FROOME SITTING PRETTY AFTER MOUNTAIN TEST
HE might have lost time, but Chris Froome looked like the big winner atop the Col d’Izoard as he closed in on a fourth Tour de France crown yesterday.
Romain Bardet snatched back four seconds but Froome emerged from the final mountain test of the Tour still in yellow, and still with the Marseille timetrial trump card to play.
Warren Barguil took stage honours for the second time in this Tour on the day that he also effectively sealed victory in the king of the mountains classification – even accepting a handshake from rival Thomas De Gendt at the foot of the Izoard. Barguil only needs to make it to Paris safely to keep the polka-dot jersey.
Bardet sits second overall, 23 seconds behind the Team Sky rider, with Rigoberto Uran third, 29 seconds down, and it is perhaps the Colombian who poses the bigger threat given his track record in time trials.
Dan Martin stays in sixth place overall after another display of attacking riding.
The Irishman is on track for his highest-ever finish, despite battling illness and injury along the way. Two days after shaking off a bug, he was back on the attack on the Izoard, even though he would give up 19 seconds to Froome by the summit.
And according to Quick-Step Floors sports director Brian Holm, it is entirely his own doing. “To be honest, we don’t need to speak to Dan Martin, his own mindset is attacking,” he said.
“Nobody has to tell him on the radio. Sometimes he breaks his neck, sometimes he acts silly, but I love the way he does it. He goes, he goes, he goes.”
Meanwhile, Holland’s Annemiek van Vleuten won La Course by Le Tour yesterday on the summit finish up to Col d’Izoard – the first women’s event to finish on one of the Tour’s iconic climbs.
The 34-year-old, who suffered a horror crash in the Olympic road race last year, finished 43 seconds ahead of British national champion Lizzie Deignan, who started the day working as support for her Boels-Dolmans teammate Megan Guarnier.
“I was really good and messed up by being a domestique and then a leader,” said Deignan. “I did too much work really.”