CYCLING:AFTER WHAT was a peaceful stay in the big hotel in Rouen, the day started off on an interesting note when we got to the start; there was a hell of a lot of TV cameras outside the bus. They were there in connection with an article stating that two of the team had been suspended for six months due to things that happened in the past, but that was completely untrue.

It was a real scrum; there must have been 40 or 50 TV crews outside the bus. Despite that, the atmosphere on the bus was incredibly relaxed, the riders joking around. Obviously the allegations of a ban are serious, but these are groundless.

There was a bit of disbelief, but the guys took it admirably well.

What was interesting is that while the story was all founded on rumours, there was this huge presence of cameras. It shows how powerful the media can be – it is kind of dangerous.

I didn’t know how the riders concerned were going to take it as all the attention would have been unwanted; you want to try to focus on the race and what we are doing in the Tour. But it was fine.

Other than that it was quite a routine day; the break went, it was brought back, there was a bunch sprint and Andre Greipel won. It seems kind of funny to say, but we are having what people are telling me is the easiest first week in the race’s history. We have done 1,000 kilometres in five days but we have barely done anything, in terms of hard racing, apart from the one really tough day with all the crashes.

I think it is a symptom of modern-day cycling – every team has come with a general classification guy or a sprinter, so few teams are interested in going in the breakaway just for publicity, especially when they have almost zero chance of making it to the finish. It is a case that the breakaway goes in the first attack every day, and we just cruise along and bring them back.

The only problem is it makes things riskier coming towards the finish. Everyone is so fresh, they still think they can be in the front, and the constant battle to move forward is what is causing the crashes. Our sprinter, Tyler Farrar, went down hard close to the finish, and was really angry about it.

His morale was already dented after it being the third day in a row that he has crashed. He got brought down by one of the Argos Shimano riders, who just pushed into him, and he was pretty annoyed.

Tyler knows the guy so it makes it hard to take and he was emotional at the finish.

He went to their team bus to have words but a couple of people from our team calmed him down and got him to come back to our bus.

I have to say I’m pretty impressed by how he has handled the impacts, though; it is really incredible how well these sprinters bounce.

Tyler has crashed at over 60 kilometres per hour in the last two days. Despite that, he has escaped with flesh wounds, and is otherwise still feeling okay. He is going to be pretty sore tomorrow, but I hope he will be able to make it through.

Away from the bike, on Wednesday evening I did an interview with Ned Boulting for the ITV cameras. It is stuff like that that makes the Tour special, it is always a treat to be doing that kind of thing.

It is nice at the moment when you are feeling pretty fresh and not too stressed, but once we get to the third week it might feel old. At the moment, though, it is all new and all fun.

Personally, I’m feeling good after the first six days of racing.

I haven’t touched down yet, I haven’t crashed; physically, I’m fine.

We’ll see for sure when we hit the first climbs on Saturday. I haven’t done any real climbs for two weeks. It is very rare that you don’t go training over climbs for so long, so it could be a challenge to readjust. But it is a challenge that features every year in the Tour, and it is the same for everybody.

I got a chance today to speak for a fair bit with Nicolas Roche. I think he can do well in this race, he is looking pretty good.

We commented to each other about the number of Irish flags we see each day – there were a lot of tricolours. I have to say that it is really nice when people come to the bus after the stage to see me, it is nice to have that representation by the side of the road.

Things between myself and Nico are great, we support each other. It is great to see each other doing well.

I don’t feel any pressure to beat him or anything.

Okay, now that I am doing a diary as well I want to make sure it’s different to his one. I guess there’s a more heated rivalry with that than anything we have with each other in the race!