While Britain mourned yet another Wimbledon tragedy on Sunday night, they will soon have reason to cheer on another sporting front after Team Sky, and in particular Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, destroyed the Tour de France in Stage 9’s 41.5km individual time trial from Arc-et-Senans to Besancon. In doing so, the British duo all but ended the 2012 Tour de France as a contest, and it will now, sadly, take a monumental collapse from Wiggins to see him lose the race from here.
The fears of cycling fans the world over came to fruition on Monday night, as Bradley Wiggins demolished his rivals to take the time trial by 35 seconds from teammate Chris Froome. Four-time champion of the world Fabian Cancellara was third, over 57 seconds behind. The more telling numbers though was the deficit of the GC riders to Wiggins – Evans lost 1:43, Nibali 2:07 and Menchov 2:08. That translates to a Wiggins lead of 1:53 on GC from Evans, with Froome @ 2:07 and Nibali @ 2:23. But for mine this race is done. There is another longer time trial to come for Wiggins to put even more time onto the field and he does not look like losing any time at all in the mountains. He will have to have a massive off day somewhere to lose this title – and I can’t see it coming. Wiggins performance was the most dominant in an individual time trial I have seen since the Lance Armstrong days – interesting given the dark clouds of suspicion that have hovered over that rider in recent days. It is also interesting that a rider who came of age as a 4km pursuit specialist is now smashing the world’s best over 40km as well as dragging his body over some of the world’s toughest mountain ranges. It is also interesting that this massive and career best performance has come in a year in which his home country hosts the Olympics….
Evans must be disappointed with his performance to finish so far behind Wiggins, especially given he also failed to beat the time of team mate Tejay Van Garderen and Sylvain Chavanel. Given he was already a minute behind Wiggins at the first time check I guess he defended his position over the back half of the course ok, but he would have hoped for much better than this.
This was the risk of the route chosen by Christian Prudhomme for this year’s Tour. The large amount of time trial km’s was designed to get the mountain men to attack early and often. But if they were not able to drop Wiggins, he was likely to burn them in the time trial and then suck their wheels for the remaining two weeks of the race. It now looks like that will happen, and sadly we could be in for one of the most boring Tour’s on record.
The more exciting contest might be for the White Jersey, which was regained by Tejay Van Garderen after he finished 4th on the day. He leads that competition by 42 seconds from Rein Taaramae and Tony Gallopin, and all have shown they have the climbing ability to win it. The points and mountains jersey’s will also be keenly fought over but those classifications were sidelined today.
Yellow Jersey – Bradley Wiggins
Green Jersey – Peter Sagan
Polka Dot Jersey – Frederick Kessiakof
White Jersey – Tejay Van Garderen
Brock Mclean Tweet of the Day
@prongle28 – Wiggins already eaten over a minute out of Evans. He is motoring…but not on drugs. C*nts. #TDF12
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