On the first evening of the 1995 Tour de France, Miguel Indurain watched the heavens open over Saint-Brieuc, he saw Chris Boardman slide off his Lotus bike and into a roadside barrier, and he sagely opted to ride the prologue time trial on a regular road bike and soft-pedal around the course. Three weeks later, as per habit, he rode into Paris in the yellow jersey.
Like Indurain, Chris Froome (Sky) was the last man down the start ramp in Düsseldorf on Saturday afternoon, and like Saint-Brieuc, the afternoon was marred by the heavy crashes that forced Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Ion Izagirre (Bahrain-Merida) out of the Tour, but there end the comparisons.
Froome opted to tackle the 14km course on his low-profile steed and he rode without inhibition on the rain-soaked parcours, sweeping through the few technical corners, seemingly unmoved by the forewarning of Valverde’s crash.
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The gamble, if it can be termed as such, paid off for Froome, who was the best-placed of the contenders for overall victory by day’s end, and by some distance. The Briton placed 6th on the stage, 12 seconds down on stage winner and teammate Geraint Thomas, but over half a minute clear of the bulk of his general classification rivals, most notably Richie Porte (BMC) and Nairo Quintana (Movistar).
“I haven’t seen the times yet but I heard in my earpiece that Geraint Thomas won. That’s super for the team. Really super. Tomorrow is the first road stage, and we’ll see how it goes,” Froome told a scrum of reporters in French immediately on crossing the line.
Some of the time gaps were hurriedly read out for Froome’s benefit before he rode off to his team hotel.The most eye-catching deficit was the 35 seconds he put into Porte, barely three weeks after he had himself lost 37 seconds to his former teammate in the 23km test at the Critérium du Dauphiné in Bourgion-Jalieu. No two time trials are exactly the same – particularly when the conditions were so different – but it was, by any measure, a most startling turnaround.
Disappointment for Porte as Quintana limits damage
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