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A s the Tour de France crossed the Massif Central towards the final showdown in the Pyrenees, with the Welshman Geraint Thomas in charge, a French word came to mind: plus ça change, more c & # 39; is the same thing . As every year since 2012, the overall result seemed fixed, with the usual reservations about luck and God's acts.
The situation is unusual: an established champion, Chris Froome, with a low question mark on his strength, lagging behind a teammate, Thomas, who is committed to showing loyalty, but is in the form of his life and is clearly considering a career-defining victory. In addition, the intimidating force that Team Sky showed across the Alps threatened to stop the race.
The Sunday field is conducive to surprise attacks of the kind of those of Alberto Contador – or Froome in the Giro of Italy – such movements are not in the repertoire of Tom Dumoulin or Primoz Roglic, the only riders within three minutes of Thomas, other than Froome. While Dumoulin remains the only one to threaten the hegemony of the British team – with the exception of Romain Bardet, Mikel Landa or Steven Kruijswijk – the next question is obvious: Thomas or Froome to win?
This is perhaps the only remaining plot of the Tour, a small world where Geoffrey Nicholson wrote more than 40 years ago, the favorite pastime is speculation.
Thomas rode as a team leader for the last 10 kilometers of the first leg. Fontenay-le-Comte, when Froome was forced to leave the road while the race separated. With each exit available since this initial gain of 51sec, the Welsh added a few seconds: five to Mur-de-Bretagne, 20 on the second alpine stage in La Rosiere, five to Alpe d'Huez. With time savings to win these two alpine stages – his two successive alpine victories are a feat rarely seen in the Tour – that took his advantage over his nominal leader at 1min 39sec.
The Welsh never looked like a team worker, never playing the role that he had spent years playing for Froome. Sometimes he could claim to have followed the wheels when the race was split, but these two alpine victories were small masterpieces that could only be created by a man who thought to win as well as every day. At La Rosiere, a No. 2 should have referred to Froome rather than skyrocket and leave it to the mercy of others; at Alpe d'Huez, a winger would have helped his leader to come out for bonus seconds available for stage victory.
To scramble the tracks, Froome has not yet raced like a man destined to win the Tour. He looked panicked when he did not have a team mate on the first leg and was producing inefficient attacks in the Alps rather than his usual quick acceleration. However, recent history has shown that he was perfectly able to take his time early in a three-week tour before making his move in the last days.
The situation looks like the one he had faced in the Giro d'Italia: a young driver (British) has taken the lead, but he has not yet proved that he "has not done it. it could last three weeks of racing. But the difference is that on the Giro, Froome was still able to attack Simon Yates for the simple reason that he was in another team.
Thomas's greatest achievement was gaining time, gradually, without ever making him look so blatantly, he was trying to oust the man he was insisting was his leader. His repeated claims that Froome remained Sky's man for overall victory are respectful of the parody point, but he continues to make an important point: with six Grand Tour victories to his credit, Froome's record counts, massively. The history of cycling, from Jacques Anquetil to Eddy Merckx to Bernard Hinault and Lance Armstrong, shows the same truth: the more Grand Riders win Grand Tours, the more they can find ways to win them.
He was forced to choose between two contenders in the past of the Tour, of course, but none that looks like this, as Team Sky seems – for the moment – to light years away from the descent to the Conflicts and mistrust that made life at La Vie Claire Hinault and Greg LeMond competed in the 1986 race. In 1985, LeMond was the challenger, Hinault the incumbent, but the American never wore yellow. A better parallel perhaps, the Giro d'Italia 1976, where former teammate Johan De Muynck seemed ready for the win after discovering his true potential before being savagely put in his place by the leader of his Brooklyn team, Roger De Vlaeminck.
With an arrival at the remaining summit, the unknown climb of the Portet Pass on Wednesday, two more mountain stages and the time trial, the Tour begins to resemble that of Thomas to lose rather than 39. to that of Froome.
to the million dollar question: assuming Thomas does not crack – a major problem for an unproven runner in the last week of the Tour – how will Froome react when or where he thinks that he could win? Will he sit down and let his teammate claim victory, or will he attack it, risking the team's unity?
Froome knows that public opinion will greet any sign of knife in Thomas's back. . Which brings us back to De Muynck: in an interview last year, he said that he had not spoken to De Vlaeminck since his "betrayal" in 1976. The wounds opened when a leader of the team runs into an ambitious teammate. ]
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