If there is something in which the feared and traditional pavé and the spectacular and new sterrato are similar, it is that they leave the leaders of the teams in the open. They run without a net. They know that they are at the mercy of any misfortune. Because the teams, frayed along the white dirt roads, can hardly rescue their leaders and reintegrate them into the platoon.
All the misfortunes hit Mavi García (UAE) yesterday, who suffered an ordeal in the fourth stage of the Women's Tour. She was not spared any problem, the champion of Spain, who was third in the last Giro that ended on July 10. She began the day in Troyes, the sixth of hers with all her aspirations intact, and finished outside the top-10, bruised, with a hole in her jersey and with her left arm and shoulder scraped and burned.
García, who was often seen alone or with very little help from her teammates, was left at the finish line for a minute and a half with the leader Marianne Vos (Jumbo) and the rest of the favorites such as Vollering (SD Worx) and Van Vleuten (Movistar). In the general classification, the Mallorcan is already at 2m26s.
The Tour has always been a race of elimination, of passing the days and overcoming the traps. Mavi García accumulated all the bad luck in one day, with two punctures, four bike changes and an ugly crash.
On the penultimate gravel section, she got a puncture and it was Boogard, shorter than her, who gave her her bike. But she had to change it a few meters further on. 20 km from the finish line, another breakdown in the last sterrato. This time, it was Magnaldi who lends him the bike. She is no use to him either. And when it seemed that she had already settled in the group of Cecile Ludwig (FDJ), the winner on Tuesday, and that she could lose little time or even rejoin the first group, where Sandra Alonso (Ceratizit) did hold out, the car of her The team itself lightly touched the wheel behind García and made it fall spectacularly to the asphalt.
Painful but courageous, she got up and reached the goal of Bar-Sur-Aube, alone, without companions, where the Swiss Marlen Reusser (SD Worx) won.
