By Jamie Finch-Penninger – @FishysCP
After sterling time-trial performances from both Tom Dumoulin and Fabio Aru, the Dutchman held a minuscule three-second margin on the Italian with three mountainous days left to race. He defended that lead on the next stage, covering Aru’s desperate attack on the final climb.
The question remains however, should Aru even be in this position after the torturous Stage 11, where he was the strongest rider, and had a teammate up the road when he attacked Rodriguez with 5.8 kilometres to go? That teammate was Mikel Landa, who after losing a lot of time in the first week, had been allowed to go in the early break and was making the most of his opportunity. He was riding solo at the front of the race with a gap of about a minute to his nearest rival and he was maintaining his gap over the main favourites from the start of the climb, with only Aru, Moreno and Rodriguez making inroads.
He got the call to drop back to Aru, at what point that call came isn’t clear, but Landa refused, going on to win the stage, whilst Aru took 2nd, some 1.22 down on Landa. Landa noticeably replaced his earpiece with 400 metres remaining on the stage, suggesting that he’d been ignoring team orders for some time by that point. Had he dropped back Aru, would now be in red, as he would have picked up a 10 second time bonus at the finish rather than a 6 second one, and would be in the race lead by a second. If he had dropped back at the point where a 1-2 finish was guaranteed, when Aru dropped Ian Boswell (2nd on the road beforehand) with 2.5 kilometres remaining, then the Italian would most likely have taken an additional 10-20 seconds, and would have a small cushion on his nearest rivals as well.
The drama wasn’t lost on either Aru or Landa, with the former saying after the stage, “I’ve got to thank the whole team who worked for me. Vanotti, Rosa, Cataldo, Zeits and Luis Leon all did some incredible work for me.” Out of a 7 rider team, there was only one name missing, the man who won the stage. Landa said, “I decided to go for it. I needed a win so I took my day….Three days ago, I lost all options overall, I needed this.”
With Aru sitting three seconds behind now on GC, many will be wondering if Landa ‘needing it’ was justification enough.
