After Vincenzo Nibali cracked on stage ten of the Tour de France to La Pierre-Saint-Martin, Astana manager Alexandre Vinokourov has confirmed that Dane Jakob Fuglsang will now lead the team in the GC.

“This day was a catastrophe. Nibali couldn’t even keep the pace with Fuglsang, which I had expected him to,” a clearly disappointed Alexandre Vinokourov said to Gazzetta dello Sport immediately after the stage. “We gave the green light to Jakob to go ahead in the classification. Vincenzo needs a good mechanic because something is broken in his head.”

“We saw today that Jakob is in good shape, so why not? We try of course to do the best with Jakob now,” said Vinokourov. “Why not try to reach the top five with him.”

Fuglsang says that he has to evaluate if the GC is worth chasing, as he is quite a bit far down. But he has previous, finishing seventh in 2013 at the Tour in his first year at Astana.

“I have not heard it from him (Vinokourov), but it was their order that I should go if I had something anything left, after we had been sitting for a while with Vincenzo. Now we will see, I'm still well behind in the standings. Whether it's worth the drive for it, it we will see the next few days,” Fuglsang told Danish television channel TV2. “The Tour is far from over yet, anything can happen.”