Leaving the Alps behind, the Tour before tackling the Pyrenees today allowed itself a trip to the shores of the Mediterranean, far beyond the Camargue, to that capital of summer entertainment which in recent years has become Cap d'Agde, with the Ile des Loisir, the extreme playground and immense white beaches, destination for nudists and swingers from all over the world: another stage without shocks for the classification won with a breathtaking sprint by André Greipel on Peter Sagan, after Evans on tear of Mont-Saint-Clair, which dominates Sete, he tried yet another unrealistic reach, immediately rebuffed by Wiggins and Nibali. The Australian's sprint served to put the group to a whip and split up with Cavendish and Goss who immediately lost their wheels and the possibility of participating in the final sprint, where Wiggins, in a gesture of generosity, pulled the sprint to his trusted companion Boasson -Hagen, who came only third though. The stage, enlivened only in the finale, also served to strengthen the curious record of the Dane Michael Morkov who, by dint of escapes with today's one finished on Mont-Saint-Clair, has already accumulated over 650 km covered in the lead.
Celebrated the third victory of the German Greipel, remarked the umpteenth flop of Cavendish, the only slightly depressed Sky man, waiting for the first Pyrenean hills, there is no better place than Cap d'Agde, with all its temptations, to distract the suiveurs of the Tour from the theme that has been taking center stage since Thursday's arrival in La Toussuire, since the shadow of the conspiracy has crept into Team Sky, Bradley Wiggins' team. If, the other day, sporting director Sean Yates' scolding via earphones to Chris Froome immediately repressed the rebellion of the wingman who had taken the liberty of detaching the captain in the yellow jersey, with a shot that expressed all the force long repressed by team orders, the rumors that filter through from the well-informed are increasingly disturbing for Team Sky, the battleship of the Tour which occupies the first two places in the standings with Wiggins and Froome. “I hope it doesn't happen for them, but the hypothesis that Froome breaks Wiggins in the Pyrenees is not so unfounded. In the big mountains, the strongest wins in the end. And Froome proved to go better than his captain uphill”, said Bjarne Rijs, a character who knows every secret of cycling, in an interview with Rai Sport.
Today Rijs is the Saxo team manager, as a rider he won the 1996 Tour as captain of the German Telecom, helped but also sometimes annoyed by the exuberance of a follower who would become a protagonist of world cycling: Jan Ullrich. He never came to the coup. Rijs was thus the first Dane to win the Tour, even though eleven years later he admitted that he had taken massive doses of Epo at the time, which inexplicably was never detected in the daily checks to which the rider in the yellow jersey is subjected. Ullrich will make up for it the following year by easily winning the 1997 edition. The same happened for Greg Lemond who in 1985 was about to snatch the Tour from his captain, Bernard Hinault, if he hadn't been blocked in the Pyrenees by team orders. The American will hit the target in 1986, winning the first of his three Tours.
Even if Wiggins – who also has the 53km time trial on his side in the penultimate stage at Chartes – were to win – Froome could therefore hope to do like Ullrich and Lemond next year. But at the 2013 Tour, the centenary one, an uncomfortable customer like Alberto Contador will be back on track, who is about to resume activity after his disqualification with a very strong desire to win and regain the throne from which the Iberian champion has always felt unjustly dethroned . He will be one of the many "phony" winners of the Tour, often referred to by Wiggins in his anti-doping crusade, but Contador belongs to another race of cyclists, of whom we have no record on this Tour. No offense to Wiggins or for the good Nibali who more than Evans remains the most dangerous rival of the two English roosters of Sky with the Pyrenees at the gates.
