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​Tour de France: Stage 12 Daily Dish

Aru takes yellow as his team falters, Froome shows cracks, and Romain Bardet appears to be gaining momentum.

Joe Lindsey |
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Aru takes yellow as his team falters, Froome shows cracks, and Romain Bardet appears to be gaining momentum. – By Joe Lindsey

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 If today’s Tour de France stage profile looked like a rollercoaster of ups and downs, it had nothing on the Astana team’s day. Fabio Aru took over the yellow jersey on the final ramps of Peyragudes when three-time Tour winner Chris Froome showed surprising weakness in the final meters. But Aru’s victory comes at a cost, as his teammate, Jakob Fuglsang, lost 29 minutes and tumbled down the standings. Fuglsang has two broken bones in his left arm courtesy of a senseless crash in the feed zone on Stage 11, which also knocked lieutenant Dario Cataldo out of the race entirely.

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So Aru dons the first yellow jersey of his career, ahead of what looks like a hard and aggressive 13th stage, just as his team is decimated by injury. Fuglsang finished the stage, but is said to be suffering pain when trying to hold an aero position on descents— and there are three big ones on Stage 13. Perhaps toughest of all, Fuglsang is now a half hour down on his teammate, which costs Astana the 1-2 tactic they might have played otherwise.

Given Froome’s uncharacteristic fade at the finish, it remains to be seen if the Sky captain will rebound as Aru’s biggest challenger. Stage winner Romain Bardet (Ag2r-la Mondiale) appears to have one of the strongest teams in the race, and second-place finisher Rigoberto Uran of Cannondale-Drapac is proving to be a formidable opponent as well. Just when Aru needs his team most, it seems like it might not be there for him.

Controversial Jury Decision Part 46

The UCI race jury seems intent on inserting itself into the 2017 Tour at the most key moments. First was the now-infamous DQ of Peter Sagan, and then the curious decision not to disqualify Nacer Bouhanni after Stage 10 for arguably an even more-egregious breach of rules.

On Stage 12, the race jury upended the overall classification by slapping Cannondale-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran and George Bennett of LottoNL-Jumbo with a 20-second penalty each for “illegal feeds.” Race rules prohibit taking on food and drinks at certain points of the race; for Stage 12 that meant anywhere inside the final 10km. Bennett took a bottle of water from a fan at 6.4km to go from a spectator, while Uran accepted a bottle at 5km to go.

Cannondale-Drapac GM Jonathan Vaughters said on Twitter that the team accepted the penalty, which puts Uran 55 seconds behind yellow jersey Fabio Aru, but he also pointed out that Romain Bardet took an identical feed to Bennett, at the same location, and received no penalty.

No word from the race jury about whether it would revisit the incident, even though there’s video proof.

Prepare for Takeoff

The Stage 12 finish at Peyragudes was a little different than the last time the Tour finished here, in 2012. The new finish was slightly shorter, but a lot harder at the end: it finished on the runway of the Altiport de Peyresourde-Balestas, a paved landing strip for small aircraft.

These kinds of high-altitude airports usually feature steep runways, which planes go down for takeoff and land uphill to quickly scrub speed. The last 500 meters, where Froome got dropped, are 16 percent gradient. Aru, who finished third, said he struggled even in a 39×28 low gear.

Transfer Rumours Abound

Alberto Contador went briefly on the attack today and paid for it, getting dropped on the Peyragudes finish. VeloNews reports that Contador will not give up on GC; stage wins aren’t worth the kind of sacrifices he makes in training, and so if he can’t compete for the overall, he’d rather just retire.

But word is that Contador has re-signed with his Trek-Segafredo team for 2018. And we’d actually love it if Contador went for stages. Yes: he’s one of two active riders to win all three Grand Tours. But he’s best known for the kind of bold attacks he tried last year at the Tour of Spain, where his early attack on the Formigal stage upset the race entirely. As well, Contador has never won a single-day monument like Liege-Bastogne-Liege or the Tour of Lombardy. He’s 34, and seems like he wrestles every day whether to continue racing or not. But a win like that would be a perfect capstone to his career.

Also, new yellow jersey Fabio Aru is said to be deciding whether to re-sign with Astana, his home for five years and the only pro team he’s ever been on, or jumping to UAE Abu Dhabi, where he would likely replace Louis Meintjes. With his yellow jersey today, wherever Aru ends up, the price tag probably just jumped.

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