They wanted excitement and the protagonists gave it to them until the end. They wanted the last day to be not a walk in the park but a great stage and that is what happened. They wanted the leaders of the general classification to get involved and they did not fail. Perhaps the yellow jersey and the final victory were not at stake, as in 1989, when Lemond depressed Fignon and the whole of Paris, but the greats got involved, so much so that the leaders of the podium ended up occupying the first three places in the classification of the time trial in Nice.
All three are out to win. The man in white, Evenepoel, with his 60-tooth chainring, like the world champion he is, to close out a dream debut in the Tour. The man in blue, Vingegaard, with a single chainring, with the desire to get rid of the thorn of Saturday, to close the round with a smile, to achieve a golden end to his miraculous recovery. The man in yellow, Pogacar, without gloves, with his morale sky-high, with the knife between his teeth, thirsty for history, to complete a record-breaking Tour.
All three are out to win, and the same old winner comes back in 2024: Pogacar, insatiable, intractable and merciless. Another minute falls to his companions on the podium, as if they weren’t already aware of the obvious superiority of the leader, already a three-time champion.
Because the route, with the flat climb to La Turbie, the explosive Col d’Èze, the long but complicated descent and the final flat, was a compendium of the virtues that he has displayed in this Tour every time he has been able. He pedalled at 44 km/h, the only one to go under 46 minutes. The Slovenian’s sixth symphony, symmetrical in his mastery, six stages in the Giro and, not to be outdone, six in the Tour.
It had been more than half a century, since 1973, since a winner of the yellow jersey had taken home six stages. It was Luis Ocaña, an unrepentant attacker, another who never had enough.
“I loved the start on the Formula 1 circuit,” confesses Pogacar, a yellow car, who admits that even his girlfriend, also a cyclist, hated training on those two mountain passes, close to Monaco, where they live.
The last to leave pushes hard on the climbs and shines on the descents with that goat that he has practiced so much with, even on the rollers after the Giro stages. “For many people my victory in the Giro would have had no value without the Tour. But for me it was important. Winning both is something else, it’s crazy,” he says.
Vingegaard, who stunned the world at Combloux last year, has not won another time trial. He was tenth in Valladolid in the Vuelta, did not seriously contest the O Gran Camiño, was only ninth in Tirreno, fifth in Itzulia… This time he is second. Evenepoel is content with third place, but is crying with emotion at his third place in his first Tour.
Between the three of them they have won eight of the 21 stages. “We are living through the best era of cycling. Let’s enjoy it,” says Pogacar, chivalrous towards his rivals.
