Sudden shift
French hopes grow as Thomas, Ineos falter
LA MONGIE, France — When Team Sky was in its pomp at the Tour de France, a time trial followed by a big mountain stage would have been playgrounds for its riders — now in new colors as Team Ineos — to take cycling’s greatest race by the scruff of the neck and leave everyone else fighting for second place.
Not this year.
Ineos co-leader Geraint Thomas, bidding to repeat as overall champion, cracked Saturday on this Tour’s first encounter with a climb to above 6,500 feet. It was an exposure of unprecedented weaknesses in the team that has won six of the past seven Tours.
The time trial on Friday and the climb up to the legendary Tourmalet pass on Saturday seemed perfect settings for Thomas to reel in Julian Alaphilippe, the general classification leader who is setting the race alight with his punchy riding and determination to stay in first place, filling French fans’ heads with dreams of a first homegrown winner since 1985. Instead, Thomas has seen the Deceuninck–Quick-Step rider move further and further away in the standings.
In two days, with a win in the time trial and a strong second-place showing on the Tourmalet, Alaphilippe has put 50 seconds of extra daylight between himself and the 33-year-old Welshman. His lead — up to 2 minutes, 2 seconds — is becoming large enough to start realistically envisioning Alaphilippe in the yellow jersey in Paris next Sunday as the first French winner since Bernard Hinault earned his fifth and final title.
Further fueling the ecstatic crowds that lined Saturday’s steep uphill finish, 29-year-old French cyclist Thibaut Pinot won Stage 14, putting the Groupama-FDJ rider back in the picture to fight for a top-three overall finish after he lost mountains of time on Stage 10.
Thomas rightly pointed out the Tour is far from done, with six more ascents to above 6,500 feet still to come. However, his inability to stay with Pinot, Alaphilippe and other podium contenders at the top of the Tourmalet — he finished the stage eighth, 36 seconds behind Pinot — was a mini-earthquake for the Tour dominated by his British team since 2012 with champions Bradley Wiggins (2012), Chris Froome (2013, 2015-17) and Thomas.
“Not the best day,” Thomas said. “I just didn’t feel quite on it from the start. I was quite weak.
“At the end, I knew I just had to pace it. I didn’t really attempt to follow when they kicked. I just thought I should ride my own pace rather than follow them and blow up on the steepest bit at the end. It’s disappointing. I just tried to limit the damage.”
Having taken cycling to a new level with its vast budget and attention to the minutest of details, the team run by David Brailsford has been hit both by misfortune and by the inevitability that other teams would eventually start to close the gap. Strikingly, Thomas and his teammates didn’t ride at the front of the pack up the Tourmalet, unlike previous years when their infernal pace uphill left others gasping and unable to attack as Pinot did this time.
“There are many very strong teams, including mine,” Pinot said. “The level is really high.”
A horrific crash in training for Froome, now recovering from career-threatening broken bones, robbed the team of its ace. Thomas’s own preparations were hampered by a crash at the Tour of Switzerland last month. Finally, Egan Bernal — being groomed by Brailsford to succeed Froome and Thomas — looks increasingly unable to compete for the title this year. The 22-year-old Colombian was fifth in Stage 14 and is fourth overall, three minutes behind Alaphilippe.
Alaphilippe is still being coy about his chances of winning, but the prospect is clearly creeping into his thoughts with each extra step he takes in yellow toward the Champs-Élysées.
“The closer we get to Paris, the more I’ll be able to ask myself that question,” he said.
Pinot, sixth overall and 3:12 behind Alaphilippe, is showing remarkable grit in bouncing back from his Stage 10 misfortune, when he was caught in a group that got separated from other podium contenders in crosswinds.
“I have this rage inside me, because in my opinion it was an injustice,” said Pinot, a podium finisher in 2014. “It was a slap the kind of which I’ve rarely suffered.”
On Saturday’s climb, he slapped back.
“Since the start of the Tour, I had this stage in the back of my mind. The Tourmalet, it’s mythical,” said Pinot, who has three career stage wins at the Tour.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on hand at the top of the Tourmalet to see Pinot win and Alaphilippe extend his lead, gushed about the “two fantastic riders.”
“They attack and they have heart,” Macron said.
With just one week left, chances will soon start running out for other riders to spoil France’s party.