Tour de France Preview Stage 3, July 6th

"Carnage!" is how Levi Leipheimer the American Radio Shack rider (and one of the overall favorites) described today's stage 2. Everyone who is anyone went down at least once. Any hope that tomorrows stage 3 traverse over the pave of l'enfer du Nord or the "hell of the north" won't have much of an impact went right out the window. In stage 3, the Tour will race over 13k of unfinished uneven and if it rains, glacially slippy, cobblestone roads that date back to Napoleon. Teams (Sky/Astana) will be out to protect their riders (Wiggins/Contador) that aren't built for this type of racing. Teams like Saxo Bank, Cervelo, and Radio Shack have targeted this day as a chance to exploit their opponent's weaknesses. They will hope for a repeat of the '99 Tour when Alex Zulle went down on the only exposed at low tide Passage du Gois and lost 4 minutes to eventual winner Lance Armstrong, when his team hit full on gas when a crash happened. One thing is for certain, there will be crashes, there will be carnage. Someone will lose their dream tomorrow.