Astana controls first Tour week

Galloping sprints, dramatic crashes, French victories and inner rivalries added to the excitement of the first week of the 2009 Tour de France. Saxo Bank may have spent the first six stages with the maillot jaune on Fabian Cancellara's shoulders, Columbia-HTC may have taken two stages with Mark Cavendish, but all eyes were focused on Team Astana and the Tour de France comeback of its most famous rider.

With the return of Lance Armstrong, the Tour has enjoyed bigger crowds, more press and undoubtedly more drama than it has seen since he left the sport back in 2005. His battle to establish himself as leader of his team was the theme of the first week, even if, as his team likes to claim, much of it was fabricated by the press.

Round one, the opening time trial, saw Contador get a leg up in the leadership department with a second place finish, laying claim to the race's first mountains jersey. Armstrong finished a solid 10th place but on stage three he set tongues a-wagging by leaving Contador behind when the field was split in strong crosswinds by Team Columbia-HTC. With that move he pulled himself into third overall, 19 seconds ahead of his Spanish teammate.

Harmony was restored within the Kazakh-backed team's camp in time for the Astana squad to smash the overall classification to bits in the team time trial. Many a GC hopeful lost his chance at winning the Tour on that fateful day and Armstrong came within fractions of a second of claiming his beloved maillot jaune.

That stage might have been the 37-year-old's best chance of taking the lead in the race, however. Three days later, on the climb to Andorra Arcalis, Contador stamped his authority on the race and the role of team leader with a stunning, final-kilometre attack that was apparently, 'not according to the plan'.

Showing that there may be no need to ban race radios, opening-week breakaways had unprecedented success this year - on three separate occasions the victor from the escape came from the race's host nation and won for a French team. Thomas Voeckler and Pierrick Fedrigo made Bouygues Telecom's Tour a huge success with wins, while newcomer Brice Feillu gave Agritubel a dramatic victory in Andorra.