Yesterday's stage won by the Australian Michael Matthews on Sagan, which does not move the classification with Chris Froome always in yellow who already foresees another stage for today towards Montpellier without jolts waiting for Mont Ventoux. After the Pyrenees and before that terrible stone furnace that is the Ventoux under the July sun, these are ideal days for stage hunters in the total disinterest of the classification men: yesterday was a tailor-made route for finisseurs rather than pure sprinters , even if there was a somewhat indigestible appetizer of the climb to the highest peak of the Tour, the Port de l'Envalira with its 2.400 meters, a giant who could sue Aso, the Tour's organizing company, for where and how he placed it in this edition.
In any case, it helps Rui Costa to win the prize in memory of Henry Desgrange, the man who, after founding the newspaper "L'Auto", conceived the first Tour in 1903. And it is precisely on the ramps of Envalira that Peter Sagan, also to raise the morale of his patron Oleg Tinkoff, who was rather depressed after Contador's abandonment, he decided to go on the attack with a double objective: to repeat the success in Cherbourg and snatch the green jersey of the points standings from Mark Cavendish.
14 other riders go with him: they don't frighten those who take care of the rankings but form a respectable squad with excellent names, in addition to the world champion and Rui Costa, there are, among others, Vincenzo Nibali, who one day sinks and the next one tries to re-emerge, the Belgian former yellow jersey Greg Van Avermaet, the Norwegian Boasson-Hagen, the Spaniards Mikel Landa and Izaguirre, the Australian Matthews and the Frenchman Tony Gallopin, yellow jersey for one day in the 2014 Tour, that Triumphal Arch of the Strait Shark.
To get to Revel, the Tour caravan crosses the boundless countryside of the Aude for hours, the scene of one of the most heinous massacres in the name of religion against the Albigensians eight hundred years ago, accused of being Cathars and therefore heretics. This crusade was ordered by Pope Innocent III, a pope whom the Church did not make a saint but who did not even repudiate since there is a monument in the Lateran basilica to commemorate him, erected by Leo XIII after they had been transported from Perugia to Rome in 1890 the ashes of Lothair of the Counts of Segni.
Returning to the Tour, Sagan is the great protagonist who animates the whole stage. The flying goals are his that ensure him the points to overtake Cavendish. But once the first mission is achieved, the Slovakian world champion, an authentic star of the world cycling movement, also wants victory. And here he is, alone against everyone else, making the breakaway train and attacking the only stretch in the final, the Cote de Saint Ferréol (1,8 km at 6,6% gradient) at a pace that makes a good selection – between the victims of so much ardor also Landa and Nibali who will reach the finish line more than 3 minutes from the leaders.
But Sagan fails to eliminate the three he fears most, namely Boasson-Hagen, Van Avermaet and Matthews. The latter also has the advantage of still having Daryl Impey with him – the first African yellow jersey of the 2013 Tour -, a decisive help in view of the sprint, with his accelerations in the last km, always generously rebuffed by Sagan, but which ended up weakening the final rush of the world champion. Matthews wins by a whisker, Sagan is second ahead of Van Avermaet. The calm and relaxed group, with Froome, Quintana and Aru, arrives after more than 9 minutes.
"Le retour d'un perdant magnifique", is the title that Equipe.fr dedicates to Sagan, acclaimed by the crowd as if he had won, a super sprinter who is also capable of fighting for the green jersey on courses where other sprinters, like Kittel or Greipel risk running out of time. If for Sagan it is yet another second place, for Matthews it is his first victory in the Tour on a finish line, that of Revel, where other champions such as Rudy Altig and Eddy Merckx also won their first stage in the Tour, the German – who died in 79 years old last June 11 – in the sprint ahead of Tom Simpson in 1966; the Belgian Cannibal in 1969, the year of his first triumph in the Tour a month after the sensational expulsion from the Giro in Savona for doping when he was the absolute master of the pink race.
