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Pogacar puts a generation at his feet

2021-07-18T21:36:21.586Z


The superiority with which the 22-year-old Slovenian has won his second consecutive Tour de France suggests that cycling is entering the 'Tadej Pogacar era'


With 250 meters to go, light uphill, pave the Champs-Élysées, Wout van Aert, a splendid tricolor jersey of the Belgian champion, leaves the wheel of his teammate Mike Teunissen and, throwing the bike over the line, resists the comeback of Philipsen and Mark Cavendish, who finished third, the most prestigious sprint of the Tour de France. The Belgian champion defends like no one else the honor of Eddy Merckx, the idol of all Belgians and denied the British, who between 2009 and 2012 won four times in a row on the Champs Elysees, the fifth victory this Tour, the 35th in his 12 Tours , which would have allowed him to overcome the Cannibal in one. Perhaps the tie at 34 will last forever and ever. Cavendish, 36, has had a spectacular Tour thanks to all the work of the Deceuninck,which has made him almost unbeatable in the sprints and has prevented him from getting out of control on the mountain stages.

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It is the third victory for Van Aert, the total cyclist, who won the Mont Ventoux stage and the Bordeaux time trial as well.

Of everything he has done on the Tour, the attacks of Le Creusot, the longest stage, the most intense in recent years too, his hand in hand with Van der Poel, his double Ventoux ..., Van Aert, 27 years old Choose to enlarge and put in your room a photo in which you can see him alone in the Ventoux, a background of moonstones and the profile of Mount Bald with its antennas.

“It is the day I am most proud of, says the only rider who has earned the right this Tour de France to have his name pronounced with almost the same reverence as that of the final winner.

Three weeks of Tour and a name, Tadej Pogacar, 22 years old.

Sunburned face, bare nose.

A childish face, an iron fist.

Watts and heart.

First week, the sentimental rebellion.

Second week, the seizure of power.

Third week, absolutism.

Pogacar, christened by Eddy Merckx

The Cannibal,

beats old and young with the biggest difference over second since 2014. Three stage victories.

13 days of yellow.

Three distinctive jerseys, yellow, white (youth) and red polka dots (mountain).

And, at his feet, a generation, that of young people who want to change everything at full speed.

It could be said that the first week started 10 months ago, in September, the last days of the last Tour, with the overthrow of Primoz Roglic at the Planche des Belles Filles and lasted in Brittany the last week of June. The week of the sentimental rebellion at breakneck speed, the murderous Tour, the cruel Tour of falls, of anxiety, of the fight for every square inch of the peloton head, ends Roglic's hopes of redemption while Mathieu van der Poel begins to write his own story in the race that always denied the best prize, the yellow jersey, to his grandfather, Raymond Poulidor. He gets it on his behalf and cries.

The Tour became a daily attack to the rhythm of the Van der Poel-Van Aert pulse, the enemy brothers who have breathed each other since they were children and began to play all cyclo-cross races. They invade the Tour and infect Pogacar, younger than them, apparently calmer,

cooler,

the same addiction to the show, never seen before. The Slovenian wins the Tour with two strokes. A one-two that leaves KO, frozen and drenched to a squad that loses the ability to react. Began his rebellion between Changé and Laval with victory in the first time

trial and ends in the first Alps, Romme, Colombière and Grand Bornand, the end of a

raid

of

canibalito

, an attack of 32 kilometers that takes him to the yellow with a lead of already five minutes over what will be his second 13 days later in Paris, the Danish revelation Jonas Vingegaard, the second element of the new cycling that is born in the Tour 21. Since the madness of Marco Pantani in the Galibier of 98 that left Jan Ullrich frozen, perhaps, no rider had attacked so long to conquer the yellow jersey.

The Tour ended on the eighth day.

On the mountain and in the time trial there has only been one name.

"It has been so different from last year," he says.

“Then it was all so like that, so surprising, so overnight, and I was only able to wear yellow one day, and it was the ride in Paris, that I could hardly enjoy the feeling of winning the Tour, I didn't have time to assimilate it.

This year has been different ”.

This year he has clenched his fist. He seizes power and sits on the throne despite the small crisis of Mont Ventoux that he attributes to the heat of the bald mountain, suffocating after the freezing days in the Alps and his rivals, like Richard Carapaz to a play organized so much so that neither the rivals nor the fans would see him as a bully, so that they would not shoot themselves, as every year for 20 years, you talk about doping that always shelter those runners who excel. He is preparing for the third week, to play no longer as a cannibal but as a whole cannibal in the Pyrenees, where, in Col del Portet and in Luz Ardiden, the fist raised, the whole symbol of absolute power, the index to heaven , becomes the first rider to win two consecutive great mountain stages with a high finish, wearing the yellow jersey.In the two stages, the second and third were the same, Vingegaard and Carapaz, the second and third, by co-option of the almighty, on the podium of the Champs Elysees.

Invincible and cannibal.

22 years.

Two Tours in a row.

As precocious as Fausto Coppi, who won his first Giro at age 20;

as gluttonous as Eddy Merckx, who also collected jerseys of all colors.

Pogacar is the first to win two in a row since the 2015-16 Froome, and he has made it so authoritarian that the question at the winner's press conference is inevitable.

"Are we at the beginning of the Pogacar era in cycling?"

The answer is not so obvious.

"No", denies the Slovenian goblin.

“We are at the beginning of a new era in cycling, the arrival of a new generation that will change everything, and I am looking forward to fighting with them for the next 10 years, at least.

But the new times have not been brought by me.

Another boy, Egan Bernal two years ago, won the Tour, and has just won the Giro ”.

Pogacar cites the names of the new ones he likes to compete with and begins with Van Aert, the Belgian from Ventoux, from the Bordeaux vineyards against the clock, from the Champs-Elysées, whom he awaits one day as a rival for the final victory, and from Van der Poel, with whom he will dispute the monuments, and talks about Egan Bernal, a Colombian;

by Tom Pidcock, British;

by Jonas Vingegaard, Danish;

by Remco Evenepoel, Belgian ...

La Vuelta, three weeks after the Games, if Pogacar finally disputes, it will be the first time that the winners of the last three majors meet and debate about their power.

Egan Bernal and Primoz Roglic have already confirmed their participation… It would be the race to end all races.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2021-07-18

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