Tour de France: Now the Tour gets brutal...

After a first week characterised by nervousness and crashes, which some put down to the riders being “too fresh”, and Bradley Wiggins fearing that it was so easy he might be “de-training”, the Tour’s second week promises something very different.

After yesterday’s first day in the mountains, they continue today with an unusual but potentially brutal stage. It doesn’t fit the mould of the traditional mountain stage. From Belfort to Porrentruy, it is comparatively brief at 157km, but it includes seven classified climbs, with the final one, the Col de la Croix, which is also the toughest, 16km from the finish. It is difficult to know who could benefit from a stage like this, but one scenario is that an opportunist takes his chance. While the overall contenders – Wiggins, Cadel Evans, Vincenzo Nibali et al – will be watching each other closely, an outsider could slip away and use the tough terrain to build a lead, a little like Thomas Voeckler did at exactly the same point of last year’s race, claiming yellow and holding it until three days from Paris.

Tomorrow, the first long individual time trial of this year’s race, over 41.5km from Arc-et-Senans to Besançon is Wiggins’ big chance to confirm his status as favourite.

This stage should also offer a clue to what might happen in London in the Olympic time trial next month. The three gold medal favourites, Wiggins, Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin, are all here, though Martin has ridden most of the week with a fractured scaphoid and his hand in a plaster cast. The plan has been for him to struggle through the week, ride the time trial, then pull out of the Tour to prepare for the Olympics.

Tuesday is a rest day, but they continue in the Alps on Wednesday, with a 194km stage that includes the “hors categorie” Col du Grand Columbier, then on Thursday with four climbs and a summit finish at La Toussuire, where Floyd Landis cracked in 2006, losing the yellow jersey.

Friday and Saturday should be easier, taking the riders west towards the battleground for week three in the Pyrenees, with an undulating stage to Annonay Davézieux then a flat stage to Le Cap d’Agde that could suit Mark Cavendish, if, with his battered body and bruised morale, he 
survives the Alps.