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You've trained all year to be part of the biggest bike race to grace the planet. You bagged the first victory of the European season at the Grand Prix La Marseillaise. You've done enough to impress your team selectors sufficiently to draft you into the Cofidis squad at the 11th hour.

It has always been a dream of yours since childhood to ride in the Tour, just like papa did on 13 occasions. The day has finally come but who would have thought the fates could be so cruel to a 23-year-old debutant?

One second Herve Duclos-Lassalle was smacking his lips at the prospect of a lunch-time musette brimming with power gels, carb-filled sarnies and sweet pick-me-ups.

The next he was hurtling over the handlebars on his way to eating the tarmac and breaking his left wrist - far cry from the lofty heights of his father Gilbert's back-to-back Paris-Roubaix wins in the early 90s.

"Merde!" the Frenchman shouted on the side of the road before anger gave away to pain and then a few tears. And with Duclos-Lassalle having completed a mere 100km of the total 3,500 on the agenda, it's hard to think of a more ignominious ending to a Tour debut.

It's also hard to think of a worse lunch-time stroke of bad luck. Blazin' Saddles has experienced a few dastardly meals in his time - that time when he ate so much blue cheese he was reduced to vomiting on his grandmother's Cheshire cat Simon springs to mind - but he has never broken a limb while eating a banana.

Luckily for Herve it was his left wrist - Blazin' Saddles could only imagine how difficult it would be to live life without the full and perfunctory usage of one's right wrist - especially when taking sick leave off work.

Anyway, it was a blow for the Cofidis team who are now being punished for picking such an inexperienced line up. I mean, you would have thought that being able to eat while in the saddle was pretty much a prerequisite for a road race rider.

Prior to the race, manager Eric Boyer had said: "It is a young team with four riders who will be discovering the Tour for the first time. Some will say this is too much but I think they are ready and that they will handle the fact that the Tour has another dimension than other courses."

That dimension being lunch?

"It is a team formed to win stages and has no ambition," Boyer concluded, before definitely adding "in winning the overall race."

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It may have been perhaps the worst Tour debut seen in history, but it is far from beating the worst start to a Tour - an accolade that surely must go to Britain's Chris Boardman.

Now let's be frank here, Boardman was a pretty adept velodrome rider, Blazin' Saddles will give him that. But as a Tour rider, he was about as convincing as Astana's anti-doping credentials, circa 2006-07.

The oft red nosed Brit blitzed the rest of the peloton in 1994 when he won the opening prologue in a record time. A year later, on his way to Saint Brieuc, the finish of today's stage two, Boardman slipped in the heavy rain and was forced to abandon as Jacky Durand - of all people - became the unlikely victor.

His duel wrist breakage and ankle fracture surely outdid the meagre-in-comparison wrist injury sustained by Duclos-Lassalle - and his high expectations certainly made the episode more embarrassing. Not that this will make things better for this 2008's premier abandon.

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Yesterday, Blazin' Saddles predicted - with the help of the rhyming lyrics of a Breton nautical folk pop group - a win for local unknown David Le Lay.

With the powers of hindsight, Blazin' Saddles would now like to say that his prediction was folly and should be disregarded. On a closer inspection of the lyrics, Blazin' Saddles was peeved to notice that the same song talked of a Spanish boat sailing towards the promise of green valleys...

But Blazin' Saddles likes to take the positives from every negative. Yes, he may have got it extremely wrong, but the method is surely correct: given a little more maturity, he would have seen the name Valverde jump out just as the man himself leapt from the peloton 250m from the finish line.

Why change something unless it is broken?

Today's stage finishes in Saint Brieuc, which happens to be named after a celebrated early Medieval Welsh monk called Brioc. That is enough evidence for Blazin' Saddles to make a whimsical prediction that the winner will have Welsh connections and a bald patch on the back of his head.

Given that there are no Welshmen in the peloton this year (Geraint Thomas, where are you when needed?) Blazin' Saddles will fall back on the only thin-haired man in the bunch who lives in Wales - Liquigas' Magnus Backstedt.

A look at the standings should be enough to set the alarm bells ringing - Magnus Maximus finished second-to-last, almost five minutes down - but Blazin' Saddles remains confident in the abilities of the tall Swede and in the abilities of his prediction method finally delivering the goods. Even if stage two has 'bunch sprint' written all over it.

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Fancy a holiday in Saint Brieuc?

Well don't. According to the respected france-for-visitors.com it's a pile of Duclos-Lassalle. Just read this extract for evidence - it speaks for itself and is far funnier than some cheap jibe about Cadel Evans's chin or Kazakh doping:

"The major city on the Côte d'Émeraude, ST-BRIEUC is far too busy being the industrial centre of the north to concern itself with entertaining tourists.

"It's an odd-looking city, with two very deep wooded valleys spanned by viaducts at its core, and it's almost impossible to bypass. The streets are hectic, with the town centre cut in two by a virtual motorway and unrelieved by any public parks.

"Motorists and cyclists, unfortunately, have little choice but to plough straight through rather than attempting to negotiate the backroads and steep hills around. (Maybe Franck Schleck is better suited than Backstedt to winning today?)

"Apart from the sturdy-looking cathedral of St Stephen, the fine views of the valley from Tertre Aubé and a handful of half-timbered houses in the streets around place au Lin, there's nothing to keep you here."

Hmm... could Chris Boardman have written this, perhaps?

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Plat du jour

Brittany being the home of Asterix and Obelix, it would be easy for Blazin' Saddles to simply suggest wild boar and some magic potion. Especially given the fact that a little magic potion rarely goes amiss in the peloton...

But seeing that today's 164.5km stage goes from coast to coast it would be wrong not to suggest something fishy (a joke here about Unhygenix, the village fishmonger, has been considered but rightfully overlooked).

You could settle for some Coquilles St-Jacques and a few Bellon oysters washed down with a splash of Muscadet. But nothing can beat the hearty Breton fish stew or Cotriade. Made with hake, cod, halibut, red snapper, monk fish, leeks, tomatoes, potatoes, shallots, white wine and debearded (?) mussels and shrimps - this is a real culinary delight, and is bound to keep you visiting the loo all day for weeks to come.

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Lantern Rouge

Today's last word on the Tour goes out to Garmin manager Jonathan Vaughters. After his comment "I really hope this year's winner will be a clean rider, not just on the outside, but inside" Blazin' Saddles suggests that maybe colonic irrigation is the answer.

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Talking point

Can you think of worse start to a Tour de France debutant than Herve Duclos-Lassalle's limp-wristed effort? The best answer could win a copy of Matt Rendell's biography on Marco Pantani.

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Felix Lowe / Eurosport