“I felt that I would have won since passing under the flame rouge of the last kilometre”. And this time Elia Viviani did nothing wrong and won big his first stage on the Tour. For the Italian sprinter, yellow jersey teammate Julian Alaphilippe, it is the day that has been awaited for years, the one in a certain sense of the definitive consecration among the great sprinters of the world stage.
It is also the best response to the not too veiled criticism that the manager-patron of Deceuninck Quick Step, Patrick Lefevere, made him the day before, underlining how in the failed sprint in Brussels – that of the victory by Mike Teunissen – it wasn't the team train that didn't work, but rather Viviani who had lost its wheels. A mistake that Elia acknowledges having committed but which is now canceled by yesterday's splendid success with arms raised on the finish line in Nancy, in front of her parents, who had postponed their return to Italy, despite being disappointed by the flop of the first stage, precisely because Nancy's felt that it would be the fraction of the ransom. And so it was.
A royal flight with Viviani's wheel in front of an authentic "parterre de roi" of the Tour sprint: Kristoff, Ewan, Sagan, Groenewegen, Teunissen, Nizzolo, Stuyven, Matthews, Laporte, Trentin and Greipel just to stop at the first eleven placed behind the former champion of Italy. A triumph that follows the fantastic one of Alaphilippe in Epernay, yellow jersey who yesterday put himself at Viviani's service in the frenetic final, forming with Morkov and Richeze a perfect train for Lefevere's happiness.
Today the Tour - thanks to the completely innovative route compared to tradition - leaves the plain again to tackle the first foothills of the Vosges with arrival in the picturesque Colmar. An eventful stage that precedes the first real mountain with the Ballon d'Alsace and the final ascent to the Planche des belles filles which in 2012 revealed Froome, then still Bradley Wiggins' luxury follower. It will be the first strict check-up for all the big names. No one will win the Tour up there, but someone could start losing it tomorrow.
