I've penalized today's stage to Joigny one exclamation point from my post headline. It's probably gonna be one of those days. The stage itself is 193km, which means about 185 of them will be spent with a breakaway being slowly but surely reeled in by the pack. As today demonstrated, every day can have incredible excitement, but some days probably not til the last half hour.
One of these days Thor Hushovd needs to get in a long break. His season depends too heavily on the Green Jersey for him not to give it a go, and a break with a bunch of intermediate points has the potential to get him back within range of the leaders. Sure, Lotto, Milram and Quick Step won't lightly let him get away, but at some point they may decide it's not worth burning a lot of matches to stop Thor from getting close... as long as there aren't enough points that day for him to go ahead. Anyway, that day isn't likely today, given his crash on Tuesday, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was. A better plan might be to go with the KOM boys tomorrow, when there are eight KOM spots, and three sprint prizes as well.