The first week of the Tour was the week of the team, with some teams weaker than others. There were dominating efforts by Cannondale and Sky and lesser but still solid efforts by Orica Green Edge, Lotto-Belisol and Omega Pharma-Quick Step. Movistar also had a good day on Sunday, but first let’s get to Cav’s dick move on stage 10, shall we?

Let there be no doubt that Cav’s shoulder throw in the last moments of stage 10 was a dick move. He had been brought up to Greipel’s wheel by Steegmans (Steegs went all the way to the front, but Cav decided to camp on Greipel’s keyster), but was pushed out by an Argos rider, he then had to drift back and come around the Argos guys, and when he started his jump for Greipel’s wheel as the sprint wound up, he gave a hard shoulder to the Argos rider (Tom Veelers) who was drifting back after completing his leadout.

OK, let me restate that. The guy who kept Cav off Greipel’s wheel (Veelers), looked around, was harmlessly falling back and Cav gave him what can only be called a "dick shoulder" as he passed by on his way to the finish. Cav wasn’t being squeezed by Veelers. Veelers wasn’t even sprinting, Cav was just being a dick. If Cav were normally sized his shoulder would’ve bumped Veelers shoulder and it would’ve sent Cav’s message, which is, "I’m a pissy dick." But Cav is a miniature replica of a person, and his shoulder hit Veelers arm, knocking him off of his bike. Total dick move. There’s no other possible ruling.

But moving on, we had a quasi-eventful first week of the Tour. The Sky Bots were deployed and wreaked havoc on Saturday’s stage 8. It was really a masterful day of team riding, with Porte even finishing second to Froome on the day. It was the type of team effort we used to see a lot in the Postal years, so that’s really, really soothing for me to type. And that sort of performance would’ve been troubling had it not been for…

Stage 9 saw Movistar try to do their best Sky Bot imitation, they dropped all of the Sky Bots save for Froome, and Quintana even tried a few moves to try and hurt Froome, but Bot-imus Prime would not be dropped. Movistar managed to get Valverde up to second place on the GC, but the issue with Movistar is that they are a multi-stage rocket delivering the crap-filled nosecone that is Alejandro Valverde. Valverde simply cannot do any damage to Froome at the end of these stages. It was interesting that Sky had a bad day after having a dominant one, which may mean they aren’t US Postal, they may be more like Discovery.

On the opposite end of the "delivering for teammates" spectrum from Valverde is Peter Sagan. Sagz’s Cannondale teammates pulled all damn day on stage 7. They essentially did a 100k leadout, dropping all the other sprinters and put Sagz in a position to win, which he did, because Sagz is an assassin, you can tell by his facial hair.

There were other teams that had good performances also. Orica Green Edge won the TTT, which is always a sign of good teamwork, and it allowed them to do-si-do the yellow jersey around the bus at night between Gerrans and Impey. Garmin played everybody on stage 9. Lotto Belisol even got in the team act by getting Greipel his stage 6 win, even if he did it looking like he was wearing a headset from an overseas call center. (Seriously, why bother with the aero suit when you’ve got a tangle of wires around your neck where the collar should be?)

All in all, it’s been a pretty feisty first week, and a lot more exciting than I would’ve thought (Hesjedal has gone GOGGLES). Today we have the ITT, which is dull as hell, but helps to really destroy the GC dreams of a bunch of guys, so it’s a necessary evil. I will be commentating on our twitter account, because it’s easy and I’m lazy.