2008 Tour de France thread.........

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

166km - Lead up to 9'50..... Nearing ten minutes.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

165km - The average speed in the first hour of racing was 39.km/hour, just so you know. The poor weather not letting the pace get too high, but still a good rate from our escapees.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

164km - Lead up to 10'30...

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

159km - A little bit of history for you: Belgian legend Eddy "the cannibal" Merckx is to this day the only Tour winner to finish the race with the yellow jersey, green jersey and polka dot (climber's jersey) having won all three in 1969. The white jersey for best young rider did not exist yet, but he would have won that one too....

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

155km - Gap up to 11'45.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

155km - More green jersey points up for grabs at the Becherel sprint (km 48,5) : 1. Longo Borghini, 6 pts, 2. Feillu, 4 points, 3. Frischkorn, 2 points.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

154km - Stage one winner, yellow jersey, and overall favourite Alejandro Valverde had this to say about yesterday's second stage: "Because of the course, the wind and the fact we had to chase behind the escapees, the stage was a very fast one. [it was] very hard and also a little bit dangerous but I particularly want to highlight the fact that it was really beautiful to spend this second stage of the Tour with the yellow jersey upon my shoulders."

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

149km - Valverde went onto say that he thought today's flat stage, ahead of tomorrow's individual time trial, would be far easier than the first two days of racing. Unfortunately, today's route is crossing winds of more than 60 km/h, so it might not be as easy as the Spaniard thought.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

Am I talking to myself?

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

148km - A good sign for Mark Cavendish? The last time a Tour stage finished in Nantes it was a 49km time trial back in terrible conditions in 2003, and it was won by his fellow Briton David Millar. The Scot beat out a star-studded group, with Americans Tyler Hamilton and Lance Armstrong second and third respectively and Jan Ullrich. That was of course before a two-year doping ban for Millar, a similar ban for Hamilton, and before Ullrich was discredited for his involvement in the Operacion Puerto doping affair and sacked from his T-Mobile team. It's good that Millar was the one to make it back.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

145km - Millar, who has come back as a fine advocate for cleaning up the sport, will be one of the favourites for tomorrow's 29.5 kilometre time trial through Cholet.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

60km gone now so still early days.... I can tell how excited you all are about this today......

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

Come on Dykie.... I need some moral support here.....

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

140km - The gap up to 13 kilometres.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

Just to catch you up on the Montauban-de-Bretagne sprint back at km 62 : 1. Frischkorn, 6 pts, 2. Feillu, 4 points, 3. Dumoulin, 2 points.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

130km - Here's the list of post WWII winners at Nantes : 1948 : Guy Lap

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

128km - Fabian Wegmann, the German national champion, is our first big crash of the day, as he hits the deck pretty hard. Slippery and wet conditions out there have made this stage much more challenging than predicted. Gerolsteiner's Wegmann, the 2004 Giro mountain jersey winner, is back on a new bike and trying to ride his way back into the peloton though now.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

127km - Gap hovering at 14'48 now.... This seems like the time where the sprint teams would want to start drawing them back in, and this could be the end of our contest.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

Almost at the 80k mark now.... is should get interesting from here on in.

[NotTheRealSteveWest]

121km - Puncture for Baden Cooke (Barloworld). The Australian is now racing his way back into the main bunch.