Tour de France is a Sporting Tour de Force

Well the Tour de France is hotting up nicely, with Team Sky's Geraint Thomas nicely positioned in 4th place and Bradley Wiggins, a candidate for the podium, in tenth.

Meanwhile Mark Cavendish had his first outburst of the Tour yesterday and indeed first penalty while favourite Alberto Contador, chasing a third successive Tour win and a fourth in total, languishes behind.

Many feel the Spaniard, who tested positive for Clenbuterol after last year's Tour but is allowed to race while waiting for the August 1st verdict on an appeal, should not be anywhere near this year's Tour. Only in cycling! 

I spent the weekend watching and covering the first stage from the picturesque Passage du Gios, a strip of land connecting an island to the western French mainland and twice submerged by the sea each day, to Les Herbiers. Is there a finer sight in sport than the Tour de France peloton at full pelt?

Over the next three weeks they will come in their thousands, five, six, ten deep to watch the riders cycle past, even high in the Alps and the Pyrenees where Contador will win or lose the Tour. And at the end of it all, after 2,000 miles, 18,000 burnt calories and 21 stages, it will all be over on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Amid Wimbledon, Silverstone, Lords and the Open the Tour de France is sometimes forgotten in the British sporting psyche. Messrs Wiggins, Cavendish, Thomas, David Millar and Ben Swift will be doing their utmost to ensure that this will be different this summer.