You spend four hours pedaling so that everything, including your victory, is decided in the last five minutes, in the last five kilometers of one of the most mythical climbs in the history of cycling.
You spend 175 kilometers watching the stage unfold to stand up on the sofa at home, not once, but twice. The first to witness one of the great cataclysms of recent years, of course, of the last Tours, such as seeing Movistar (Matteo Jorgenson) faint a few meters away from giving the telephones their first great success in the last seven years and, minutes later, to verify that the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar He is, in effect, although he remains lonelier than one, the authentic candidate to recover the throne of Tour on the Champs Elysées.
They are the things of the Tour. Sometimes you have to wait four hours to witness the greatest spectacle in the world, this time with no help from anyone, not even their cars, their mechanics, their domestiques, only the good ones, up there, on the last ramps, the ones in the 12% unevenness, from the Puy de Dome, which had not been climbed for 35 years.
And continue Carlos
And there, in those last kilometers, it has been where Spanish cycling has discovered, now yes, that it has a cheeky young man, named carlos rodriguezthat one of these years (there is no need to be in a hurry) can end up being the king of tour. At the moment, in two long weeks, the same is the prince of the podium of the Champs Elyseesof course, next to Pogacar and, of course, next to Jonas Vingegaard. Calitos, the other Alcaraz, is already fourth overall. And up.
The Pogacar thing is to stay, again, with your mouth open. After her ‘slut’ (or not) in the first week of Bilbao, today, for the second time in a row, he has nailed the tremendous Vingegaard and his entire team of gregarious, with 4.5 kilometers to go from the top of the Puy de Dome. He skidded and the Dane in the Jumbo was stuck. It is possible, very possible, that more than one in the Jumbo is thinking that the time to kill the Slovenian has already passed and that they would have had to take advantage to a greater and better extent, in morale and in real time, the coup d’état of the third day of career. Now, Pogacar seems not only recovered, but eager to take the yellow jersey, which is his favorite item of clothing.
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It was beautiful, very beautiful and vibrant, enjoying the ascent to Puy de Dome, almost entirely reserved for television, twice. First to see how he Canadian Michael Woods He smiled at the camera on the motorcycle as soon as he passed the North American Jorgenson, a few meters from the finish line, and, minutes later, he saw the best cyclist of the moment deal a new blow to his greatest rival.
There is a long way to go on the Tour and, of course, what has been demonstrated in the first week of the French round is that we must prepare ourselves to have a good time with the fight for victory and with the fight every day that, perhaps, has nothing to do with Pogacar and Vingegaard, but that will be just as attractive and daring. Two Tours better than one.