thor hushovd

The UCI has announced the names of 20 Professional Continental teams that have applied for wildcard status for the 2010 season, making them eligible for invitation to ProTour events such as the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, Vuelta and the Spring classics.

The list includes Cervélo TestTeam, whose riders include Tour de France green jersey victor Thor Hushovd and former overall winner Carlos Sastre, and US-based BMC Racing, which has signed world road champion Cadel Evans and US national champion George Hincapie.

We’ve flagged up Cervélo TestTeam’s Beyond The Peloton films before, and they’re well worth watching, each giving a unique, 15-minute behind-the-scenes insight into the ProTour outfit’s debut season.

Now, film-makers Joe Finkleman and Booker Sim have released the second of three films shot at this year’s Tour de France, which promise to “show you what race footage fails to capture”.

The riders expected to be the main contenders for the 2010 Tour de France have given their reaction to the route announced yesterday in Paris. Both Lance Armstrong and his former team mate, and the winner of this year's Tour Alberto Contador said they liked the course, but both identified the cobbles of the Paris Roubaix course part of the route in the first week, and the Pyrenees as crucial to the outcome of this year's race.

Thor Hushovd Cervelo S3

Thor Hushovd Cervelo S3 - green zipps

Thor Hushovd Cervelo S3 - rotor cranks

There will be all sorts of bikes on display at the Cycle Show but very few with the pedigree of the nearly new Cervelo S3 on the Sigma Sport stand (E22a), it's the bike Thor Hushovd won the Tour de France green jersey on, and it sports a unique one-off black and green colourway as a tribute to that fact.

So for another year the carnival (or circus, or freak show, depending on your point of view) is over. After the crowds disperse on the Champs Elysées, all that's left on the roads of France are memories, fading chalk messages and discarded energy gel wrappers as the Tour packs up for another year. And it's certainly been an interesting Tour de France. A classic? no. But interesting. Today there was the usual champagne sipping and shenanigans on the slow-motion run in to Paris, and the usual balls-out sprint on the cobbles.

Cavendish sprints to glory on Stage 19 taking the win, but with Thor Hushovd right on his wheel. It should have been a stage for the break, it turned out to be one for the sprinters. Hushovd's second place means that the green jersey is still tantalisingly out of reach – in fact it was just behind him – but with this win a point had been made.