Wind that tears off antennas and knocks down trees; rain that falls in torrents and Jonas Vingegaard, who in cannibal Galicia devours everything and wins all the stages that counted for the general classification, the last three, like last year when the freezing cold and snow, and makes O Gran Camiño transform once more in O Gran Jonas Vingegaard, as if between the magical Galicia of dark mountains and pilgrimages so religious that they seem pagan and the Dane who wins everything he runs, including the last two, a mystical-meteorological complicity stronger than any bond had been established. Journalists call the relationship love, Vingegaard’s love with a career that revives the legendary roots of cycling like no other.
Also the cyclist’s love for his job as a champion that forces him to always try to win, as it forces all the best of this extraordinary decade. The best from before, from up to only 20 years ago, those who set a single goal a year, said that the first races of the year were only useful for training with a bib. Those of today train as if they were competing in a race and they compete in each race as if it were the last of their lives, to the death. “I like to win,” says Vingegaard simply, three days of competition in 2024, three victories (the time trial on the first day does not count, since due to the wind it was held without goats, like a walk), and echoes another of the champions of the decade, Remco Evenepoel, who won the first race of the year, the Figueira classic in Portugal and the overall Volta al Algarve then, guided by Mikel Landa in his magnificent Soudal sherpa in the mountains at his years. Or Wout van Aert, who following winning a stage in the Algarve came second in the first big classic, on Saturday, the Het Volk, and first yesterday in the Kuurne. And they will say the same when the other three riders of the apotheosis debut, as they said regarding a group of rejoneadors in the past: Tadej Pogacar will do it next Saturday at the Strade Bianche; Primoz Roglic, on Sunday in Paris-Nice, and Mathieu van der Poel will do so on Saturday the 16th directly in Milan-San Remo. By then Vingegaard will have already competed in the Tirreno-Adriatico, his second season on the way to the Tour.
Some speak of cyclists without soul or moods, true war machines programmed to win without mercy, and so it seems to Vingegaard, who competed in the three stages he won, those that followed the paths of Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra, as if They were classics, he, a stage racing man who hasn’t run a one-day classic in two years. He won all three by attacking far away, when the road got steep, and when he left, no one might follow him, not even great climbers, not Egan Bernal revived, nor Richard Carapaz, who competed in the 2021 Tour head-to-head with the Dane. , nor the brilliant Lenny Martínez. The promising Jacetano Pablo Castrillo was fleeing on the way to Ribadavia on Saturday and when he saw the Dane approaching behind him he sprinted to catch his wheel when he overtook him, and was happy because he was able to withstand his excessive watts for a few kilometers .
“It has been tremendous,” said Vingegaard following winning a storm-shortened stage on Sunday at the top of Mount Aloia, where the San Xulián pilgrimage took place, and if there were no clouds from there they would have seen the Cíes Islands, Mount Santa Tecla in Guarda, already in Portugal, and the Miño making the border down there. But what they saw was the uncontrollable force of nature. “The trees were bending over the road, it seemed like they might fall on the asphalt at any moment, the wind was so strong,” said Vingegaard, one who knows well what wind is, and enjoys it, and on the roads of His Jutland, open to all storms, fought daily once morest the wind, and thus he became a climber and time trialist at the same time, because pedaling on the flat with the wind once morest you is harder than climbing the Tourmalet.
“Will you be back in 2025?” they ask journalists to Vingegaard, who since he arrived in Galicia on Wednesday, has not stopped repeating how much he likes the land, the people, the environment, the modern race. And Vingegaard smiles almost sweetly, as he never might with a machine, and he responds with good humor. “It might come back, of course, we will have to study it. But first I will study the weather forecasts carefully…”
