Thomas takes reins as Froome flounders
‘Proud’ Martin makes mark as Sky rider survives fan attack
THERE are still three more days to go until Paris. Three long, dangerous days, one of which, tomorrow’s gargantuan 200km stage from Lourdes to Laruns, features some enormous cols, including the Tourmalet and the Aubisque. But this felt decisive.
This felt like the day when Geraint Thomas finally seized control of the
maillot jaune for good, and at the same time put his team-mate Chris Froome decisively in his shadow.
Thomas took a huge step towards becoming the third British rider to win the Tour de France as he finished third on the final summit finish of the race yesterday, the Col du Portet. The Welshman crossed the line 47 seconds behind the winner of stage 17, Movistar’s Nairo Quintana, who finished 28 seconds ahead of Ireland’s Dan Martin.
Far more importantly, Thomas finished five seconds ahead of yellow jersey rivals Tom Dumoulin (Sun web) and Primoz Roglic (Lotto-NL-Jumbo), dropping them with a few hundred metres to go and picking up four bonus seconds for his efforts. The nearest he came to being derailed was when an idiotic fan stuck an arm out and tried to grab him on the final ramp to the finish.
RAREFIED
Fortunately, he stayed upright, and as a result stretched his overall lead to 1min 59sec over Dumoulin, with Froome, who endured a difficult day, dropping to third overall, 2min 31sec behind. Froome was unable to live with the pace as the stage entered the rarefied airs above 2,000m, slipping off the back of the yellow jersey group and finishing 48 seconds behind his team-mate.
There was another sour twist to Froome’s day after the stage when he was accidentally knocked off his bike by a gendarme when he was mistaken for a fan in his rain jacket while riding back to his team bus from the summit.
However, the shift in his rhetoric afterwards was noticeable, with Froome now acknowledging Thomas was the main man. “It was a tough day, an intense day, but I’ve no regrets. ‘G’ has ridden such an amazing race, he deserves to be in yellow and fingers crossed he holds it now until Paris,” Froome said.
Froome’s hopes of winning that record-equalling fifth Tour title are now hanging by a thread. At 33, he knows he might never get another chance, but he said he would now work for his team-mate.
“That’s professional cycling, that’s what a team is all about,” he said.
“I’m happy just to be in the position I’m in. I’ve won the last three Grand Tours I’ve done. It’s been a tough buildup for me, but I’ ll still fight for the podium and – obviously we want to see G up there in yellow.
“I think he’s got an almost two-minute lead on Dumoulin, which is a pretty comfortable buffer. He looks pretty strong and I imagine he’ll be able to finish it off. We just need to look after him now.”
Thomas had predicted that yesterday’s short 65km stage from Bagneres-de-Luchon would be decisive. And so it proved, although it took a while to warm up. The much-vaunted ‘motorsport-style’ grid start was a damp squib.
The idea of setting the riders off in general classification order, with the top 20 riders fanned out across the road in arrow formation, had always felt a little gimmicky. It may be a while before we see it again. No one was prepared to risk attacking from the gun and instead Sky controlled the break as usual.
The race only really came alive on the final hors categorie climb up to the Col du Portet, a 16km drag so long and so steep that Sky’s sporting director Nicolas Portal rated it tougher than the Alpe d’Huez.
Quintana, a rider who had barely landed a blow in this Tour, attacked first, responding to an acceleration by Martin (UAE Team Emirates) to launch his bid for glory. But the real race was taking place behind them.
Froome, with May’s Giro d’Italia in his legs, began to struggle near the summit, unable to respond to attacks by Dumoulin and Roglic and needing assistance from Sky’s Colombian domestique Egan Bernal, who dropped back to help him.
Thomas, though, looked at ease, following wheels before launching his own late acceleration. “I guess so,” he replied when asked whether he felt the team were now all in for him. Thomas added that a team radio message from Froome in the final kilometres, admit- ting he was in trouble, had given him confidence. “I was feeling good,” he said. “Obviously I didn’t want Froomey to have a bad day, like he did. It just gave me confidence, that someone of his stature was struggling.”
The mantle has been passed and the boy from Cardiff is tantalisingly close to being crowned prince of Paris.
Martin, however, is left to rue time lost due to bad luck early in the race and despite a storming ride yesterday he climbed just one place to ninth.
“It was a shame about the crash and a puncture and without them it could have been a different story in this tour. I am pretty proud of how I am still going well this far in to week three,” said the winner of Stage Six. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
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