Stage 1

The race got off to an explosive start today with world number 1 and by far best performing rider of 2011 Philippe Gilbert darting away on the final climb to claim his first TDF stage victory and first ever yellow jersey.

The race went to plan up until 8km to go with a small 3 man break consisting of:

Jeremy Roy - FDJ

Lieuwe Westra - Vacansolei-DCM

Perrig Quemeneur - Team Europcar

forming after just 53 seconds of official racing. They went on to hold a lead of around 4 minutes until the gaps started to drop nearer the finish. With around 20km to go they were caught at the team of former French Champion Thomas Voekcler went to work at the front.

With 8km to go a major crash mid pack took down around 40 riders and split the peleton in 2, with Team Europcar still pushing on the front this gap opened up quickly. Alberto Contador, Robert Gessink, Sammy Sanchez, Andy Schleck and Levi Leipheimer were among those caught out.

Onto the final Cat 4 climb to the finish and with the gap now approaching 1 minute to the second group it was Alexandre Vinokourov who initiated the attack, being quickly chased down as passed by a charging Fabian Cancellara. With 500m to go Philippe Gilbert who had been positioning himself for the win throughout the finishing stages surged past Cancellara to victory, his first ever in the tour. Cadel Evans finished second, putting valuable time into his rivals.

Fantasy League:

Gilbert was the big fantasy points winner of the day, picking up 20 for being top of the GC and Points classifications, 50 for his first ever stage win, 40 for being in the yellow jersey for the first time and 40 for being in the green jersey for the first time (though it will be worn by Evans tomorrow due to also being in the yellow). His total points haul was 195, the most by more than 120 points.

Due to winning the combativity prize, plus being present in the break and picking up 15 points at the sprint it was Europcar's Perrig Quemeneur who picked up the next most points at 70. Though he is not included in any of this years fantasy squads.

The leading team by a large margin heading into day 2 is Team Heeead with a staggering 294 points, 220 points more than the team in 2nd place. This was hugely down to this team being the only in the league to include Philippe Gilbert but also picking up points for Team Heeead were Chris Horner, Jose Rojas and Jurgen Van den Broeck.

I am happy to say that all teams picked up points in the opening day, with the lantern rouge on day 1 going to team "My Boys" who thanks to Linus Gerdemann's 11th place finish picked up 10 points.

It will definitely be interesting to see how things shape up tomorrow at the team time trial.

Hope you all enjoyed the first day, it was more explosive than we all thought, get some rest and wake up early for stage 2 tomorrow.

Enjoy the weekend!