Clearly the Strategy of Garmin-Cervelo for today's 23km Team Time Trial was to ride really fast for as long as they could and hope it was good enough to beat all of the other top teams. It worked and the team not only won the stage, but will host to the Yellow jersey for the next few days. Saxo Bank-SunGard, the team of defending Tour champion Alberto Contador, never found their rhythm and looked disjointed and unorganized. Eventhough they finished 28 seconds behind the winner, the race favorite lost even more time in his quest for a fourth title. Not exactly the start he was looking for in the first few days on this years Tour.
I was little surprised by Garmin's reaction to their win though. Hoisting their team manager up on the podium was a little over the top, amateurish, and seemed to indicate that they reached their Tour goal of winning a stage and winning the right to wear the Yellow Jersey for a few days. I hope that we haven't seen their best so early in the race
Although Team Sky clocked an opening speed of almost 60km/hr (37.5mph) at the 9km checkpoint, the team and their white jersey wearer -Geraint Thomas (Best Placed rider under 25 yrs old) could only manage a third place on the day. HTC-Highroad wondered what might have been after an early stage crash by Bernard Eisel disrupted their early rhythm and could have easily accounted of their team's five second deficit on Garmin pushed them to 5th on the day. Radioshack had a respectable, albeit conservative ride, to finish 10 seconds down with four guys on their team threatening to finish on the podium in Paris. The big loser of the day was Samuel Sanchez of Rabobank who is so far down on time that he can only realistically look forward to a stage win now.
The surprise ride of the day was the BMC team of George Hincapie and overall contender Cadel Evans, who is now 1:41 ahead of Contador. They pulled of the ride of the day and eventhough they didn't get to pop the champagne bottle, I'll bet they feel like winners with their second place ride and with Cadel missing the yellow jersey by one second. The consolation prize is that they don't have to lead over the next few days and feel the pressure of defending the jersey and can save their energy for when it counts.
1 Garmin-Cervelo 0:24:48
2 BMC 0:24:52
3 Sky 0:24:52
4 Leopard Trek 0:24:53
5 HTC-Highroad 0:24:53
6 RadioShack 0:24:58
7 Rabobank 0:25:00
8 Saxo Bank-SunGard 0:25:16
Stage 3
Tomorrow's stage is pancake flat and is destined for a sprint finish. Mark Cavendish of HTC-Highroad would be the favorite, but he didn't appear to be particularly interested in the intermediate sprint in stage 1, but then again he is all about the win. Garmin's Tyler Farrar might think that he has a chance, but I haven't seen anything that indicates that he is about to break through...yet. Look for Cav, Hushvod, or Pettachi to take the stage on the slightly uphill finish.
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