Aru takes yellow jersey
Bardet charges to Tour stage win as Froome overtaken in tough finish
ROMAIN Bardet and Fabio Aru blew the Tour de France yellow jersey race wide open yesterday as Chris Froome showed his first signs of weakness. Bardet won the 12th stage while Aru, who was third, stripped Froome of the race leader’s yellow jersey.
“It’s one of the best things that can happen in life, to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France,” a beaming Aru said.
“I never imagined this would happen. It was a really tough day and tough stage.
“I’m delighted to wear this jersey, it repays all my teammates who’ve helped me so much in this Tour.”
In an amazing finish on an uphill airstrip with a vertiginous 20% gradient, Aru went on the attack in the last few hundred metres. Froome tried to respond but did not have the legs to follow – yet Bardet did.
The French hope overhauled Aru and won by two seconds from Colombian Rigoberto Uran, who finished in the same time as Aru.
“I’m delighted to have raised my arms [in victory]. It’s a weight off my shoulders because I hadn’t done it yet this year,” Bardet said.
Froome, who held an 18-second lead over Aru at the start of the day, was 22 seconds back in seventh and lost the yellow jersey.
“It was a very, very tough finish. I didn’t have the legs in the final but there’s still a long way to go,” Briton Froome, a three-times tour winner and the reigning champion, said.
Coupled with his four-second time bonus for finishing third, Aru took over the race lead by six seconds as things started to get cramped at the top of the standings.
Bardet remains third but just 25sec off Aru now, with Uran still fourth.
However, the Colombian is still 55sec off the lead, as he was at the start of the day, after being penalised 20sec for illegally taking a water bottle from his team in the final 10km.
The big loser of the day was Colombian Nairo Quintana, who cracked 12km from the end of the 214.5km mountainous stage from Pau to Peyragudes in the Pyrenees.
Quintana came home 11th, more than two minutes down, and is now more than four minutes off the pace, although still eighth overall.
Froome’s Sky team had seemed to be in total control of the stage all day.
A 12-man breakaway was allowed a lead of more than six minutes at one stage and by the time they reached the top of the Porte de Bales hors-category climb 40km from the finish, Briton Stephen Cummings was on his own with a lead of about a minute and a half from the Sky-led peloton.
Cummings did not have the legs on the first-category Col de Peyresourde and was caught with 8.6km left.
Sky’s tempo had riders falling out the back of the lead group, with Denmark’s Jakob Fuglsang, who started the day fifth but had suffered two fractures in his arm in a crash on Wednesday, first to fold.
Quintana was next to go among the favourites with Spanish two-times former winner Alberto Contador also wilting with just more than 5km left.
But the young guns were still there with Froome.
Once the leaders reached the brutal last kilometre of the day, it was New Zealander George Bennett who attacked first but Froome’s Sky teammate Mikel Landa chased him down.
Aru was next to attack with Froome trying to follow. He could not and neither could Ireland’s Dan Martin, but Bardet and Uran showed their strength.