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Toasting the Team
Yet another tradition of the Tour de France is for the winner of the Yellow Jersey to have a glass of champagne on the gentle ride towards the Seine and the Champs Elysees. Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) true to his character, went to the team car and collected glasses of bubbly for each and everyone of his teammates who had worked so hard to get him into the Jersey and to keep him there. It was an act of bike handling to collect nine glasses and then to ride to each teammate to hand them a glass. Astana is one of the few teams that brought all nine riders all of the way around the Tour. They did come very close to losing Jakob Fuglsang on a crash coming down a mountain, but he got back on the bike and kept going all the way to Paris. When Nibali won the 2013 Giro d'Italia, they skipped the glasses and passed the bottle around, each taking big pulls off of the magnum as they rode along. It is amusing to know that his General Manager had criticized the Italian for failing to produce results in the earlier part of the season, Nibali simply let his legs give the answer.