Prologue Let the show begin. Phil and I had been pretty confident that our pre-race favorite for the prologue, Brad McGee, was almost unbeatable. We had thought about the outside possibility of a young man from Switzerland called Fabian Cancellara creating the surprise, but he seemed too young and in his first attempt at the race. Even so, at 23 years of age in his first Tour de France, he has already realized the dream of many other riders -- to wear the yellow jersey. He achieved this by beating the defending champion by two seconds and all other on-comers. Armstrong, although he didn't win the opening stage as he did in 1999, reported present and correct with a thundering ride to finish on the tail of the young Swiss champion. Armstrong will have seen his ride as the first psychological blow against his rivals. He handed out a 15 second beating to his arch rival Jan Ullrich, and even more to Tyler Hamilton. It was only the opening shot, but tonight the Texan will be a lot more comfortable than if the gap had been in the other direction. Next up, the race heads onto the open roads and we await to see if Alessandro Petacchi is still the king of the sprints -- as he was a month ago in the Giro d'Italia.