Fernando Gaviria took his second win in the 2018 Tour de France, winning stage four from La Baule to Sarzeau in Brittany by outsprinting Peter Sagan at the climax of a four-kilometre straight leading to the line. The Colombian’s victory came in the home town of the local mayor and UCI president, David Lappartient, whose war of words with Team Sky’s principal, David Brailsford, escalated on Tuesday as Brailsford was accused of insulting France.
On Sunday Brailsford told the Guardian that Lappartient had the mentality of a “local French mayor” and to become more presidential the Frenchman had “got some work to do”.
On Tuesday, asked to respond to Brailsford’s comments in the aftermath of the Chris Froome salbutamol case, the Frenchman initially said he “didn’t really want to reply” but quickly warmed to the task. “The last person who called me a ‘Breton mayor’ didn’t have much luck. It was Brian Cookson,” he said referring to the former UCI president he ousted in an election last autumn.
“By insulting me as mayor, he [Brailsford] insults the 35,000 French mayors and the French in general. Doesn’t he realise that it takes mayors taking stages of the Tour de France for such great events to take place?” Lappartient added. “He doesn’t understand much about cycling. When you are arrogant, sooner or later there will be always something that brings you back down to earth.”
On the road the atmosphere seemed less volatile, with Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas suggesting the fans were less hostile, before admitting that it was “hard to tell a ‘boo’ from a ‘Froome’.”
If the booing has subsided, the crashes continue. A pile-up five kilometres from the finish split the bunch and left Rigoberto Urán, second in last year’s Tour, frantically chasing with his teammates, although Gaviria’s compatriot did eventually rejoin the main field.
The day’s breakaway of four riders, two Frenchmen, Jérôme Cousin and Anthony Perez, and the Belgians Dimitri Claeys and Guillaume Van Keirsbulck mirrored the nationalities in the first World Cup semi-final. But as the foursome closed on the finish line in Sarzeau their chances of bringing a stage win home looked doomed.
Fifty kilometres from the finish a crash among the pursuers stalled the peloton’s effort and allowed the quartet to move further ahead. However, once the Quickstep team of the sprinter Gaviria, who claimed the first yellow jersey of the 2018 Tour, moved to the front of the field their chances of staying away were over.
For the first time Mark Cavendish was present at the stage finale but his hunt for stage wins goes on. In past years the straight, slightly uphill run to the line would have been ideally suited to the Manx rider but he failed to add to his stage victories.
“The machine isn’t quite working yet,” the sports director, Rolf Aldag, said of Cavendish’s Dimension Data team. “There are multi-million reasons. They haven’t raced together, Edvald Boasson Hagen had a rough start, Mark’s had three crashes [this year], plus Bernie Eisel isn’t here and we’re missing him big time. Fixing that all takes time.
“So are we really surprised that we’re not lining up like the Quickstep team? Well, right now we can’t,” he added. “Then you hope for luck, but luck in the Tour comes and goes. But it’s wrong to say that Mark doesn’t have the form. Once we see him sprinting, then we can judge his form. We can’t judge it yet.”
At the back of the peloton the American rider Lawson Craddock maintained his lonely progress, racing most of the stage 100 metres behind the main field, to guard against another fall on the broken scapula that is hampering his progress.
Although the Texan has a black eye and intense pain in a shoulder he is continuing. “Two opinions matter,” his team manager, Jonathan Vaughters, said. “The doctor’s and the rider’s. If he’s safe to race, and the doctor says it’s OK, we leave it up to the rider.”
Education First say Craddock is managing his pain with a combination or paracetamol and Ibuprofen. Asssuming their rider survives until Sunday, Craddock will then have to race over 21.7km of cracked and ruptured cobbled roads, known as the ‘Hell of the North’, in the stage to Roubaix. “That will be the hard one,” Vaughters added. “The pain will have had to subside a lot for him to be able to survive that day.”
