Bicycle Race (2)

An update on Le Tour De France.....

With 7 stages to go, early favourite for the sprinters' green jersey, Isle of Man tough guy Mark Cavendish has had an awful start to the race. An early stage he should have won disappeared along with his will to win right at the death. When he did eventually win a stage he showed his emotional side by blubbing through the presentation and the follow up interview, as he felt he had previously let down his team mates whose job it is to lead him into the final sprint to the line. Now some 30 odd points behind the leader in the green jersey competition, it was very unlikely he would win the sprint competition after his latest stage win on Thursday. These odds have been made even longer by the antics of his final lead out man Mark Renshaw, whose job it is to lead Cavendish in a sprint from 500m to 200m to go, when Cavendish then takes over and hopefully wins the stage. Every team with a class sprinter has a similar lead out man, and Renshaw got involved in an unseemly scuffle with his Team Garmin opposite number. Having landed a number of headbutts on the Garmin man's shoulder, Renshaw then looked over his left shoulder where he saw the Garmin equivalent of Cavendish (Tyler Farrar) coming up on the rails, so he cut him off. Quite rightly Renshaw has been chucked off the race, leaving Cavendish with no lead out man and little chance of catching the current leaders in the green jersey competition.

Our great white hope to win the race overall Bradley Wiggins now has no chance. I said at the start his hopes were slim, but I think the weight of expectation has proved too much and he doesn't look like the consummate all rounder we saw last year. Currently lying 16th overall, as the man himself says, the best he can now hope for is a top ten finish.

The Maillot Jaune is now a two horse race between last year's winner Alberto Contador, who at the time of writing lies 30 seconds behind Andy Schleck. It all hangs on what happens in the Pyrenees and I fancy Contador as he seems to be blessed with a higher level of tenacity than Schleck, whose time will no doubt come.

As nobody in the UK but me seems to take any interest in Le Tour, I can't be bothered putting a link on Facebook, so yah-boo to the lot of yis!