BlurryVII said:That's where you're wrong, it was Gallopin who was in the Yellow jersey. Astana didn't have any duty to do, and they weren't pacing the peloton before alberto's crash ONCE. Only after the unfortunate crash, they slowly moved up and started increasing the pace. Nibali didn't want Alberto to come back easily in the peloton, he wanted him to waste energy, he knew he was going to take a huge blow on belles filles, that's it.
No, that's not it, not at all.
Nibali was the highest placed GC rider and everyone knew he would be back in yellow after that stage. So Astana were just doing the job they should have been doing. Nibali had a chance on the stage, they didn't want Kwiat to gain too much time (perfectly reasonable), and they couldn't let the break get too far up the road.
To say they were trying to get an advantage on Contador is just wrong. If they were trying to do this there would be a lot more talk about it on the forum, and there was very little.