Tour de France: Chapeau Bradley! Wiggins takes yellow

HISTORY was made on the toughest stage so far of this year’s Tour de France as Bradley Wiggins became only the fifth British cyclist ever to wear the yellow jersey of race leader.

Completing a memorable day for British cycling, his team, Team Sky, dominated, with the coup de grâce coming from Chris Froome, Wiggins’ British-Kenyan team-mate, who attacked at the finish to win the stage and take over the polka-dot king of the mountains jersey.

Wiggins becomes only the fifth British rider after Tom Simpson in 1962, Chris Boardman in 1994, ’97 and ’98, Sean Yates in 1994, and David Millar in his debut Tour in 2000, to wear yellow. After being presented with the jersey by five-time winner Bernard Hinault, he was asked what it meant, and his response was succinct: “Yeah, it’s f*cking massive.”

The first day in the mountains is always decisive, and so this stage in the Vosges mountains proved. As much as gaining times or winning, it is about imposing yourself and sending a message to your rivals. As Sky led up the final climb, and several of Wiggins’ expected rivals dropped out the back of a dwindling lead group, the message was clear. He and his team would have gone to bed last night feeling as satisfied as they can now afford to be confident for the two weeks ahead.

Wiggins went so far as to predict that it will become a three-horse race involving him, the defending champion Cadel Evans of Australia and the Italian Vincenzo Nibali, who shadowed him all the way to the summit of La Planche des Belles Filles. Few would disagree at this stage, but they might question the wisdom of taking the yellow jersey so early.

Not that Wiggins was having any of such talk. His aim now is to remain in yellow all the way to Paris, which is two weeks away. “We will take it day by day,” he said, “but you can’t choose when you take the yellow jersey.”

On occasions, riders have deliberately lost the jersey, allowing a less fancied rider to sneak into a break and claim the lead, along with the responsibility of riding at the front and defending it. “It’s not something I’m going to try to lose,” Wiggins said. “There’s no point in trying to be cocky or smart. We’re going to respect the jersey and defend it.”

He also confirmed that the team had a plan going into the stage, and that it was executed to perfection. It involved all eight riders, including world champion Mark Cavendish, who at one point collected drinking bottles from the car to distribute among team-mates. And it saw the German Christian Knees and Austrian Bernhard Eisel spend long periods helping set the pace at the front of the peloton.

When the hills came, in the final 30km, Edvald Boasson Hagen of Norway went to the front and injected speed, then Michael Rogers of Australia led them up the lower slopes of the final climb, before his countryman, Richie Porte, took over. It was Porte who did the damage, sitting at the front and setting such a tempo that fancied riders including Frank Schleck, Ivan Basso, Levi Leipheimer and Thomas Voeckler were dropped.

When Porte finished his shift, 2km from the summit, it was up to Froome. But so much damage had been done, with the lead group whittled down to just six riders, that Wiggins told his final team-mate not to go too hard. There was no need. “I thought there’d be about 15 guys at the summit,” said Wiggins. “I expected more to be there, so I told Chris to slow down a bit and save something to go for the stage win.”

Froome described the win: “When we came to the final bit of the climb, which was really steep, Cadel came underneath me and I thought, ‘here we go, here’s the attack,’ but it never came. I could see Bradley was in the perfect position and wasn’t going to lose any time, so I thought, why not put in an acceleration and see what the response is?”

Although he upstaged Wiggins at last year’s Tour of Spain, finishing second, with Wiggins third, Froome insisted history would not repeat itself. “We have a plan to look after Bradley, the whole team,” he said. “Maybe in the future I can lead the team, but not this year.”

For Wiggins, yellow was also a reward for staying upright, as he acknowledged. “I just feel very fortunate to be in this position after a crazy first week,” he said. “I’d rather be in yellow than in hospital.”

The talk yesterday was still of Friday’s huge pile-up on the road to Metz, described by David Millar, pictured left, as “the worst I’ve ever been in”. Millar spoke of “bodies and bikes flying into each other at 60, 70kph”, and he counted himself lucky that he was in “the third wave of riders who fell, which meant I was falling on top of other guys”. Those at the bottom of the pile were not so lucky, and the medical bulletin on Friday evening read like notes from the front line.

Millar lost two Garmin-Sharp team-mates, including the recent Giro d’Italia winner Ryder Hesjedal, who abandoned yesterday. Another ten riders were also forced out, including Holland’s Wout Poels who, incredibly, got back up and rode to the finish in Metz with a ruptured spleen and kidney, bruised lungs and three broken ribs. He spent yesterday in intensive care.

The recriminations from the crash continued, with various theories as to the cause. Some blamed the Italian, Davide Viganò, who was helping his team leader, Alessandro Petacchi, remove layers of clothing as the race hotted up. More generally, though, a combination of factors seems to have contributed to the sheer number of crashes in the first week, including the riders’ freshness and their eagerness to fight for every inch of space in a crowded peloton.

Ordinarily it is the mountains that provoke apprehension and fear.

But this year the carnage has been of a different sort, and there was some relief yesterday as the riders put the fast, flat stages behind them to head for the hills.