It was a long, windy -- but luckily for the riders, dry -- stage in the Tour, won by the Italian Filippo Pozzato of Fassa Bortolo, giving the team another stage win after the Prologue win by Fabian Cancellara.

Fassa Bortolo came into the Tour, putting all of their hopes on Alessandro Petacchi. Petacchi was having a horrible Tour, until he dropped out a couple of days ago and went back to Italy. Filippo Pozzato took the chance to win a stage, covering a breakaway, started by Francisco Mancebo, and Iker Flores -- two Spaniards, very motivated as always to do a good race.

Filippo Pozzato is one of the young stars of Italian cycling who is coming into the limelight now as an emphatic stage winner.

For the GC contenders, there was not nearly as much drama as the day before. No big crashes to report from the favorites. They all are grouped right behind Lance Armstrong, after the Prologue and the team time trial.

The only contender losing out really was Iban Mayo, who in the first week of racing on the stage across the cobbles, had a crash as the whole peloton was in full flight, strategically before the cobbled section. There was some discussion of whether or not Lance and company should have waited. But honestly, when you're racing flat out through a section of cobbles this early in the race, and Mayo is not the yellow jersey, there's no real compulsion for the peloton to wait. That's bad luck, and that's part of the Tour.

That's why it's so difficult to win -- not just the arduous stages in the mountains, which are pretty obvious -- but the flat stages that shouldn't do too much to the GC, but can also take a rider out. Iban Mayo is now over 5 and half minutes behind Lance Armstrong.

Tyler Hamilton, Jan Ullrich, Roberto Heras, Ivan Basso are all queued up behind Lance Armstrong -- and no real surprise there.