it was the strength of Thor Hushovd that prevailed over some of the more agile sprinters (such as Cavendish). Cervelo Test Team’s first victory in this year’s Tour was good to see.

Tomorrow’s mountain-top finish should be the first real test for the yellow jersey contenders. Cancellara should lose his yellow jersey, and if Contador puts in the ride we all know he’s capable of, he has a very good chance of wearing yellow after tomorrow’s stage.

Also in the mix is He Who Must Not Be Named, still 0.22 seconds behind Cancellara in the GC. We’ll see if he has the ability to keep up with Contador in the mountains. I suspect he doesn’t, but if he can, it would be a stage for the ages, as if they finish together it will be He Who Must Not Be Named who dons yellow on Saturday.

The real question (at least, according to the Internet) was: would there be friction between Armstrong and Contador? As it turns out, the answer was NO (the team rode beautifully from start to finish, with Armstrong taking strong pulls and Contador taking minimal pulls as the protected leader of the team). But I could have told you that before the stage even started–it would have been stupid for the team to fracture during the TTT! Everyone loses in that situation.

With Astana’s convincing victory in the TTT today, it made it that much harder for the other GC contenders to catch the Armstrong/Contador (Armstrontador?) pairing. Though Saxo Bank’s strong showing allowed Cancellara to keep yellow, Armstrong sits in 2nd place by a fraction of a second. Contador is not far back either.

For now, Team Astana sits in an unusually commanding position (for the first week of the TdF) over the rest of the peleton. My prediction is that Cavendish will win approximately eight consecutive stages, and then Armstrontador will duke it out in the mountains. If anyone not on Team Astana wants to win this race, they’ll have to have some special moments in the mountains and the last time trial. It’s Astana’s race to lose.

Today, Mark Cavendish won the stage virtually uncontested with a perfect leadout from his teammates. And no one was surprised. This guy is ridiculous. He’s got a great support crew to get him to the last 300 meters, and at that point he simply can’t lose. I’m calling 11 stages for Cavendish in this year’s Tour, and over 9000 green jersey points as well.

It was interesting to watch the pre-race interview of Lance Armstrong conducted by Frankie Andreu. For those of you who don’t know the history, in 1996 he and his wife testified that Lance told cancer doctors, in the Andreus’ presence, that he (Armstrong) had use EPO that year. Evidently, this testimony was sealed but got leaked, and at that time Andreu stood by the testimony. They settled in 2006, but things are understandably still awkward between them.

The tension in the interviews was palpable, but they both did their job. Normally Andreu’s commentary is slightly awkward, but I could understand any difficulties he had doing that interview.

Anyway, it was a very Cavendish-y day. And those are always good days. (I saw him in person at last years Tour of Missouri, and he is quite the good-looking fellow.)