Tour de France, 2011

 

The Tour is well under way and I’m only just getting around to doing a short blog.

We have had some highs and lows here already this year but I can say that I’m happy with my Tour so far. The Tour is the biggest race of the year for any cyclist and I am very happy to be here racing again; the glory, the stress, the good and bad times make this race so special.

The team here this year have had a great start winning 3 stages so far with Mark Cavendish and great results from the other guys. We have 2 more chances before Paris to hopefully add to this total and I will be trying my best to help him.

Along with our good moments we have had some bad moments, Personally I have had a few bad days that have fallen on sprint days. Not being there to help guide Cav to victory is hard to accept some times but you can’t have great days everyday and you must learn to roll with it. I would have loved to be there to help Cav hold off Andre Griepel to win another stage but it didn’t work out that way.

As you can imagine its hard to bounce back from a bad day but here at the Tour you will always get another chance and you must always keep that in the back of your mind.

The Tour this year has seen many crashes that are not good for cycling but also some great racing though north France. I think we will never stop guys from crashing but the

best way that could stop many of these crashes in by only inviting 18 teams to reduce the numbers. Take just the top World Tour teams and leave the lower ranked

Teams at home. This would be the fastest and best step to stop the damage.

I will try and do a few more blog's before the end of the Tour to give you all an insight into some stages with more detail. We have some very exciting stages to come and hopefully

we will have less time in the bus traveling from the finish to the hotel so I will have more time to write some views.

Thanks for reading and sorry for the long delays in getting something online.

Cheers

Mark