What a Tour

I’m closing out my Tour coverage with this report, time to get back to early morning bicycle rides to help the post-Tour detox after this most intensely enjoyable three weeks of racing. Yesterday’s stage, short and violent, confirmed the standings of the race and put everyone in their correct positions. The peloton will ride into Paris, triumphant all, after a Tour de France raced with passion and abandon, “a la ancienne”, an event that fascinated each and every day.

Egan Bernal has opened a new era in cycling. The young Colombian, who began cycling at the age of seven, taking long mountain bike rides up to 3000-meter summits, is the youngest post-war winner in history. He won Paris-Nice, the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de France this year, and his fellow South American, Richard Carapaz, Ecuadorian but formed in the Colombian system, won the Giro. Colombians have also just won the Baby Giro (U23) and the Tour of Qinghai Lake in China and these victories will only inspire more champions, men and women, across all forms of the discipline. Their triumphs are not simply attributable to the luck of high-altitude birth: Colombia has very carefully built a system that gets kids on bikes, identifies the most talented ones, brings them up in national races before networking them into Spain and the big leagues. I’ll bet it all doesn’t cost a fortune either. The Tour of Colombia brings in WorldTour teams but ensures that all of their small national squads can race, so that the top pros end up serving the development of their cycling and not the other way around, in the way the Coors Classic used to do for us. Clever these Colombians.

Geraint Thomas, now 33, and Chris Froome, who will be 35 by the time he comes back, may very well end their careers in service to Bernal. For Thomas, the mudslides on Friday ended what was probably his last chance to win the Tour. We don’t know how long Bernal would have stayed out in front after his solo attack on the Iseran: logic says that he would have been caught, setting up Thomas for the winning counter but we’ll never know. With Carapaz moving to Ineos, the domination that began with Sky is sure to continue for many years to come. 

Julian Alaphilippe rode so far beyond his physical capabilities, “leaving his skin on the road” as he put it, that I’m actually worried about his abilities to finish today’s stage. He’s coming down hard after 14-days of defending Yellow in the most spirited manner, racing day-to-day, leading out the Deceuninck-Quickstep sprint trains, roaming the front of the peloton with no long-term plan in mind. He never thought he’d get this far and we all owe him a loud and heartfelt, “Merci Juilan!!” Look for him to be on the podium today after all, as recipient of the Most Combative Rider Award to the disappointment of Thomas De Gent, another fine racer we must all thank for these past three weeks. Alaphilippe will take a long time to digest all of these efforts, but when he does resurface, he’ll be a different, much stronger man. Watch for him at the World Championships. 

Steven Kruijswijk – compare how he raced, almost invisible for most of the Tour, to Alaphilippe’s constant presence on our TV screens – put that powerful, Team Time Trial winning team of his on the front and ripped that podium right away from the Frenchman. The Deceuninck-Quickstep directors, who let Laurens De Plus leave them for Jumbo-Visma last year, must have been wondering about the wisdom of the choice while watching the Belgian take his massive pull up the final mountain, destroying the peloton and their last hopes of a podium. Kruijswijk is in fact worthy of that podium spot, he’s been knocking on the door for so long and finally has just recompense for his dedication and efforts. 

Vincenzo Nibali showed what a never-say-die spirit really looks like with his fifth major attack in a race that must have been sheer misery for him. Out of form after an exhausting Giro –he was second there just the same – criticized like mad this entire time by the Italian social and traditional medias, the champion persevered until the very end, winning the final mountain stage, his first win since being crashed out of last year’s Tour, on pure will and a healthy dose of Sicilian stubbornness. 

The Movistar…where to begin? Their disfunction was, again, on full display yesterday on a stage that World Champion Alejandro Valverde should have won. Instead, the Quintana-Landa quarrel dominated, each racing for his own account. I couldn’t see it on TV, but when the group is closing in on Nibali, and your team has the speed and strength of the in-form World Champion, the general classification already set, why don’t you all line up, close down the gap and set him up for the win? The finishing order of Nibali followed by 10” by Valverde then Landa 4” after that with Quintana in 10th speaks volumes to me. They need to put that house in order, put Max Sciandri in charge and start cracking heads.

Of course the great Peter Sagan joined the history books with his record Green Jersey defense, he doesn’t quite seem the same as in the past, but still the clearly the best for that classification.

The French had a great Tour. The drama of Thibaut Pino, Alaphilippe’s 14-days in Yellow, two stage wins, and 5th overall, Wawa Barguil resurrected to finish 10th, Romain Bardet Best Climber and little David Gaudu wearing the White Young Rider jersey (he’s second behind Bernal) was the best national performance in years. It’s important for the Tour that the French do well and they did. All of France is proud of them. 

Thank you all for reading, it’s been a fine pleasure to write for you and I'll continue with the Vuelta, Worlds, and some other topics as I did last year. What a great, beautiful sport. Our showcase event demonstrated that to the world over these three-weeks of daily drama and the future remains bright for cycling.