“Yesterday, they were attacking with Sergio Henao and Chris Froome was attacking himself in the jersey”, said Porte.
Advertisement
A 20-man breakaway escaped on the first climb of the day and gradually built up a lead of more than 10 minutes.
“It was a surprise also for me”, Sagan said.
Quite apart from the defensive tactics needed on the road and the media obligations off it, carrying yellow has in the past meant for Froome a barrage of unsubstantiated allegations and rumours about doping – and he even had urine thrown at him during last year’s Tour.
The Irishman lives in Andorra and has a liking for the French Pyrenees, having won a Tour stage there in 2013.
“It really is a good place to be at the moment, I m really happy to have the yellow jersey on my shoulders”, said Froome.
Froome is expecting he will also need his team to continue riding as it did on Sunday. “But it never came”. “A few days ago if you’d said I would win the Andorra stage, maybe the hardest day in the Tour de France this year, I’d say you’re insane”, beamed a shivering Dumoulin.
“When we came into the race, I didn’t have any expectations”, he said on Monday’s rest day.
“There were a lot of attacks in that final climb, I was hoping to gain more time as well”.
The Aspin, which was included in the Tour for the 73rd time, was affronted from its longer southern slope, 12 kilometers at an average gradient of 6.5 percent.
“You have to take it slowly to see how your rivals are and where the possibility to attack will be”.
After reaching the top of Peyresourde first, Froome pedaled away as Quintana and others failed to react promptly, taking risks on the descent as he put his whole weight onto the front of his bike in a position reminiscent of Graeme Obree in the 1990s.
“We ve seen Chris attack, we ve seen a couple of other skirmishes if you like, but as of yet it s been a relatively compact race”, he said. That made it much, much easier to understand the post race interviews.
McLay, racing for wildcard team Fortuneo-Vital Concept, has managed four top-10 finishes in the sprints and was a close third behind Cavendish and Marcel Kittel on stage six.
Sagan, already a stage victor in Cherbourg, outsprinted Froome to take the day’s laurels and deliver an nearly final blow to Mark Cavendish in the green jersey race after the Briton was left behind in the finale because of a mechanical problem.
Despite the biblical conditions, Martin hung on as the pace of Froome’s Sky squad decimated the peloton and was first to respond when Froome’s Colombian wingman Sergio Henao attacked with 5km to go.
You get riders who like the heat, or race well in the wet and cold; or even some who adapt or don’t to when the weather suddenly shifts like it did in Sunday’s ninth stage that took us 184.5km from Viola D’Aron in Spain to Andorra Arcalis over a route that included five major mountains, the last to the finish.
“He had a flag that was flying out behind him and it was just getting unsafe so I pushed him away”, the defending champion added.
Advertisement
“Obviously the disaster I had last Sunday is still a bit of a hard one to take, but the hardest days of the race are in front of us so hopefully I can make more time back and try to hit that podium in Paris”. But Movistar manager Eusebio Unzue said his team are merely biding their time. Could we see him on the offensive on Thursday’s stage to Mont Ventoux?
