Le Tour de France 2013
So we've seen the first stage of the Tour de France 2013. Hectic chaos would probably be the best words to describe what happened yesterday. First we saw Johnny Hoogerland crash (again..) and then we heard about the Orica Greenedge bus that had created a chaos at the finish line.
The famous Orica-Greenedge bus (photo from www.steephill.tv)
This gave organizers a headache and they had to make a decision to have the finish already at the 3 km to go line. At this point the riders were only 10 km from the original finish line and hence the teams started immediately to line up for sprint. Moments before the "new" finish at 3 km sign the bus was removed and the organizers decided to move the finish back to the original one. This lead to immediate change in pace from 100 % to less and this disorganized chaos led to a big crash.
The big crash before finish took down both Mark Cavendish and Peter Sagan (picture from www.steephill.tv)
When the big sprinters were away, Marcel Kittel had a pretty easy job to take the stage win. Only the Norwegian Alexander Kristoff from team Katusha gave him a decent fight.
Marcel Kittel the first to wear yellow in Tour de France 2013 (picture from www.steephill.tv)
Today will take the riders to mountains already. Hopefully everyone who crashed yesterday are able to start. The mountain stage should make the bunch a bit more relaxed. Let's at least hope so.
I also found a great graphic that visualizes the development of the Tour de France (picture by Bikeraceinfo.com):
Enjoy the greatest sport event of the year!