A burst through the mountains opens the Tour de France

LA THUILLETTAZ, France – The attention for this year's Tour de France has not been easy, especially in the host country, where a triumphant World Cup campaign has taken hold of the country

. itself, the race is installed in a provisional model and ranking. But an intense race through the mountains turned things around on Wednesday and propelled the British Team Sky, favorite of the race.

The first leg of the race on Tuesday included a section on unpaved roads and the La Rosière ski area brought more novelty. At 67 miles, it was relatively short but included four major mountain passes, two of which were noted as being difficult to read.

The unique challenges of the route were the setting up of stationary trainers and the setting up of bicycles. in them as soon as the team buses pulled into their designated parking spaces. The coach is usually associated with time trials – short and intense races against the clock. Wednesday's stage was not a sprint, but it was just as disruptive.

Team Sky, who had been a bit out of the way during the first stages, now has Geraint Thomas in the yellow leader jersey while the Tour was halfway through. His teammate Chris Froome, the four-time champion, is in second place, 1 minute and 25 seconds from the end.

The climb of about 10 miles to La Rosière (which falls in Italy on the other side) was new to the Tour. The Thuillettaz, hamlet of three cottages and a garage, was six kilometers from the road, beyond a point deemed too narrow for the Tour's advertising caravan.

Several generations waited on the steep path of the hamlet. From a French family who rents one of the cottages each summer. They were waiting for Romain Bardet, the French climber and the great hope of the nation. The paradoxical ability of the Netherlands to produce climbers offered many runners to encourage three Dutchmen who had brought their flags. A British family who had been cycling was waiting for Team Sky. A French family with their car on the side and a bunch of kids carrying advertising materials for the caravan had only fuzzy ideas about who was riding.

While the results of the scene were not decided anything for everyone in the hamlet. Near the front was Tom Dumoulin from the Netherlands. Froome and Thomas were there for the British Cheers section (a member skillfully grabbed a bottle of empty water), and Bardet, at that time, was about to act.

In the hot afternoon sun, the rest of the runners went on in dribs and drabs. Greg van Avermaet, a Belgian running for the BMC Racing Team registered in the United States, went on wearing the yellow jersey about 20 minutes after the leaders in what was then the largest group on the road – maybe a dozen runners. It was his eighth day as the race leader, and one day earlier he had defied expectations by staying ahead in the first stage of the mountain.

Dumoulin finished 20 seconds behind Thomas, with Froome in third. But the result of the day has raised a familiar perspective – that Sky will dominate the rest of the Tour again. Now the big question is whether the team will support Thomas or defending champion Froome for the final victory when the race will end in Paris on July 29th.

During the 2013 Tour, Froome seemed to be the most powerful of the Sky pilots. Bradley Wiggins, who won the overall victory. This decision sparked a rivalry between the two men that still has not dissipated even though Wiggins has long since retired, but Thomas diplomatically downplayed suggestions Wednesday that he wanted to be the new boss here.

"It's unreal and I do not have it I do not expect it at all," he told reporters on arrival. "Obviously, Froomey is the leader.He won six Grand Tours and for me, it's an unknown."

Froome, addressing the Eurosport broadcaster, said that Thomas's push for the victory on stage was the right thing to do.

Sky, with his usual embarrassment of wealth, has seriously hindered the hopes of several other teams, especially Movistar of Spain, for a global victory.

Less predictable, as the final runners climbed the mountain, Mark Cavendish, a champion sprinter from the Isle of Man, was the last of them

Cavendish started this year's race with 30 stage wins on his resume and hoped to get closer to the record of 34, set by the Belgian Eddy Merckx.

But he was doing well out of action during the first week's sprints, and the mountains are never nice with sprinters, who have to carry more heavy muscle mass than most of their colleagues. But they were particularly cruel to Cavendish on Wednesday.

He drove in the hamlet 50 minutes after the first appearance of the first rider. Cries arose, and soon everyone would come home while he was heading up, dragged by a team car and the so-called vulture – the white van that serves as a "van" broom "to sweep the runners to the back. (It is rare in modern towers that riders ride in the broom wagon because most give up in team cars.)

But Cavendish intended not to give up. As the small convoy climbed, groups of hundreds of riders hoping to descend were gathered by the police. Cavendish slowly pedaled his orange shoes but his pace was majestic, sometimes under six miles per hour. The police motorcycle that was right in front of him was struggling to keep up such a slow pace, and she stopped occasionally to let Cavendish catch up with him.

Cavendish crossed the line about an hour and five minutes after Thomas. But the weather was not officially recorded because it was more than twice the maximum of 31 minutes allowed to avoid disqualification. As soon as Cavendish crossed the finish line for the last time in this Tour de France, a work team jumped up and started dismantling it.