It is an exciting Tour, which also takes the bookmakers by surprise, who in a few days had to constantly change the super favorite for the final victory: after the time trial in Pau it was Geraint Thomas but at the top of the Tourmalet the Welshman, protagonist of an uncertain ending, was supplanted by the explosive Alaphilippe in yellow shirt.
Just 24 hours have passed and on the Prat d'Albis, which dominates Foix, here is the first candidate for the Paris yellow jersey Thibaut Pinot, who repeated yesterday the bullying attack, which had given him the victory on the Tourmalet, and jumped up to fourth place in the standings 1'50” from Alaphilippe and just 15” from Geraint Thomas who is second.
He didn't win because there was a perky 33” ahead Simon yates who gave himself his second victory in solitude in a Tour run since the beginning as a stage hunter and not as a man-ranking. Alaphilippe wasn't there yesterday with Pinot but Landa, author of the umpteenth attack which, although not finalized with success, allowed him to shorten the standings a little, climbing up to seventh place at 4'54” from the yellow jersey.
Symbol of primacy that remains on Alaphilippe's shoulders but the horizon for what until yesterday seemed an invincible musketeer has suddenly blurred. The fault of a failure that turned on a red warning light in the yellow jersey's perfect engine up to now: it all happened at the time of the shot of Pinot who greeted in the blink of an eye the company of a troop with Thomas, Bernal, Krujiswjick, Valverde, Buchmann, Porte, Fuglsang.
Only Alaphilippe he tried to follow him, repeating the pairing of the Tourmalet. He even succeeded for a short stretch, but faced with a second acceleration from Pinot, the yellow jersey gave way and was reabsorbed by Thomas' squad. Instead of following up on the two co-leaders of Ineos, Thomas and Bernal, Alaphilippe took the lead in shooting wasting what little energy he had left.
With the consequence that it came soon also detached from the other big namesrisking a semi-suicide. Overwhelmed by fatigue, he crossed the finish line 1'49” behind Yates and 1'16” behind Pinot and Landa. It was nearly a minute – 58” to be exact – that Alaphilippe had to concede to bookman, a tough German who is riding a splendid Tour, ea Bernal, good in the final to gain precious seconds even up Thomas (seventh at 1'22” from Yates) e Krujiswjick.
The Welshman – to tell the truth he didn't look good either – and the Dutchman, who arrived together with the always irreducible Valverde, nonetheless took advantage of Alaphilippe's misstep to gain 27” on the yellow jersey, which he now entrusts to the day of rest, which fortunately happened today, all hope to recharge the batteries.
“I'm not disappointed, I'm just exhausted. It was to be expected after what we've done in these first two weeks of the Tour. But I'm proud to still have the jersey on,” Alaphilippe commented hotly on his first bad day. But with the Alps looming on the horizon with so many legendary hills to climb, from the Vars to the Izoard, from the Galibier to the over 2700m of the Iseran, he is no longer Alaphilippe but Pinot, who proved to be the strongest and most concrete of climbers in the Pyrenees, the French best equipped to laugh to France the final yellow jersey, an event that has been missing since 1985.
