Wiggins blasts Team Ineos’ orders as Yates wins Tour de France stage 15 and Thomas makes gains on Alaphilippe
SIR BRADLEY WIGGINS launched a stinging attack on Geraint Thomas’ Ineos bosses after they missed the chance make time the Yellow Jersey.
Bury’s Simon Yates, 26, won his second stage in four days in Foix, but Thomas blew a chance of taking the race by the scruff of the neck.
Thomas admitted he didn’t know whether to attack Yellow Jersey leader Julian Alaphilippe inside 4km to go on the final climb of stage 15, because his team-mate Egan Bernal, 22, was up the road.
The Welshman, 33, barked into his radio for permission to attack struggling Alaphilippe, but was left dithering for 2km, before he finally opened his legs with 2km to go.
He said: “I wanted to go, I had the legs to go but I wasn’t going to chase down Egan with the guys on the wheel.
"It was a bit of shame then because I got stuck behind Alaphilippe and we didn’t want to put him on the wheel, so we let him ride a bit then jumped with maybe 2km to go."
The 2012 Tour winner Wiggins, 39, was not impressed with his former employers.
Wiggins told Eurosport: “G was the team leader and he wasn’t able to attack because his team-mate was in front, who is two or three minutes behind him (on GC).
“He was stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of wanting to attack but not wanting to chase Bernal down.”
“What was going on there, where was the communication? They messed up a bit in some ways.
“Does that come from G, does that come from the car behind in Nico Portal?”
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Yates was delighted with his second stage win of this year’s race, after winning Thursday’s descent finish to Bagneres-de-Bigorre on stage 12.
He said: "I'm very proud of what I did there.
"It was extremely hard from the start to the finish today but I raced how I like to, which is aggressive and I managed to pull it off.
"Today was the other day I had a chance for the stage win and I took it with both hands."