Boonen strikes first

So the first bunch sprint and 35 points go to Tom Boonen. Hushovd and McEwen were 2nd & 3rd on the stage. After the stage McEwen admitted he started his sprint too early, which is obvious on the replay. O' Grady picked up 24 points for his 4th place. Baden Cooke managed to salvage 17 points with a 9th place finish. Robbie Hunter earned a respectable 20 points between a 12th place finish and an intermediate sprint. A couple of the heavy hitters were shut out. Kirsipuu only got 3 points for being 23rd across the line. Jean-Patrick Nazon finished behind Lance Armstrong--no points for that.

The Boonen-Hushovd-McEwen trio is going to be slugging it out like this for weeks. Guys like O'Grady, Cooke, and Hunter aren't going to beat them regularly, so they had better be opportunists and think about the intermediate sprints to make up points. And here's a memo for Nazon--you can't come up empty and expect to be a factor.

Three cheers for Thomas Voeckler who wears the first polka dot jersey. His attack on David Canada to take the points was great, and I love the way this guy competes. If anything of value is within reach, Voeckler fights for it with all he's got. Stage 3 has another category 4 climb 20 km from the start, so expect him to try to pick that up too so he can hang on to that jersey.

And the other good news of the stage...no one crashed out. There was a minor crash near the end, but no one was seriously hurt, not even Erik Dekker.