Hincapie made his own break to take yellow jersey

	George Hincapie, who lost Saturday's prologue by .73 of a second to Thor Hushovd, claimed the overall lead on Sunday. AP
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They lull you, do Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett, OLN's matchless cycling analysts. This pair of Brits can be nattering on about the beauty of the countryside or the peloton's cruelty toward the breakaway -- "They let the fish think he's been caught," quoth Liggett during today's first full stage of this scandal-scarred Tour de France, "and then they let him run again" -- when suddenly there is urgency in their voices.

They hit that dire register when George Hincapie busted his bold move late in Sunday's 115-mile circuit around Strasbourg: All of a sudden the Brits were shouting as the helicopter shot showed a Discovery rider bolting from the bunch.

"That is what you call a cheeky move!" declaimed Liggett. With a flash of naked aggression we seldom saw during Hincapie's seven years as Tonto to Lance Armstrong's Lone Ranger, the Big Hink basically stole the yellow jersey. Upset to the point of insomnia over losing Saturday's prologue by .73 of a second to Credit Agricole's Thor Hushovd, Hincapie -- who is looking more and more like Discovery's undisputed new team leader -- saw his chance to snag the jersey with five miles left in Sunday's stage.

One of the shirts the riders vie for is the green jersey signifying supremacy in the sprints, which are sprinkled throughout each stage, and for which time bonuses are awarded. By taking third in Sunday's last sprint before the actual race finish in Strasbourg, Hincapie filched two seconds in the general classification, enough to vault him past Hushovd and into yellow.

After what happened to Hushovd near the finish, it looked like Hincapie might have backed into the race leader's jersey even without that bit of cunning. Replay cameras show the Norwegian riding into one of those green, oversized cardboard hands given out, I believe, by PMU, the same company that sponsors the sprint competition. Moments after Frenchman Jimmy Casper of Cofidis won the sprint finish, cameras showed Hushovd on the pavement, his green shorts and yellow jersey spattered with blood from what appeared to be a nasty wound on his right arm. Hushovd was then seen being loaded into an ambulance. (Velonews is reporting that Hushovd is not seriously hurt, and that he should take the start Monday.)

If you're looking for an overarching theme for the Tour so far, it would be blood. The sight of Hushovd lying in his own blood was nearly as disturbing as the news, last Friday, that nine riders -- including pre-race favorites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich -- had been fingered in a blood-doping scandal called Operacion Puerto.

Maybe I'll feel differently when I fly to France to pick up the race a week from today, but right now the very ground under which the riders pedal seems tenuous, unstable. When nine guys get the thumb, you wonder who else in the peloton is dirty but just hasn't been caught. It's unfair to the guys who play by the rules. It's also inescapable.

This race has a surreal aspect; it feels like an alternate-reality Tour de France. With Americans Hincapie, Floyd Landis (Phonak) and Levi Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner) now that much closer to podium spots, this Tour feels like the Tour de Georgia-East.

Speaking of surreal, how about Landis burning six seconds before he made it down the ramp for the Prologue? What, I wondered, is Floyd so uncomfortable with his new status as prerace favorite, is he so attached to being an underdog, that he has to spot everyone else in the race half a dozen seconds?