Today’s stage looks as if it will have all the characteristics of a sword fight at a theme park—lots of: noise, color, tight pants, Frenchmen, action and an outcome so predictable that even toddlers can see it coming; in short, we’re probably in for a sprint today. It’s still the first week of the Tour, and the teams haven’t been worn out by the hills yet, so they will be OK with giving their sprinters one last chance before the Tour hits the mountains. But this is the Tour though and you never know, some lucky Frenchman might pull off a great ride and weep so furiously as he crosses the line that people will think he’s from the Isle of Man.

In other news from the world of cycling, Jan Ullrich’s former DS, mentor and BFF Rudy Pévenage revealed in a L’Equipe interview that he organized Jan’s trip to see disgraced Operación Puerto doctor Eufemiano Fuentes. Pévenage’s admission comes after Floyd Landis’ admissions that he and Lance Armstrong did many many naughty things together. Pévenage’s confession to being involved with Ullrich and Fuentes comes under the international "no duh" statue, and is a surprise to no one really, but what is surprising is that Pévenage, once a stalwart among the oily denial crowd, has developed something resembling a conscience or human emotion, what we humans call "feelings".

Of course, Rudy’s new "emotions" leaves Ullrich in the lurch, and Jan will have to once again face questions of the Puerto nature. I can’t help but feel a little sorry for Ullrich in this case. He retired after the Puerto allegations in a sort of weird "I didn’t do anything, but what the heck, I think I’ll retire anyway." style admission, and now he has Pévenage baring his "soul" to reporters. Here’s some tidbits from the ever vigilant cyclingnews:

Pévenage revealed that he was caught up in the Operación Puerto investigation after mistakenly using his personal mobile telephone to call Fuentes from the 2006 Giro d’Italia.

"I used to communicate with Fuentes using a pre-paid unknown number. But at the 2006 Giro, I wanted to call him after Jan had won the stage. I didn’t have any credit left and so I used my personal phone. Fuentes’ phone was being tapped and so they got my number."

Pévenage claims Ullrich decided to work with Fuentes because he was under huge pressure to try and beat Armstrong.

"The rivalry pushed us to give it everything to try and beat him," Pévenage told L’Equipe. "With all the money he earned, Jan could not afford to be beaten. He was stressed out by the pressure and even put on weight because of that. Stress poisoned his career."

In a nutshell, Jan got nabbed partly because Rudy forgot about using the super secret cell phone and the police overheard him thanking Fuentes for the super awesome blood. Pévenage also mentions that Ullrich was under a lot of pressure to perform. Remember that Ullrich always demanded that teams hire Pévenage when they took him on board, which made Ullrich Pévenage’s benefactor in many ways—as getting a job is really nice. Pévenage was then, as his director sportif, Ullrich’s boss, and who might supply the pressure and stress to beat Armstrong? Maybe his boss? So imagine Jan’s dismay when his former boss, who he insisted that teams hire, not only screws up and helps gets Jan snagged in an investigation about blood doping to increase performance that his boss probably thought needed "boosting", but that boss and former BFF then finally goes to the press and informs them that he and Ullrich were stockpiling enough blood to make an army of franken Janses. Wow. I like the truth and think everybody should be coming clean about things, but I also think I finally understand why Jan was taking all that ecstasy. And no, Pévenage isn’t like Floyd in this case, Floyd wasn’t the one supplying the pressure for anyone to perform, he was the one who felt he should volunteer to "get help"; and that "help" was allegedly coming from his team management. That would make Pévenage’s admission equal to that of let’s say hypothetically, someone who was Floyd’s boss, someone who allegedly would’ve supplied drugs and the means to use them. Now who would that be?

In other non-related (honestly) news, Alberto Contador gave Lance Armstrong and his former Astana boss Johan Bruyneel watches to thank them for helping him win the Tour last year, as they both missed the Astana Tour after party last year and didn’t get theirs (they were both at the Radio Shack announcement party—let’s be honest, the Shack people were giving out free Merlins). I imagine the watch drop off was an exchange only slightly less awkward than a full body hug between Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney; and longtime time employee Yaroslav Popovych, upon hearing that his boss was giving out thank you gifts, instinctively sat down and awaited his lap dance.

Yesterday also saw Mark Cavendish tasting success after a year marred by tooth problems (feel free to laugh, as he is British), crashes and his own quotes. In fact, here’s a quote from Cav right here (from cyclingnews again):

"It was hard this year. I always said everything was about the Tour de France. Thing didn’t go our way yesterday. I let them down massively and it would have been easy for them to say ‘He hasn’t got it’ like other people did. But they rode for me. Siutsou rode covered in bandages and Rogers was there at the finish and took it on too. Renshaw did an incredible job, fighting with Thor [Hushovd], with Tyler [Farrar] and with Oscar [Freire]. I knew he’d drop me off at the right place."

