I didn't see much of this stage live and I've watched the sprint finish twice. Again, it was just a flat stage, but this one had a couple of pretty bad crashes (which I have not seen and I don't care to see, because ugh, really. The pictures make it look like total carnage and I don't need to see that). AG2R was doing a lot of work for their yellow jersey boy, though as Phil said either yesterday or today, perhaps that's not for the best because they should let the sprinter's teams do the work. I don't think that's necessarily the case, if only because they probably know they'd don't stand a chance to keep the jersey once we hit the next set of mountains. At least this way, maybe they'll make some allies and get themselves a lot of TV time. Also, AG2R is currently leading the team standings and that's just awesome.
The race was basically a chance to bring back a breakaway of two riders, then there were the crashes and ... then we got to one hell of a sprint finish. Not only did Cav win, but that Tyler Farrar is edging closer and closer to taking a stage. It almost looked like he'd have a win today. But what was really awesome as that Cav just barrelled through and not only did he win the stage, but he also took the green jersey from Thor. This really makes me happy. I'm really happy that he took the jersey, especially after his hilarious Versus interview before the stage where they tried to ask him all these questions and he was brilliant and playing coy.
The Columbia train was too strong for the break to succeed and Cav, well, is just. Cav broke a bunch of records (broke or tied), something about tying for the most stage wins for a British rider and the quickest number of wins in the shortest amount of time or something. I liked his post-race interview where they were like 'can you be in green in Paris?" and he's all 'I'm totally not thinking about this at all!' which I have to say, is the best answer ever. Who knows if he's thinking about it? I don't care, because I want him in green in Paris, but if he keeps not thinking about it and then winning stages? I'm not complaining.
Nothing else really changed on the stage, which was fine. Tomorrow is a bit more of an up and down stage, but again it could be for sprinters or maybe a breakaway. Let me just add that if this doesn't seem to make sense, it's because I've only had 5 hours of sleep and I'm basically sleep walking through this post. Hopefully tomorrow will be awesome. Sylvain Chavanel, how about another go at a break? That's my hope for tomorrow!
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