Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali outfoxed other Tour de France title contenders to win a hilly second stage through Yorkshire countryside on Sunday, wresting the overall race leader’s yellow jersey.
The Astana team leader pointed a finger skyward as he burst out of a breakaway bunch at the end of the 201km ride over nine rolling ascents and through the heath of northern England.
Belgium’s Greg van Avermaet was second and Michal Kwiatkowski of Poland was third, each two seconds behind.
Photo: EPA
Over the last 6km, several of the pre-race favorites to win the three-week race played a cat-and-mouse game, quickly exchanging leadership of the breakaway bunch. However, Nibali, a 29-year-old rider who has won both the Italian Giro and Spanish Vuelta, timed his attack perfectly — bursting ahead with less than 2km to go and holding off surging chasers.
“It was a fabulous day for me, I led a good action,” said Nibali, who collected his first Tour stage win and first yellow jersey. “It was difficult. There was a lot of headwind ... I had the luck to attack at the right moment.”
Marcel Kittel of Germany, a powerful sprinter who often struggles on climbs, trailed near.
Nibali was up front with a bunch including defending Tour champion Chris Froome of Britain and Spanish two-time winner Alberto Contador — each of whom burst to the front of the escaping bunch near the end. Others in the group included 25-year-old US riders Andrew Talansky and Tejay van Garderen.
“It was a very hard day, but the home crowd support was great,” said Froome, the Team Sky leader. “I’m tired, but I hope everyone’s tired after a day like today.”
“Today was a day when you really needed to be careful,” Tinkoff-Saxo Bank leader Contador said. “There are thousands and thousands of people. It’s great, but it’s also dangerous.”
Overall, Nibali leads 20 other riders by two seconds: Slovakia’s Peter Sagan is second, van Avermaet is third, while Froome is fifth and Contador trails in eighth.
Massive crowds lined the route from York to Sheffield. One of the British stars in the race, Mark Cavendish, dropped out before the stage after pain from a separated right shoulder sustained in a crash on Saturday.
While Yorkshire does not have ascents on a par with the Alps or Pyrenees in France, riders faced nine low- to mid-grade climbs. The hardest was the 4.7km Holme Moss pass, and the steepest was also the shortest: The 800m Jenkin Road pass, with an average gradient of 10.8 percent — just 5km from the finish line.
England is hosting the first three stages of the three-week race before it enters France.
New roads for cycling’s greatest race also mean new audiences, some of whom are so enthusiastic and eager for a “selfie” with the pack that they don’t realize the hazards of getting too close to the riders as they go by. There are simply too many people for barriers that race organizers erect in crowded spots, making the course more treacherous for the riders.
Kittel and Giant-Shimano teammate Koen De Kort of the Netherlands were among those who crashed during the day.
Team sporting director Christian Guiberteau said the German sprint star was unharmed, sustaining “just a little crash because there are so many people on the roadside.”
Simon Gerrans, who crashed with Cavendish in Saturday’s stage, also spilled — as did van Garderen and Joachim Rodriguez, the third-place finisher in last year’s Tour. All recovered to finish the stage.
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