When Cav says that Renshaw did a good job fighting with Thor SMASH and others, he isn’t kidding, Renshaw practically purse fought his way through everybody to get Cavendish to the line. Thor SMASHed him with a really hard shoulder when Renhsaw tried to move him over. So cudos to Cav and HTC. And I’m assuming after he gave that quote that Cav burst into tears, well, actually he was crying until the start of today’s stage, so it was more of an elongated sob.

Finally, here’s the reaction from Thor SMASH about yesterday’s stage (via cyclingnews again):

"He’s one of the best sprinters in the world. I’m happy with today’s stage. I was able to get some more points in the hunt for the maillot vert," Hushovd said. "I was in good position for the final sprint. I used a lot of energy to get on the wheel of Renshaw, and Cavendish was able to win. It’s always better to win the stage. I am not racing just for points, I want to win the stages too."

Let’s run that through the SMASH translator shall we?

"There were tiny men bouncing off me before the SMASHing, making me contemplate, and Thor SMASH not like contemplating! Then the hamster man made some sort of leaking from his eyes when the ladies kissed him."

Also as a programming note, the weekend’s stages will not be done live, as I have family obligation to attend to, so everyone will be probably spared Mike Creed’s comments.

Live race

113k to go. The secret internet pre-P&P VS Aussie announcer says that the riders have been complaining about Euskaltel causing many of the crashes this year and have nicknamed them "the carrots", probably due to their uniforms, once again we are reminded that bike racers are not very creative. Carrots? That’s it? Not "Spanish speed bumps"? What about "Basque holes"?

89k to go. We settle into what has become a routine with Phil and Paul, Paul reads from the race media guide and Phil wakes slowly.

Paul keeps calling the Astana jerseys purple and turquoise, is he color blind? Does he see the Footon jerseys as black and a non-revolting color?

86k to go. Mathieu Perget (Caisse d’Epargne), Sebastian Lang (Omega Pharma-Lotto) and Ruben Perez Moreno (Euskaltel-Euskadi) in a break that’s 33.3% French. 

80 k to go. Paul says Menchov is called the "silent killer" in the peloton, actually that a mis-translation, his nickname is really "silent but deadly". Pow! There’s a joke for Mr Creed! 

78k to go. P&P have a detailed discussion about swifts, which they oddly know more about than they do about Gerald Ciolek.

77k to go. Berto fist bumps the moto camera man, who immediately comes down with cancer.

74k to go. And we have our first nature break sighting! Thank you team Sky.

73k to go. Paul mentions how nice the marbling is on Bert Grabsch.

72k to go. Shhh, Sanchez is changing.

69k to go. There’s a shot of Andy Schleck going back to the team car for his juice box. 

62k to go. Paul is dominating the media guide today. "This region of France is known for its beef cattle and extremely virulent strains of Tourette’s." 

54k to go. P&P are mentioning about how Tyler didn’t have the legs yesterday, but JV mentioned in a tweet that Tyler was supposed to be the sweeper yesterday and Dean was supposed to sprint, but Tyler saw the leadout get caught and tried anyway. Then he tweeted something about French cops’ underwear. #I’mnotmakingthatup

41k to go. Monfort brings a Chelada up to Bert Grabsch at the front.

38k to go. The mechanic looks at Thor’s SMASH bike. Thor SMASH tells him, "My handlebars make slippery by the fear tears of weeping Spaniards." 

36k to go. If I didn’t know better, I’d say P&P have a cow watching fetish. "Look they’re moving!" 

30k to go. There’s a minor crash at the back of the race. Boom lowered.

24k to go. An AG2R* guy jumps, it there an all you can eat buffet prime sprint out there?
*AG2R is poor.

23k to go. Champion gets to the break, doubling the Frenchness up there.

16k to go. Rabobank working, I’m not going to say an Oscar win won’t delight me.

12k to go. HTC has been complaining that Garmin and Cervelo haven’t been helping bring back breaks. What, does HTC stand for "help tow Cav?" 

 10k to go. The break is finished, Millar comes up to the front. JV said he’s still not recovered from his crash, Astana and the Shack are pulling until the 3 to go mark, known as the chicken line.

 7k to go, once the GC teams pull off at around 3 or 4k look for HTC to come through, with a headwind this is a crashy situation until then.

 5k to go. HTC is letting everyone else work while Bert Grabsch finishes his Chelada.

3.7k, here comes HTC. Lampre looking to jump their train again.

2.3k Garmin trying to move up on the left, but they not moving up fast. This could be a Hoag day also.

Lampre up front on right

1k to go Garmin up front. They take it through the turns, they have a slight gap.

Renshaw jumps and collects the Garmins, Tyler’s on Cav’s tail (and having flashbacks to 2009), but he can’t come around, Cav wins. This win is tear free, allowing him to return to Britain.