Don't you mean that the only way that you can twist Woods's legitimate excuse into BS is for Carthy to blow up so that you can claim he was never a legitimate GC contender?
If anything, today's stage confirms that Woods should not have worked with Valverde yesterday. EF worked hard to set up a Carthy attack and even though it didn't work, Carthy still seems like one of the top four GC contenders in the race. Moreover, even when Valverde was dropped early, he didn't sit up and rest like he should have if he was just riding as a domestique, but instead struggled to the end to preserve his GC chances. Should Woods have helped Valverde get closer to Carthy yesterday?