TdF Files: Sky shattered

For the GC contender, the opening week of the 2011 Tour has been about one thing – staying up front and out of trouble. So far, writes Anthony Tan from Châteauroux, the majority have been unable to do as such.

Right now, one could say Team Sky's plans are up in the air.

On paper, Friday's seventh stage from Le Mans to Châteauroux, the birthplace of France's most celebrated actor with a nose as crooked as Stephen Fry's, Gérard Depardieu, was a completely innocuous stage that had "will finish in bunch sprint" written all over it.

But as the two previous days had already shown, on-paper prognostics rarely translate to reality in the opening week of the Tour de France.

A raft of GC contenders have hit the deck, some harder than others, including Alberto Contador and Nicki Sørensen (Saxo Bank), Robert Gesink (Rabobank), Janez Brajkovic, Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner (RadioShack), and Tom Boonen (Quick Step). Brajkovic and Boonen have since abandoned; Horner appears likely to.

Out of the top contenders vying for the final maillot jaune in Paris on July 24, only Cadel Evans (BMC Racing), the Schleck brothers (Leopard-Trek) and Andreas Klöden (RadioShack) have escaped unscathed, touch wood.

And in one fell swoop Friday, Bradley Wiggins' fall with around 40 kilometres to go took Team Sky from a euphoric high the day before, when Edvald Boasson Hagen won the sixth stage to Lisieux ahead of Matthew Goss, to a devastating low that crushed the team's TdF raison d'être to a pulp.

"We were in no doubt as to the form he was in," Dave Brailsford, Team Sky's principal, said, who later confirmed his team's leader had broken his left collarbone.

"Brad was climbing with the best climbers, time trialling with the best time trialers, and once the race hit the mountains, we were very confident that he was going to challenge for the overall."

The person I feel most for is Wiggins, who, as stage seven winner Mark Cavendish said in his press conference, "was in the form of his life". Two days before the race started, I asked the 31-year-old to compare his form to his breakthrough Tour in 2009: 'Bradley, are you lighter, fitter or stronger than two years ago – or all of those things?'

Without sounding arrogant, he told me he was all of those things.

He said he was a whopping four kilos lighter than 2009, and as his performance at the Criterium du Dauphiné and national championships showed, where he won all three (the week before the Tour began, he took both the British national road race and time trial, which preceded his overall victory at the Dauphiné), he was fitter also. And judging from his recent TT performances, Wiggo clearly had lost none of his strength and prowess in the discipline he's best known for.

Whether he would have stood up to the rigours of this most mountainous Grande Boucle, is a question worth asking.

Last year on the Tour's second rest day in Pau – the same day Contador was found to have traces of clenbuterol in his urine – I asked his former team manager, Jonathan Vaughters, what he thought of Wiggo's chances in future Tours de France, in light of the disaster that was the 2010 Tour de France, and which, like this edition, was held on a mountainous parcours.

"I don't really see any sort massive error that Brad made or anything else like that – I just think that he performs better when he can sort of isolate himself a little bit.

"Brad's got one really big bullet. Some guys have six little bullets – they can go over this climb, this climb… and they can all do those climbs well. Brad's like one of those guys like in a Verbier [the Stage 15 finishing climb of the 2009 Tour] situation – Verbier's a 20-minute climb – and for him to go rrrrupp for 20 minutes, he's great at that; that's perfect. Verbier and the [Stage 18] time trial in Annecy, it's ideal, and they'll be another Tour like that.

"I think there will be a Tour course in the next two or three years that will suit Brad Wiggins and he'll do a great Tour again. I doubt have any doubt about that."

Whether or not this parcours suited Wiggo or not, I would have loved for him to find out, rather than let fate take its course, as it unfortunately did Friday for the mercurial talent.

* * *

After Mark Cavendish (HTC-High Road) won his second stage in Châteauroux, elevating himself from fifth to third on the points classification and closing the gap to current maillot vert Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Movistar Team) to 17 points and second-placed Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) to 6 points, I asked him the following question: 'What are thoughts on the green jersey competition so far, and how have the changes this year affected your approach to win the jersey you covet?'

"This is a question that I've been asked most since they announced the changes to the green jersey [competition]," Cavendish began saying.

"I was actually pondering it yesterday, and came up with the conclusion that the biggest hindrance to [winning] the green jersey is just the lack of absolute bunch sprints. The change in the points is kind of indifferent – it's neither here nor there – it's the lack of absolute bunch sprints that will hinder my progress.

"Doesn't necessarily make it right or wrong, but I think it's going to make more of an attacking rider, the style of a Philippe Gilbert or Rojas… you're going to look at one of them having the green jersey in Paris.

"But it's not for lack of trying," added the world's most emotion-charged sprinter. "I'll try and keep chipping away at points as best I can, and see where it takes me."

I think Cav's playing himself down a little.

There are still three more sprint stages to go and with 20 points up for grabs in the intermediates, which he's been doing splendidly in so far, the Manxman is now within striking distance of taking the jersey he so desperately wants to wear in Paris. I reckon he's going to do it – and good luck to him.

As for why his team's owner, Bob Stapleton, is yet to find a replacement sponsor, he said: "It's incredible we can't find a new sponsor."

However, if the rumours about Cavendish joining Team Sky next year are true, and I believe them to be so, then it's something he need not worry about.

Follow Anthony on Twitter: @anthony_tan