La Toussuire: Bradley Wiggins extended his lead and Chris Froome moved into second place at the Tour de France on Thursday after a staggering day of action over the hardest stage of this year’s event which ended with British riders lying first and second in the General Classification.
Wiggins had been taken by surprise by a strange incident just over three kilometres from the finishing line.
Froome, who had appeared to be struggling moments earlier as Wiggins worked hard at the front of a small group to bridge a gap between himself and Vincenzo Nibali and Jurgen van den Brooke, then set off on a brief attack on his own before appearing to receive radio instructions and returning to his team leader’s small group.
It was always Sky’s intention after their team meeting at breakfast that Froome be given licence to attack in the final 500 metres to either gain line honours or close the gap on defending champion Cadel Evans, who was expected to be involved in the finale, but this foray up the road was much earlier than expected and seemed to catch Wiggins and Sky unawares.
Over-exuberance, miscommunication or a world class rider on top of his form forgetting for a moment that he is meant to be riding for his team leader?
Afterwards Froome, who did attack again with 500m to go to finish in third place to Wiggins’ sixth, played the curious incident down.
“I’ll follow orders at all costs,” he insisted. “I’m part of a team and I have to do what the team asks me to do. Wiggins is just as strong as me, I think, and stronger than me in the time trial.”
Froome’s girlfriend, Michelle Cound though, was less impressed and tweeted to say she felt he was being “taken advantage of by others”.
Wiggins, who is now two minutes five seconds ahead of Froome, seemed unperturbed afterwards: “At that moment I was just really concentrating on my effort and keeping it constant. I’d been riding at the front for 1.5-2km before that, we came down off that dip and up that climb, and I just wanted to clear the lactate and didn’t want to make any more of an acceleration.
“There was a lot of noise and a lot of things going on on the radio and a bit of confusion at that point as to what we were doing. I think he [Froome] showed today he had the legs, certainly. It was another great day for the team. I don’t know who called him back. I didn’t have a radio in at that point, my piece had fallen out.
“This morning we certainly spoke about Chris maybe attacking in the final... and maybe making those 20-odd seconds up on Cadel to move into second on GC, because Chris wasn’t 100 per cent confident in the last time-trial that he’d have the better of Cadel.
“He wanted to try to get a bit of time on him today. It was certainly the plan as long as I stayed with Vincenzo and those guys and Chris didn’t drag those guys away.”
The Sky team meeting on Thursday night will have been interesting but if nothing else the confusion on the mountain underlines a real quandary, namely that they now clearly have two riders capable of winning this year’s Tour de France.
It can be a strong tactical card to play but does not come without its own problems.
“You can never have too much of a good thing,” says veteran Director Sportif Sean Yates.
“I reckon The fact that we’ve got such a strong second rider on our team is great. The fact that Chris lost one-and-a-half minutes in Liege is really unfortunate for him. If he hadn’t, it’d be a lot closer. But the fact that he did makes the roles clearer until the situation is otherwise. There is no point in gambling. We want to try and win the Tour, we don’t want to spin the roulette wheel.”
All of which should not, but probably will, detract from an outstanding team effort by Sky on probably the most difficult day of the tour to control and which featured a phenomenal 59km turn by Michael Rogers at the front of the chasing peloton leading into the final climb before Richie Porte took over and then Froome before his brief sticky patch.
The overall pace was so fierce then reigning champion Evans, if not exactly cracking, lost 96 second to wiggins and faces a massive task simply to get back into contention.
Nor should it detract from the impressive stage winner Pierre Rolland, winner at Alpe D’huez last year, who survived a nasty tumble on the decent of the Col du Mollard 32km out to remount, rejoin the break and eventually win by 55 seconds from fellow Frenchman Thibaut Pinaut. It was that sort of day.
