The New Generation Tour
The wild, uncontrolled sprint up the Champs Èlyèes, lengthened from the past due to the ongoing transformation of Paris into a bicycle and pedestrian city, completely changing the traditional nature of the famed sprint, was a perfect closure to this Tour de France. A Tour where, as on the Champs, the traditional ways of racing have been changed by this new, tremendously exciting generation of racers.
The additional 350-meters added to the finishing on the most ‘beautiful avenue in the world’ – I’d mistakenly termed it a boulevard in a previous post – proved fatal to the record-making ambitions of Mark Cavendish, his team finally giving out as the sheer power of the Mike Teunissen-Wout van Aert combo proved too much for the Green Jersey. Alone, Michael Mørkøv went missing, Cav was in with a chance in the last 100-meters but a clever move to the left by van Aert, blocking that passing lane, and a perfect entrapment by another Belgian, Jasper Philipsen on the right, stopped the Manxman from taking Eddy Merckx’s 34 stage win record. Imagine what it was like in Belgium as they saw their flag on the body of van Aert surging to the front to save the national honor.
Wout van Aert has now won a mountain stage, a time trial and the most coveted sprint in the world, all in the greatest race in the world. Technically, he’s a perfect as a racer can be, fluid pedal action, beautiful position – his sprinting style is textbook – and that formation is certainly part of his success. Van Aert is a fine champion for our sport, he’s on top of the world and headed to Tokyo now – maybe still now as of this writing – with the goal of winning Gold in the Time Trial. His possibilities are endless, perhaps he could go full starvation one year and try and win the Tour, or perhaps he’ll stay in his current place, able to win any race in the world that doesn’t go above 2000-meters.
Mark Cavendish may have lost on the Champs, but the Manxman brought home the Green Jersey on top of four stage wins in a triumphant return from the abyss. Known for his generosity towards his friends and neighbors. “When you grow up as poor as we did, you have an obligation to share with those in need,” Cavendish, on the podium with three of his four children, closed the fairy tale in the best way by leaving us waiting for next season’s sequel, and another run at Merckx’s record.
Tadej Pogačar, the ‘petite cannibal’ who devoured the Best Climber, Best Young Rider and the Yellow Jerseys, is an amazing figure, blessed with a maturity that belies his years. I really saw it when he kept saying about his team, “it is the best team in the race.” It was clear that he repeatedly drilled that in until they began to believe it, especially going into the crucial Stage 17 in the Pyrenees. It was there that Pogačar wanted to smash the race, and the peloton, when they saw his UAE-Emirates team roll out on their rim braked Colnago’s, knew that they were in for a rough ride. (Ha!) As said, the team rode like the Sky of old that day, crushing any hopes to beat the Slovenian in a major step forward in their development as a team. It was, it turns out, a bit of a bluff as the team pretty much folded the next day, “Pogi” having inspired them into landing the killing blow, successfully cowing the competition only needing Rafal Majka to finish off the job on the next day’s mountain finish.
When Pogačar was just 19, about to take on the world as his Tour de l’Avenir victory later showed – he had a long battle with Brandon McNulty in that race – and unbeknownst to him, his mother, Marjieta, a French professor, went to Andrej Hauptman, the man who has guided his entire career. She wanted her son to stop racing before things go too serious: Marjieta Pogačar was terrified of doping. Hauptman assured her, promising that he’d watch over young Tadej and protect him from all the nefarious influences, attracted by the money and glamour, that surround professional sport. Pogačar said in an interview that his amateur club, Roj-Ljubljana, was constantly giving seminars on anti-doping, making their racers sign affidavits promising to never cheat. “I must have signed 15 or 20 of those, that’s the atmosphere we were raised in.”
His parents and three siblings followed the last two weeks of the Tour in a camping car, stationing themselves on the road so that he’d see them every day. Pogi is watched over by his tight community of family and clubmates, they are all protecting this national treasure, one that has finally been forgiven him for beating Primoz Roglič last year. I am quite confident in this young man.
I also love his approach to racing. He brilliantly calls cycling a ‘game’, which is exactly what it is. The Tour is akin to a 3,400-kilometer-long football field with 23 teams all trying various combinations of plays and efforts to score. The greatest game there is. Pogi was on French TV trying to explain his approach, “But it is a game? Just a game?” As though some sort of toy. Tadej Pogačar plays his game the way Lebron James plays his: joyfully yet brutally. They play to win. And just like Lebron, or Felice Gimondi, or Serena Williams, or Eddy Merckx or Lewis Hamilton, Tadej Pogačar is simply better than everyone else. That’s really all there is to it.
Thank you for following the Tour de France along with me. It gives me such pleasure to do this, my attempts to report on the race. I could never find it boring; there are just too many layers of interest, too many stories, too many magnificent sights to see as the race rolls on its dramatic, passionate way through the beauty of France.