Sagan wins again but focus stays on Sky
Rowe grabs placard from French fan before stage Belgian Van Avermaet retains the yellow jersey
Just when things were beginning to quieten down a bit for Team Sky. A bizarre incident between Luke Rowe and a French fan prior to the start of stage five in Lorient yesterday morning ensured relations between the British outfit and the locals stayed in the spotlight on a day when Peter Sagan tightened his grip on the green jersey by winning his second stage of this year’s race.
The Slovak triple world champion (Bora-hansgrohe) has now started 101 Tour road stages. This was his 10th win, and his second in the first five days of this year’s Tour as he chases down a sixth green jersey. Sagan has finished in the top three in 39 of those stages, well over a third of them. And in the top 10 in over half. He is unbelievably consistent. And versatile.
Yesterday’s win, on the first hilly stage of this year’s race, came after he followed an attack by Philippe Gilbert (Quick-step Floors) up a steep climb on the final kilometre into Quimper. He then sat on Greg Van Avermaet’s (BMC) wheel for a bit, looking around him and sizing up the opposition, before outsprinting Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain-merida). “I’m still hoping to improve,” he said afterwards, adding that he was eyeing up today’s stage to the Mur-de-bretagne, where he finished fourth in 2015.
With all of the general classification contenders – including Team Sky’s Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, who dropped one place to fourth overall, five seconds behind leader Van Avermaet – finishing safely together, it meant the incident between Rowe and the French fan at the start of the day was always going to be discussed afterwards.
It turned out that, leaving Team Sky’s bus at the start of the day to go to rider sign-on, Rowe had “grabbed” a placard bearing the words “Sky – Go Home” from out of the hands of a French fan and thrown it on the ground before pedalling off.
It was not a particularly ill-tempered grab. And the fan in question, Didier Bregardes from Lorient, did not seem to be particularly outraged. Indeed, Bregardes was accompanied by a young boy who was wearing a Team Sky jersey and told reporters afterwards that he had “nothing against Froome or the riders”. Bregardes’s beef, he said, was with Team Sky’s principal Sir Dave Brailsford and the way he has handled the fallout to the Froome salbutamol case.
Rowe said. “It wasn’t meant to be malicious or anything. Afterwards we went back and gave the kids a bottle each. It was a light-hearted bit of fun, it was no big deal really.”