In the end the “The show must go on” prevailed but the Tour yesterday he really risked being stopped when William Bonnet, a French rider from the FDJ, triggered a crazy carom in the middle of the group. Seen from above it seemed that the road had exploded under the wheels of the runners with bikes and bodies thrown here and there on the asphalt and on the grassy edge of the road. The most tanned were Bonnet himself, Tom Dumoulin, the white jersey of youth leader, and the Australian Simon Gerrans who were hospitalized. It was also on the ground Fabian Cancellara, lying on the pavement in his newly won yellow jersey in the Zeeland wind. Spartacus will courageously get back on his bike reaching the finish line with a delay of over 11 minutes from the first. But then the Swiss champion declared his surrender: the X-ray revealed two broken vertebrae, the same problem from which he had just recovered after the bad fall in March at Harelbecke. Involved and battered in this tangle were about twenty riders, including Matthews, Van Summeren, Ten Dam, Rui Costa, Pozzato and the Eritrean Teklehaimanot. The confusion was total with all the ambulances invading the roadway to provide first aid. So that the director of the Tour decided to neutralize the race creating an uproar between those who agreed to stop (such as Quintana and Valverde's Movistar) and those who wanted the race not to be interrupted (Nibali's Astana and Froome's Sky). At one point the Tour just stopped. At least for ten minutes before setting off again, in the midst of controversy and chaos, at a tourist pace.
Only after the Cote de Bohaissau did the Grande Boucle regain its competitive rhythm. And the race, having exorcised yet another great fear, caught fire on the final ascent of the Mur d'Huy where a great man was seen again, with his old explosiveness Joaquim Rodríguez. 'Purito', as he did in the victorious Freccia Vallone in 2012, even with a sore arm from Sunday's crash, sprinted in the last two hundred metres. Like lightning he grabbed and left Froome and then Gallopin in the lurch: a peremptory victory that launches the Spanish climber among the possible protagonists of the Tour, beyond the fantastic four among which once again he was Chris Froome the best, behind Rodriguez just a second apart. And for a second on Tony Martin, the extra-terrestrial from the 2013 Tour is back in yellow shirt increasing the advantage over Nibali (seventh at 11" from Rodriguez), over Quintana (eighth with the same time as the leader of Astana) and above all over Contador who appeared packed in the decisive moment of the Mur d'Huy reaching 12th at 18". Now the 'Gunslinger' is 36” behind Froome in the standings while Nibali is 13th at 1'38”. Quintana too saw his delay rise to 1'56”, closely followed by Rodriguez, 18th, exactly 2' behind Froome's yellow jersey. Yellow jersey no. 29 in his career that Cancellara, hero of many Roubaix, was unable to defend right on the eve of today's cobbled stage in Cambrai, which Nibali exalted last year but which was fatal to Froome forced to retire due to a disastrous fall.
