Changing of the Guard
Stage Four gave us a day of spectacular team racing that culminated, at the top of Orcières-Merlette, the first major climb of the race, with the knowledge that the days of Sky/Ineos domination have come to a close. Holland’s Jumbo-Visma team now owns the race, and, barring major incident or some sort of physical collapse on the part of their leader Slovenian Primož Roglič, we’ve seen who will win in Paris.
Roglič, according to a report in L’Equipe, is now at the end of a five-year, meticulously crafted plan that began in 2015 when was a neo-pro on the Dutch team, at a mere $47,000 salary (how these men race for peanuts!). He announced to the astonished staff, before having even started his first race, that he was going to win the Tour de France in 2020. Their laughter didn’t last long when they witnessed the intense application of the Slovenian who read, studied and basically inhaled every bit of cycling information he could get his hands on to make up for his late start in the sport. The man is clearly an excellent student.
Julian Alaphilippe put on a spirited defense of his Yellow Jersey, with the Deceuninck-Quickstep boys riding their hearts out for him in a day-long chase of a breakaway containing AG2R’s Alexis Vuillermoz who posed a threat for Yellow. Kasper Asgreen, the young Dane on Alaphilippe’s team, was particularly impressive with his long, fast stints at the front, pulling the field to the base of the final climb in an exhibition of pure power. I must say that Asgreen is one of my favorite riders, especially with the remarkably aerodynamic and efficient way that he sits on a bicycle. Next time you see him in a breakaway, notice that his 6’4” body has a lower profile than the other, much shorter riders. Couple those slippery aerodynamics with his massive V-16 motor and you begin to better understand his superb performances. After Asgreen pulled off, Bob Jungels, the man who can do anything, gave Alaphilippe his final bits of energy before the Jumbo-Visma came to the fore.
The climbing speeds of today are truly astounding, with the seven-kilometers and 6.7% average gradient of the final climbed raced at speeds of 25 to 30-kph. The climbing ‘trains’ now resemble sprint trains in their speed and organization. What’s more, the days of a rider chugging along, out of the saddle in a big gear are forever gone. Anyone who goes fast today does it with efficient, high cadence pedal action, as best embodied by the entire Jumbo-Visma team. They are clearly, to a man, trained for those elevated cadences and the crushing speed of big Wout van Aert – will that man ever cease to blow our minds? – taking the front with 3.5-k to go, pedaling at 100 strokes a minute, then dropping a gear and raising his cadence to 120, completely asphyxiating Ineo’s Kwiatkowski and Castroviejo in the process, leaving Egan Bernal isolated, before pulling off at 1.5-k and handing the reins to American Sepp Kuss, who then went even faster with that same pedal action, showed a team far above the others.
Roglič sprinted away from the 16 survivors to win in the type of turbo-charged power move that we’ve been seeing from him all season, with his young Slovenian countryman Tadej Pogačar, whose name everyone seems to have learned to correctly pronounce this season, “Po-Ga-Cha”, giving the tiny mountainous country, considered the crossroads of Latin, Germanic and Slavic culture, a remarkable one-two on the day. Julian Alaphilippe, who like all the others was holding on to the Jumbo-Visma’s for dear life, had no energy for the sprint, yet still hung on to the Yellow Jersey, a massive accomplishment despite all of the criticisms being launched at him by the media.
Today is another hilly “flat stage” for the sprinters. Look for a winner with depth, a good day for Peter Sagan to dispel the rumors that he’s no longer taking his training seriously.