When Fabio Aru was asked during his rest day press conference if he would have settled beforehand to be in second place at this point in the Tour de France, the Astana rider's broad grin said more than his words.
"We've got to this rest day in the best way possible, and I'm very satisfied with how we're doing," Aru said. "There have been so many difficult days in this year's Tour that we have to be pleased. On the first stage alone, two riders crashed out. I didn't take that many risks, but right up to yesterday [stage 9], there were some very tough situations to handle."
Aru is currently lying second overall and has already won a mountaintop stage in a Grand Tour that was not, at the start of 2017, expected to figure on his race schedule. An April training crash ruled him out of the Giro d'Italia, however, and Aru's shift to focusing on the summer instead has paid off so far. Aru lies second overall, 18 seconds behind Chris Froome (Sky) after nine stages.
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Nor has his progress in the Tour gone un-noticed amongst the Italian cycling tifosi, something Aru said he appreciated deeply. "We've been concentrating on the race, and as such you're not always aware of what's going on back home, but I've noticed a great deal of support on social networks. It's very important. Without support from the fans, we're nothing."
Aru spoke at length – getting on for three quarters of an hour – and without reacting testily to any difficult questions in a packed press conference on Monday's rest day. He was flanked at the top table by teammate Jakob Fuglsang, the Critérium du Dauphiné winner who is currently lying fifth overall in the Tour, and who will surely have a massive role to play in the Astana game plan in the days to come.
Aru and Fuglsang both were very much in the thick of the action in the final part of Sunday's brutally difficult stage through the Jura, and the Italian was in the thick of some controversy too, given he attacked just as the race leader Froome suffered a mechanical problem, and then collaborated with Fugslang and the Briton to chase down Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) in the finale.
Froome
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