This is a Tour that will be decided on the great mountains in the last terrible week of the race, certainly not – as has happened in other editions – by the time trials. Much less from the only 13,8 km scheduled for this year which inaugurated the 102nd Grande Boucle yesterday. But for Vincenzo Nibali, pedaling for just a quarter of an hour or so, on the street circuit of Utrecht, and already finding yourself with a handful of seconds ahead of Froone, Contador and Quintana, isn't really a bad start to his thriller adventure. Only a surprising Thibaut Pinot, usually awkward in races against the clock, did better by two seconds than last year's Tour winner, but the Frenchman, despite being an excellent grimpeur on whom the transalpine hopes are concentrated to win back a final yellow jersey that he has been missing from France for thirty years, he is not among the first tier opponents of the Squalo dello Strait. The really tough ones are all behind him: Froome by 7 seconds; Contador of 15: Quintana of 18. A trifle in terms of gaps but psychologically an important outcome for how Nibali, right from the first pedal stroke, immediately played his role as defending champion to beat, ready to play all his cards for an extraordinary BIS.
After all, in Utrecht no one in the club of the fantastic four has appeared extraterrestrial. The true Martian of the day, first yellow of this Tour, was actually the Australian Rohan Dennis who lined up, in order, time trial specialists such as Toni Martin (second at 5”), Fabian Cancellara (third at 6 ”) and Tom Dumoulin (fourth at 8”). Dennis has also achieved, with a time set at 14'56”, the average of 55,446 km/h, a new record for the Tours of this millennium. Only Chris Boardman had done something similar in the short time trial of Lille in the 1994 Tour. The Australian of Bmc, a racer born on the track after all Boardman, is part of the group of last holders of the hour record before Bradley's exploit Wiggins on June 7th.
Today the Tour, after having risked the first suspected case of doping with Lars Boom, Dutchman of Nibali's Astana even before the start, remains in Holland with a treacherous stage due to the wind from the North Sea which will blow to Zeeland, the place of arrival in the landscape of the famous dikes that defend the Netherlands from the tides. The French call the tremendous gusts of wind that create fans and break up the group "bordures". Froome also knows something about it in the Tour he swept away in 2013 but that in the stage of Saint-Amand-Montrond saw the green mice when Contador with Cavendish made the devil out of four taking advantage of a fan that the British, despite being then an authentic extraterrestrial, could no longer close.
