Stage One: - Grenade launcher at the ready.

Despite terrible forecasts of wind, hail, rain, snow and frogs, the day started in nice sunshine - some clouds, but not much.

It also started rather unexpectedly with a tiny, fast breakaway consisting of two Bora Aragorn riders and an IAM rider, which was quickly whittled down, by correct application of the "two against one" tactic, to one Bora Aragorn rider (Paul Voss) way out front. He then picked up the two single KOM points that were on offer for the day, and therefore will take the polka dot jersey, if it just makes it to the end of the race. Not a bad tactic, and a great way to start the race: with a jersey, they will be able to enjoy lots of publicity today, and a nice easy ride tomorrow.

We always expect the first week to be nervous, twitchy, and full of crashes, and today was set to be particularly bad, with sidewinds forecast: but when it came to it, it wasn't really that bad. Possibly because the general speed was quite low: with the small break out the front, the rest of the peloton seemed to relax.

We even saw a very narrow shave for Frankie: one of the other riders kindly told him that he had a plastic bag wrapped round  his rear mech (I think that is the correct technical term) and he had to get a sticky mechanic to lean perilously out of the car window and pull it off, while Sean drew in his breath sharply between his teeth and reminded us all how dangerous this was, and how it was a good way to lose a finger or two.

So, the happy gentle riding continued in a happy manner until about 90k to go and the feed zone, whereupon the pace suddenly rose, and instead of a nice neat bunch, it turned into a single line, and a feeling of impending doom.

Sure enough, within 20k, an unseen drone launched a tripwire and a couple of guys slidded out (Sean's phrase) even though they were doing it all correctly, ie keeping at the front out of trouble. The worst hit was Contador, who left quite a lot of his jersey on the road and took a significant tow from the medical car while they frantically attempted to get a bandage to stick to the jersey. He also had to change his shoes, which is always fun to watch.

Apart from that little burst of excitement, it was almost the dullest day of racing every seen: as LLB said, if you were wanting to introduce someone to the joys of watching pro cycling, this would have been exactly the wrong stage to show them! It was lovely of Eurosport to give us the whole day, and we always enjoy watching "the whole day" to see how the early breaks develop, to see the domestiques doing their bit, to see who does what early on: but honestly, as an introduction to the sport *insert that annoying wack-wack noise to indicate a dismal failure*  ... not so good.

At least there was some good field art to look at: the best one was probably the one with farmers leading cows (cries of "Les vaches du Tour!" from the sofa) around to be the wheels, where one of the animals refused to co-operate and headed off in the wrong direction, prompting LLB to say that it was "not playing bull".

Note for non-native English speakers: the phrase is "not playing ball" to indicate that someone is not joining in properly. End of Note.

Getting back to the race, after about 10k of the slowest-looking 57km/hr sprint lead-out ever seen, there was a classic sprint finish, a classic double crash into barriers on one side and into each other on the other side, and Cav did a fantastic sprint , clearly faster than Scruffy - er, Sagan, faster than Greipel and Kittel, and took not only the stage - his 27th Tour stage win, by the way - but his first ever yellow jersey.

So well done, Cav!

As mentioned yesterday, he's such good value for the sponsors - even when pink in the face and almost in tears with emotion, he still manages to name check the sponsor, the charity, to mention bikes for kids in Africa, to mention his respect for the race, and so on.

A note of amusement from the catch-up with the lovely Ashley (I'm developing a mild asexual crush on him) and the equally lovely Juan Antonio Flecha, to see that JuanTo had presumably spilled something down his shirt and had to buy a new one, as you can see the original folds and creases in his abnormally crisp white shirt. *snorts through nose*.