Ten seconds they are nothing in a Tour that from Tuesday will face only mountains, first the Pyrenees and then the Alps, but losing them because you can't keep the wheels of the best on a final stretch is not a good sign for Vincenzo Nibali that on Mur de Bretagne registers another misstep of his beginning Tour a little too muted.
To win on the route that the Bretons call their Alpe d'Huez and which saw the success of Cadel Evans on Contador in 2011, is finally a French rider from Ag2r, Alexis Vuillermoz, called Pikachu, a nickname that was given to him for his resemblance to a Japanese cartoon hero since the days when he competed on a mountain bike. With a surprise attack 700 meters from the finish line, the twenty-seven-year-old Frenchman catches everyone on the counterattack, in particular Daniel Martin, Valverde, Sagan who have to settle for placing themselves, in order, behind him, regulating the rest of a group of 25 riders with all the men in the standings, from Froome always in yellow to Contador, from Rodriguez to Van Garderen, from Quintana to Uran. Everybody except Nibali which in the standings is now at 1'48” from Froome. For Sagan yet another podium without a win but with the satisfaction, at least yesterday, of having snatched the green jersey of the points classification from Greipel which he took to Paris last year.
Today the Tour faces the team time trial from Vannes to Plumelec, a short fraction of just 28 km but which in the last two kilometers has an average gradient of 6,2% with peaks of 7,2%. Prediction open even if Van Garderen's Bmc and Froome's Sky seem to be the most popular for victory.
