Gathering momentum... The Tour says goodbye to Corsica on Stage 3, and it's fair to say it's been umm... eventful. (Getty Images)

Every metre seemed to take a mountain of effort, but as Jan Bakelants crunched out those final metres before the finish line in Ajaccio, one couldn't help but smile, writes Al Hinds.

Bakelants detached himself from the likes of Sylvain Chavanel (Omega Phrama-QuickStep) and Juan Antonion Flecha (Vacansoleil-DCM) in the technical Corsican finale before eeking out every ounce of energy in his body to keep the peloton at bay. It was a display, archetypal of the Tour de France, a surprise winner to be sure, but a victory from a man that's been knocking on the door for quite some time, and one we'll hear more of in the future.

A winner of the Tour de l'Avenir, arguably the most prestigious races for youngsters, Bakelants comes from good stock, but his excitement at the finish was incredibly infectious. Here's what he said:

"You give everything now and you might just stay away. I put it in my 11 (tooth), it didn't look pretty, but I was going fast. It was a little bit down and then 1km flat. I thought of the Jensie, my room-mate. I thought, 'Just pedal, I don't want to have any regrets'. I made it. I had to wait five years. But I made it."

Chris Froome stretched his legs during stage 2 of the Tour de France (Sirotti Images)

He showed just a smidgeon of what is to come the next three weeks, but it was enough to send a none too subtle message to his rivals, writes Anthony Tan from Ajaccio.

Apparently, Chris Froome is beatable.

That’s what the “seven or eight riders who really stand out as potential winners”, as mentioned by Froome last Friday, would like to think. But the reality is, provided the man from Nairobi does not crash, or fall ill, the quizzical, lanky-looking lad will become the hundredth man to stand on the Tour’s final podium come July 21.

Sky Procycling will employ the same tactics to win this year’s Tour. It worked last year for the mercurial Bradley Wiggins, and it will likely work better still for Froome.

A dramatic opening... Did that just happen? Onlookers would be forgiven for seeing a rather unique opening stage to the 2013 Tour de France. (Getty Images)

Left speechless after the opening day of the Tour, Al Hinds, hopes the focus returns to racing in Stage 2 which could prove one of the more interesting days in this year's race.

What ... The ... Expletive ... Was ... That. All is going smoothly with the race set for its expected sprint climax and then ...

If spectacle was the aim, the opening stage of the Tour de France certainly delivered, but as a sporting occasion it was far from that, although admittedly through no fault of the athletes themselves. This was a calamity of biblical proportions that will live in Tour folklore alongside Tour winners being disqualified for catching the train, and the France TV car taking out Hoogerland and Flecha in 2011. Perhaps the latter is a more apt comparison, if only because the blame can rest only at the feet of the logistical staff that run the event.

The bus incident, which had hints of Roger Moore in the 70s classic Live And Let Die, was funny for a second, and then only a symbol of impending disaster. An onrushing peloton, and a blocked finish are not a recipe for anything else. Orica-GreenEDGE's communication director Brian Nygaard explained that ASO staff had ushered the bus forward, and that the driver was blameless. The Tour organisation has told a different story, if only to save face. At the very least, it did seem odd that the driver continued on into the gantry when from afar it appeared the bus was never likely to pass under the obstacle.

Can Matt Goss keep up? (Sirotti Images)

This year’s Grande Boucle is blessed with a treasure trove of sprinters, including the fastest four of their generation. The question on Anthony Tan’s mind is: how can Matthew Harley Goss beat them?

Was the hold up and ensuing calamity caused by the Orica-GreenEDGE bus crashing into the finish line signage in Bastia an omen of things to come from the team?

“While we’ve chosen a group that gives us more options in the medium mountains, we remain devoted to our sprint train,” Matt White, their recently reinstated sport director, said in his Tour de France preview, the Friday before the crash-plagued opening stage, won by Marcel Kittel of Argos-Shimano.

“Teams are committing a lot of money, time and talent to their sprint trains. Pair this commitment with the depth of the sprint field, and I can guarantee that we’ll witness some of the most competitive sprints that we’ve seen at the Tour in a long, long time. It’s exciting and daunting at the same time,” White said, adding: “With our support, Matt Goss can hold his own against any of these riders.”

