Tour de France 2017: Day Two. Bunch sprint and Big crashes

Well, I have to say that Sky have possibly peaked: they start this second day of the Tour with G in Yellow, Schleckland Pet and Diesel Engine Vasil Kiryenka in Green (who'd've thought it!!) and the whole team in yellow hats (except for Kiri, who's wearing a green hat) for leading the team classification. Also, Stefan Kung has defected from the Red Team and has joined Sky in the White Block for now, as he's in the White Young Riders' jersey. 

Can it get better? Will it be only downhill from here? Will G stay in Yellow right to the end?

Who can tell... but we'll be watching with interest, I can tell you: this is the best, most exciting start to a Tour that I've ever seen, and I've been watching for over a decade  now.

So, this is the Tour of the Helmets: the only way to differentiate the members of the gigantic Red Team, Black Team, and now the White Block, is by their helmets. I'm well bogged off with Sky, by the way, for going to white for the Tour: for heaven's sake, whose bright idea was that? They have a totally distinctive, 100% successful existing livery, easily spotted from all sides, tasteful, stylish, etc, and they change it to a white jersey  - a foolish move considering all the white Nationals jerseys, not to mention poor old Krys, sponsor of the Young Rider jersey and apparently quite cross about it all - which is almost identical to that of Trek, and on which the blue stripe can't even be seen from above.  I don't even know what hats they were planning to wear - they had white ones with a blue stripe for the TT, so presumably it was going to be white lids for everyday wear as well, had they not been holding the Teams classification and therefore allowed to wear yellow lids. Like at least two other teams, three if you count the nasty "gold" of Bahrain Merida.

Ho hum.

So, stage 2: the first proper day of racing, and on paper it was a fairly standard Tour first-week day, being mostly sort of flattish, with a bunch sprint at the end.  As predicted by me, Wanty ("Go, Bears!") were in the break, and the four of them spent the whole day out there all alone, in the rain.

Talking of the rain, and the White Block, there was an added complication today when it started to rain: Team Sky put on their normal black Sky gilets and the White Team suddenly lost a whole batch of riders, while the Black Team smugly expanded. And Team Jumbo were astonished to find that G was suddenly riding for them!

Honestly, UCI and ASO, you are really going to have to do something about this kit issue!

After the slips and spills yesterday, the commentators are going on about safety, barriers etc for at least the first hour of racing, so LLB and I decided that the answer was for fans to bring along their own "pad", which they could hang over the barrier in front of themselves. Teams could sell covers, in team livery: there you go, job done! 

At 28k to go, there was a totally unexpected hand-grenade right at the very front of the bunch - one of the Dark Lords slid sideways and took out the whole of the peloton, the whole of Team Sky,  the Maillot Jaune, and everyone. Panic!

This meant that we didn't see any more of the valiant break until they were caught with just barely 1k to go - awww! We would have liked Taylor Phinney to get the stage win, it's great to see him coming back from 3 years recuperation after a horrendous injury: but at least he got the KOM jersey. And we would also have liked to see Wanty get the stage win, as Offredo has had his own share of trauma this year, as he was attacked while out training by two blokes in a car, with a baseball bat and a knife, resulting in a broken nose, broken rib, and knife wounds to the face and arms. What  is this world coming to? Anyway, he, too, has recovered from those injuries and deserved a win, but instead he got the most combative rider, which is something, at least.

There was a horrible moment just after the finish, when the leaderboard gave Ugly Aru 9th place. What??!! Phew, it was all a mistake, what a relief. I can't tell you where the lovely Jakob Fuglsang came, as ASO haven't put up the full results yet. But I would imagine that they both came in with the bunch, so they will still be just 2 seconds apart.

Now, one final point before I go: to my eternal shame, I have only just noticed that stage 4 starts in Mondorf. Mondorf!! Damn, there isn't time to get a day off work and book a plane ticket. I just hope that someone remembers to interview a famous former rider who just happens to live there.....