The kids run like there's no tomorrow.
The phrase is repeated every day.
It is repeated by all the voices that speak of the Tour de France, of the first crazy week, of total cycling, due to the daily events of Mathieu van der Poel, the grandson who left for Tokyo;
by Wout van Aert, Shadow of the Dutchman's Shadow;
of Tadej Pogacar, who does not calculate and attacks.
The phrase, perhaps, should be another, they run as if there were no yesterday, which they do not know: history does not impose on them.
The story is invented by them as they invent cycling.
That is why they pedal hard, because of that blind faith in their unique, inimitable value, in the Ventoux, the monster, whom, fulfilling their obligation as would-be heroes, they attack alone, with bare hands, on a bicycle.
Until they collide with time and heat that is not relieved by the light, warm wind from the south.
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Classifications of Tour de France 2021 of Cycling, Stage 11 Sorgues - Malaucène (198.9 Km) in THE COUNTRY
Tour de France 2021 calendar in THE COUNTRY
No matter how much people write about them, every time they talk about the Ventoux, always so strange, so alien to the landscape that they dominate from its almost 2,000m, the stones do not wear out, they remain impressive, sharp, threatening, promise of thirst and pain, and reflect the dark clouds, they do not dazzle past the Col de las Storms, reaching Mount Sereno, when Jonas Vingegaard, Danish climber with a great engine and a greater future (24 years) accelerates. He is fourth overall, 5m 30s behind Pogacar, who could afford to let him go, to have his rivals chase him for the podium. But it is the Ventoux, it is the monster. Pogacar, the most feared human monster in cycling, can't look the other way. You have to accept the challenge of the mountain. 20 degrees that seem more. Wind and dust.The Slovenian's yellow shines when he sticks to the wheel of the Dane in a white jersey and a very pale face, so blond. The two of them leave alone.
They cannot be caught by Richard Carapaz, whose Ineos has taken the peloton in a large train all the stage, the 170 kilometers there, the train of champions like Geraint Thomas, like Richie Porte, like Kwiatkowski, the last in the chain, who lifts his foot and look at the destruction behind him: rivals turned to mush.
Enric Mas looking for oxygen (the Mallorcan loses 1m 24s with respect to the best and drops to eighth place in the general, at 1m 39s of Vingegaard, the third, the podium line), Ben O'Connor, Guillaume Martin ...
The escabechina is enormous.
One of the Ineos, Luke Rowe, arrives out of control;
another seven cyclists drop out, victims of falls (Tony Martin) and absolute exhaustion.
Also, as he tells it later, Pogacar curses inside the Ineos, who have not given him a minute of respite, and the heat, which forces him to open his jersey to the navel when they go through the Provençal plain out of breath, and so on. a first ascent to the moon, where the wind steals oxygen, and so on the second. He does not hesitate and runs after Vingegaard, the Dane so fresh, and 400 meters later he regrets it. It stays dry. Pogacar cannot follow him. The Tour is alive, shout the TV commentators, the leader stays. They underestimate the Slovenian, his disarming calm in the midst of crises. "If I had been scared I would have stayed there," he explains later. But I breathed, I thought. There is little ascent. Then there is a 17-kilometer descent to the finish line that favors me. I found a bearable pace and waited for Carapaz and Urán.We understood each other in the relays and the problem is over ”. At the top, Pogacar passes 38s from the Dane who has assumed the leadership of the Jumbo after Roglic verified that the hero's will can do nothing against fate. It reaches him reaching Malaucène, the goal, and sprints him. Then he gives him a pat on the back and congratulates him: what a good stage you have done, he says. And he goes to the podium, to which he ascends after all the fans had been dried up by applause, everyone loves Wout van Aert so much, who runs as if there were no yesterday or tomorrow, not even time existed.Then he gives him a pat on the back and congratulates him: what a good stage you have done, he says. And he goes to the podium, to which he ascends after all the fans had been dried up by applause, everyone loves Wout van Aert so much, who runs as if there were no yesterday or tomorrow, not even time existed.Then he gives him a pat on the back and congratulates him: what a good stage you have done, he says. And he goes to the podium, to which he ascends after all the fans had been dried up by applause, everyone loves Wout van Aert so much, who runs as if there were no yesterday or tomorrow, not even time existed.
And he knows that no, tomorrow is him; yesterday took him by his side on the escape that began on the plain, when photographers crouch in the fields of fragrant lavender and purple looking for the most original, most unique, most repeated photo of the squad's passage through the ocher landscapes of the Rousillon, trails iron oxide, very red, and the burgundy and black of the devastating Ineos jersey that pursues and does not let the gap increase. Yesterday is Julien Bernard, son of Jeff Bernard, who was not afraid of Ventoux and defeated him in his great time-trial of '87; Yesterday is Froome, lame and tenacious, who in the Ventoux has run on foot and has demolished everyone, the great Nairo of 2015 who arrives, with his red polka dots, more than half an hour away, like the English. And there are more yesterdays on the bald hill, Tom Simpson,Eddy Merckx (the only Belgian who had conquered him before Van Aert) and Julio Jiménez, who was won by Van der Poel's grandfather in 65 because a fan to cool him down threw water on him and also the bucket that contained it, which he gave him in the chest to the Avila when he was going to attack.
They do not matter the least to Van Aert, who calls the mountain "iconic", the word of now. Only he is imported, the appendicitis operation he suffered in May, the Belgian tourists so abundant in Provence, his fight with Van der Poel since he was a child and the two won everything at cyclocross, the classics in which they always look for each other. , they are marked, they are devoured, Flanders, Strade Bianche, Amstel, Milan-San remo, winter, spring and summer. Total cycling. The day after finishing second in Cavendish's third sprint, Van Aert, Belgian champion tricolor jersey, climbs towards the white stones alone, like bare-handed heroes. Defeat the monster and launch into a happy descent to the finish line. It is his fourth victory on the Tour. The other three were sprinted for the last two years. He also dominates the time trials."I'm getting better every day," says the 26-year-old Belgian. "Win the Tour some year? My team [the Roglic Jumbo] will have to bear with me. I will have to lose weight, and the younger ones keep coming very fast ”.
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