“She needed that time to process, in a way, what had happened to her,” Miansoni said. He added that the woman, who lives a few miles from the scene of the crash, seemed “overwhelmed” by the spotlight placed on her actions by the news media and on social media.
At the news conference, Nicolas Duvinage, a colonel with the Landerneau gendarmerie, said even the police’s Facebook account had become a target of angry fans; it had received more than 4,000 comments, some of them violent, after appealing for witnesses over the weekend, he said.
“It is important to keep a cool head in this affair,” Duvinage said.
The race, meanwhile, has continued on schedule. Mathieu Van der Poel of the Netherlands leads the Tour after six stages, but his advantage is only eight seconds over Tadej Pogacar, the 22-year-old from Slovenia who won the race in his debut last year. Pogacar won the Tour’s first time trial on Wednesday and should be in a strong position to take the lead on Saturday and Sunday when the race’s first high-mountain stages begin.
Primoz Roglic, a veteran rider who had been expected to challenge Pogacar, his countryman, is in 10th place, 1 minute 48 seconds back. He is also expected to benefit from the race’s move into the mountains.
The first week also has seen the re-emergence of the 36-year-old sprinter Mark Cavendish, who has won two flat stages, including Thursday’s, to record his first daily-stage victories since 2016.
Cavendish’s victory in a sprint at the end of Thursday’s sixth stage from Tours to Châteauroux was the 32nd of his long career, two short of Merckx’s race record.
Victor Mather contributed reporting.
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