All the power to Pogacar

• Stages of the Tour de France 2020

Light from where the sun takes it, Tenorio said to his Inés, as Inés is the heroine of La Planche, the belle fille, the great beauty, who drove the Swedish invader mad, and Inés, the light, preferred to throw herself into a lake from the mountain before surrendering to the invader, and on that same mountain, asphalted, turned into a slide of glory and tragedy, always, war, a kid with acne and an ever-alive gaze launches for that light, which is shaped like a yellow jersey, which has the emblem of the Tour de France, and wears it, and it transforms.

Tadej Pogacar, Tamau Pogi (little Pogi for the family), as Eddy Merckx climbed on the podium in 69, and at the same time man reached the Moon, and prodigies, optimistic humanity, considered them normal, there are no limits for the human being, he believed, and like Merckx, another rookie in the Tour, he wears not only the yellow jersey, but the white jersey as a young man, the mountain polka dots, and does not wear the green one because that one, the one for sprints , it would have already been abusing.

In Paris, at 22 years less one day (he meets them on Monday), he will become the second youngest winner in history after Henri Cornet in 1904.

General pic.twitter.com/ek9QFvTjgK

- Carlos Arribas (@carlosarribas) September 19, 2020

But, the only thing that matters, it has the light that everyone would want, and would even kill to own even a second.

Merckx monopolized it for five years, as had also done before the other greats who finished their first Tour in yellow, Anquetil and Hinault.

Gimondi only won it one year.

The last rookie who achieved it, Laurent Fignon, lasted two, and in the third, the one that has made him more remembered than his two victories, he lost it as Roglic lost it, in a last time trial, 1989, in which he He was 8s behind Lemond.

And before ascending to the stage of his absolute coronation, Pogacar is congratulated by Roglic, who had everything, who already counted the meters, the minutes, the nothing he lacked, and when he reached the -267 meters of a murderous time trial, a vertical road of recent asphalt and a commotion of people around as surprised as he by the film that parades before his eyes, before his black bicycle, he gasps, finished, his gaze naked, his helmet twisted like that of the unarmed soldier, rendered , without glasses, without the attributes of mechanical perfection that had become his strength, and perfection is completed by his partner Tony Martin nailing his number to the millimeter, the number 11 that he may have already begun to hate.

And his face with sunken cheeks, pale with cold sweat, his sad eyes, his unfocused gaze, the face of the hardest defeat to swallow because not even he could wait for it.

The look of fear.

Only defeat makes him human.

Respect 🤝 @ rogla 🇸🇮 @TamauPogi # TDF2020 pic.twitter.com/mLLljZ0b9F

- Tour de France ™ (@LeTour) September 19, 2020

The time trial ends, the disaster of his life, 1m 56s behind the compatriot who has had the whole Tour tied to his ankle, like a calf that took advantage of his milk, so abundant that it seemed inexhaustible, for something he was the great favorite and neither a fly on a cow's tail moved without their permission, and everyone resigned themselves to following its wheel, so fast.

After 19 days, more than 3,600 km pedaled, only 36.2 kilometers and a wall of almost six, stand in the way.

And he has a 57s advantage, and no one doubts, not even Pogacar, the man alone against the machine, against the system, against a strategy thought to the millimeter, that they will be enough, and everything happens not far from Ronchamp, where Le Corbusier, who It is not God but it seems like it, he did his great miracle of beauty, a humble and overflowing church, and in Ronchamp the press from half the world is looking for how to tell the other miracle, that of a perfect cyclist who rides on the bike, when he lifts his ass to climb, and it seems that he looks out on the 120-meter springboard of ski jumping, so aerodynamic he is even when he climbs, and after the defeat, there is no one who does not think about the boy who was 17 years old and the tremendous accident that he suffered jumping and that made him think about the bike and leave the flight.

• The 2020 Tour, in pictures

Roglic crossed the line of the Planche 116 seconds slower in the ascent than Pogi, almost doubling the advantage that he patiently obtained, like the spider weaving, without hurry, the entire Tour.

His whole plot falls apart into nothing, in the first 15 kilometers, when Pogacar goes out to death, like those who know they are going to lose and only want to scare the favorite, and he takes 13 seconds, and Roglic verifies that he is not a bluff When at kilometer 30 the handicap has almost multiplied by three, 36s, and everyone knows what exponential growth is, and Roglic fears it and suffers it, and after changing bikes, for the final hard climb, Roglic is no longer the one sure champion who does not move a hair in the hardest of the confrontations, but the same nervous cyclist, decomposed, without style on the bike, unable to articulate an answer, and in a seen and not seen, he is already sunk .

And Pogacar flies, and breaks all records, wins with 55m 55s, the four fives that symbolize the perfection of his time trial: more than 50 on average in the first 15 kilometers, 45.7 before reaching the climb, the 5.9 kilometers that is swallowed in 16m 11s, the never seen before for a Tour never seen.

Not to Pogi;

For Pogi, the victory for 59s in the general classification does not make him seem anything other than what he is, a happy child so unaccustomed to transmitting his emotions that when he is demanded he tells him to let him "his head will explode", and people laugh, because it was said by someone who just blew up the Tour creating the biggest surprise, the most unexpected turnaround in the last almost 50 years.

“And still”, Pogi adds, “I have not won it, I have yet to get to Paris, and, anyway, my dream was not to win it but to run it, but in the end, of course, I also dreamed that such a story could be produced, and he came prepared for her, and he knew me to the last centimeter of the journey ”.

And ascending he does not hear anything from those who shout at him on the radio, the screams of the maddened public, who know better than the protagonist how the film will end, they prevent him, and he does not need them to feel without a chain, to make everything happen according to his will, as in the wild sprints of Laruns or the Grand Colombier in which he was so energetically able to with his friend Roglic, 30, and, no, remember, he is not his older brother, just a friend and a rival.

This Monday, September 21, Tamau Pogi will turn 22 years old.

The day before, this Sunday, he will climb to the podium of the Champs Elysees not only as the youngest Tour winner since 1904, but as the author of a feat that cycling will remember forever, and will haunt Roglic to the end of his days.

[See here the Tour classifications]