Tour of Britain Stage One

My thighs felt like beached seals this morning but I dragged myself out of bed to go to London. Nina, Julia and I got to town in time to walk from Embankment station, along the river, through the City and up to Tower Hill. This probably constituted about two thirds of the course of Stage One. There was nothing technical for the riders save for the very tight bend on Tower Hill itself. There was enough clowning and quite enough sausage frying to amuse both the young and the fat in the area around The Tower and the tight bend provided a little excitement on lap one as one of the neutral support vehicles almost failed to make the turn.

Fortunately we were spared the sight of a lot of squashed spectators as one of the Ploughman riders led the peleton through the first lap. By lap three or four we had made our way to the sickeningly vertiginous KoM climb. Standing on the wall of a (rather ill kept) flower bed gave us a great view of the a leading group which was beginning to get away from the peleton.

Over the next few laps (I lost count) the gap went out to at least 50 seconds and for a while I thought the bunch may not catch them. Sadly the break (which initially contained riders from seven teams) began to splinter and the bunch cut the margin to around ten seconds by lap eight.

The last rider to be swallowed up was Danielo Di Luca (LPR Brakes) on the latter part of lap eight. By this time the CSC train looked pretty much unstoppable driving the peleton from the front with at least five riders. In the end however it seems that wiley old stager and (alleged) doper Alessandro Petacchi used his awesome sprinting power to decisive effect. Britain's all purpose cycling genius Rob Hayles was second for team GB and Magnus Backstedt got third for Garmin.

Really good day out topped off with sherry on Villers Street, art at the NPG and a good curry near Euston.