Despite travelling at over forty miles an hour Mark Cavendish still has time to put in a plug for his new mobile phone sponsor whilst crossing the lineIt's been a good Tour so far with an exciting stage on Monday creating some unforeseen early splits in the general classification. We're not a fan of the team time trial as we think the race should be about individual achievement. At least this year they have got rid of the nonsense of time bonuses meaning that only time on the road counts towards the total. In fact, it is a pretty radical Tour all round and the mountain top finish the day before the Champs Elysee will keep things boiling until the last day.
It's too early to pick any favourites yet although Lance Armstrong looked surprisingly good in the time trial. We're not sure how he'll handle the mountains though. He was very unlucky not to win the yellow jersey yesterday and in fact they have calculated that after 438km of racing he is just 2.37 meteres and 0.22 of a second behind Cancellara! Contador is looking very relaxed and he's got 10 years on Armstrong. Some pre-race favourites have taken a bit of a drubbing already. Grumpy wombat Cadel Evans has lost nearly three minutes already and Denis Menchov has lost nearly four minutes.
Canet Plage. Doesn't seem to have changed much. Agent Triple P broke his toe jumping off that wall when he was 10!Today's stage goes through three towns we know very well from our childhood, when we had a holiday home down in a village called Theza in the Rousillion. The nearest beach to us was Canet Plage and the tour will be going through there, St Cyprien Plage and Argelès sur Mer (or Argelès Plage as the official Tour guide erroneously calls it) today. All places where Agent Triple P happily built sandcastles in the 1960s.
