The bad luck is blind but in this Tour it seems to see us trying to hit all the big names one by one: in the chaotic final of the first stage he chose as victims Froome and Porte involved in a fall and Quintana stranded by a puncture just over 3 km away from arrival; in the fourth fraction it was Ilnur Zakarin's turn to suffer the blows of bad luck, which forced him into a vain chase after a tumble; yesterday, in the stage that ended on the Mur-de-Bretagne, it was above all Tom Dumoulin who paid the price for bad luck, forced to put his foot on the ground due to a puncture 5 km from the finish, an accident that took him out of his own way as the race heated up in view of the tough final climb.
In an attempt to regain the lead of the race, the Dutchman must have insisted too much pedaling in the slipstream of the flagship, so much so that the delay accused on arrival (53" by the winner Daniel Martin) was compounded by the 20" penalty of the jury. Shortly after, bad luck hit Romain Bardet too who, bike in hand, yelled "crévaison" to solicit the intervention of a mechanic from his team. The Frenchman got back on the saddle quickly but there was no more road or time to get back: in the end he too had to give his direct opponents about half a minute for the classification.
But the chronicle of the stage didn't lie only in the jinx that persecuted Dumoulin and Bardet. On the Mur-de-Bretagne, where the Irishman Daniel Martin reminded himself that he was one of the brightest finisseurs around by winning his second stage of the Tour, no one expected all hell to happen to change the face of the standings. Fascinating but too short, it is certainly not Alpe d'Huez even if it is advertised as such by the Bretons.
However, the final climb with its gradients of more than 10% did give some signals. And it is very positive for Vincenzo Nibali: the Squalo lost a minute in the team time trial but in the five road stages raced up to now he has never lost a pedal stroke, managing to emerge unscathed from falls and punctures but also from difficult moments like that of yesterday when the Sicilian champion found himself in the second section due to a fan that broke the group. And on the final ascent, where he had suffered in 2015, Nibali, who arrived with the leaders, together with Quintana and Valverde, preceded Chris Froome by 5" - a trifle that in any case raises morale.
Daniel Martin won the stage and in the convulsive last km he accelerated with power, surprising everyone, even Sagan (eighth) and Alaphilippe (fourth), who were also overtaken by Latour (second, 1" behind Martin) and Valverde third at 3” who settled the squad with Nibali, Quintana, Thomas, Majka, Mollema, Landa and the yellow jersey Van Avermaet in the sprint. That is the best of the Tour except for Froome who this time can't invoke the bad luck that delayed Dumoulin and Bardet.