Blast off... The time for the Grand Depart in Porto-Vecchio has finally come around. (Getty Images)

The Tour de France always begins with endless possibility. It's what drives the anticipation and excitement in the days, weeks, months before the great race gets underway, writes Al Hinds.

Arguments with friends, colleagues, debates over who has form and who doesn't, how the race may or may not play out, why that mountain will be decisive or that Col, and why that team's kit is completely garbage.

Everyone is an expert, and nobody is wrong. There's an element of fantasy as to what we can expect, a blank canvas, and over the next three weeks it's a canvas that will be filled in a way that we can neither imagine nor predict. This is the magic of the Tour, a sporting event that is bigger than cycling, and keeps more and more Australians up into the wee hours of the night every year. This is the Tour de France.

It's been one hell of a build up to get to where we are today, the Grand Depart in Porto-Vecchio. 110 years of history, 99 previous editions, through wars, doping scandals, and financial trouble the Tour has endured, and in 2013 it's bigger than it ever has been. Like a little kid at Christmas, the Tour for me is something that one looks forward to from the day the last rider crosses the finish line on the Champs Elysees the year before, and the excitement rebuilds again from there. One chapter closes, another begins, it's something I've never been able to get enough of and handily, I get paid to follow the sport full-time.

From July 1st, there will be new rules governing superannuation.

Last week parliament pushed through four pieces of legislation, which completes its latest reform on the industry.



The Super Guarantee will increase from 9 per cent to 9.25 per cent from Monday, eventually climbing to 12 per cent by 2012.

The Zombies are abating (Getty Images)

I think a lot these days about the potentially impending zombie apocalypse.

But the dope-scourge and zombie-menace are not the same. Zombies are way easier to catch, and the gluttonous peoples they tend to befall invariably ‘had it coming’. That is not us Tour fans.

Today’s my birthday, which is usually around the eve of the tour. I’ve often celebrated it amid headlines revealing my heroes are drug cheats.

But this week? It seems what we don’t already know is hardly worth publishing. I look at the news feeds and I see questions of riders’ form, squabbles over teams’ leadership, route analysis: all real coverage.

Keira Knightley has recently signed on to appear in a jazz-era drama, a music-based movie, and an action franchise reboot.

Keira Knightley is just 28 years old, which doesn’t quite gel with the fact that the English actress has been very famous for a decade now. Unlike actors who struggle in their twenties, searching for a breakthrough, Knightley was making the first Pirates of the Caribbean movies with Johnny Depp at an age where her contemporaries were just starting university. Looking back over those 10 years it’s apparent that Knightley has shown a degree of promise in her choice of roles: Atonement, The Duchess, Never Let Me Go and particularly David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method – which Knightley was close to extraordinary in – sit prominently alongside the blockbusters and the generally well-intention failures.

Now that Knightly has got her warrior years out of the way – let us never speak of King Arthur again – she’s adding a variety of parts to her list of films. Her latest role is in an adaptation of Suzanne Rindell’s novel The Other Typist, which is set in 1923 and tells the story of Rose, a conservative secretary working for the New York Police Department who becomes enchanted and then obsessed with a new secretarial colleague, Odalie, who introduces her to a world of speakeasies and modern glamour. Knightly will play Odalie (her range isn’t that extreme yet to encompass Rose), and it will follow a performance alongside Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers) in the new film from John Carney (Once), the Manhattan music scene-set Can a Song Save Your Life?

Knightley also has a supporting role in Jack Ryan, the rebooting of the Tom Clancy character who at various times has been played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. Star Trek star Chris Pine plays the once again young CIA analyst, with Knightley as his wife, Cathy. The film is directed by Kenneth Branagh, who’ll also be working on his Russian accent as the villain, and since the success of 2011’s Thor Branagh has been a resurgent filmmaker, lining up projects with no-one even mentioning that remake of Sleuth. After Jack Ryan, Branagh is putting together a new Cinderella, which will star young British actress Lily James (television’s Downton Abbey) in the title role with Helena Bonham-Carter (Alice in Wonderland, Fight Club) as the fairy godmother and Cate Blanchett (Little Fish, Hanna) as the wicked stepmother.