Simon Clarke wins on the pavés and Pogacar shows his power in the Tour de France

Gloomy looks, too serious, and the dust ages their faces, the worry lines on their foreheads.

The Jumbos are everywhere except in front.

They are strong, the energy overflows them, the landscape accompanies them.

It is your ground.

The dust that stains their faces, their clothes, that turns to mud with their sweat, is the fertile loess that makes beets grow strong, that when cooked gives beautiful bricks to make red and white houses, that muddies the roads and the farmers cover them of boulders from Avalonia, granite without quartz, so that everyone stumbles, so that Pogacar dances on tiptoe, alone, a child's face, childish joy, a boy in white, clean, and adolescent cheeks, and the blonde lock peeking through the cracks of the helmet.

Tour de France 2022

Tour de France 2022: teams and favorites to wear the yellow jersey

Everyone suffers except him, who enjoys it on the 11 cobbled sections of the flat lands of northern France, Colorado Ryan in Rio Bravo riding carefree, brazen, shooting fast and accurately with John Wayne, old and worried.

And the white jersey, pristine, bright as limestone, as the sun would be if the clouds did not hide it, as the yellow jersey would shine if the winner of the last two Tours, 23 years old, had reached the end.

It should be the big day for the Jumbo, the second collective hit after the one in Calais by the Van Aert gang, down, Vingegaard, punctured, Roglic, injured.

It is the day of accelerated, crazy Pogacar, who overestimates his strength, who despises the danger of cobblestones on which he has never run, who launches himself with his apparent calm into an insane attack, and therefore beautiful, of which they quicken the pulse, along with the Flemish stone specialist Stuyven, and not even Dylan van Baarle, the last winner of the Roubaix, the mother of all boulders, can follow him.

Vingegaard, the strongest of the jumbos, and Roglic, his second, are already far behind.

Pogacar does not calculate.

He attacks and is carried away by the impulse.

He does it in section three, the most difficult, four stars, uneven, uneven bicorn cobblestones, and a thrill.

There are 20 kilometers to go.

The objective is threefold.

Distance the jumbos, catch up with the escapees and win the stage, reach the yellow jersey.

He fights for everything and does not reach any.

He reaches the finish line and bends over the bike while he drinks half a liter of water in one gulp, and coughs, coughs, fatigue crushing his lungs.

He apparently is more tired than ever.

He doesn't look like the Pogacar of the Strade Bianche, or the one in Flanders, or the one in Grand Bornand.

The impression is false.

He has gone further than he could, but he recovers quickly and is already smiling on the podium, pure white, the boy in the white suit that everyone is chasing.

🚨🚨 This was the dangerous moment after Wout Van Aert's fall...

And we still hadn't reached the pavé!

#TDF2022

📺📲💻 Follow the development of the stage on Eurosport and the Eurosport / Player APP pic.twitter.com/Pv4wyq7aXG

– Eurosport.es (@Eurosport_ES) July 6, 2022

He was 51s behind the winner of the stage, the surprising Australian Simon Clarke, from Israel, the most skilful finisher among those from a breakaway kept alive by the inevitable EFs of Magnus Cort and Neilson Powless.

Clarke is the last to move.

He perfectly follows the lessons of the elders, wait, wait, wait, wait until you go crazy waiting, only then, speed up.

And he wins by half a wheel to one not so patient, the Dutchman Van der Hoorn.

Pogacar's beautiful and foolish action could also be judged useless, if life were only looked at by the result.

He has only achieved a lead of 13s over Vingegaard, his rival, whom he leads by 21s in the general classification on the eve of the first mounts, the Belles Filles, on Friday, Châtel, next to Morzine, on Sunday.

Roglic is further away, 2m 17s overall, and is injured with a dislocated shoulder.

Vingegaard has punctured at 38 kilometers and has been slow to change bikes.

Ahead, still six sections of stones, which are no longer local, but imported from Sweden to renew the paths, 12 kilometers of vibrations, of fear of a breakdown, of entrusting oneself to the wheel of Van Aert, generous, companion .

A few kilometers later, before the next stage, at a roundabout, Roglic falls against the straw protections.

Only the collective spirit of the Jumbo, and Van Aert, who finds a mission only within his reach, save the team.

The chaos of the pavés can even with the best organizations armed with great intentions.

There is a superior, spiritual force in everything that is the Tour, which chooses its lovers, and does not allow itself to fall in love, and thus, the pavés.

Lucky Pogacar,

, the chosen one.

Let's take pity on Roglic, and applaud his courage, who swallows a bale of security straw that a passing motorcycle hit and left in the middle of the roundabout.

The Slovenian's shoulder comes off.

It's not the first time he's done it.

He stops a little further on.

He asks a spectator for a chair.

He sits.

He grabs the knee and pulls hard.

And the bone returns to the site of it.

Let us console Vingegaard.

Let's admire Van Aert.

The yellow jersey has fallen 97 kilometers from the finish line, at the beginning of the stage, before the start of time.

"I was stunned," he later confesses, "and I didn't even see myself with the energy to climb to the top, to get into the fight for position and victory."

Only the misfortune of his companions shakes him and wakes him up.

Halfway through the stage, he feels lost in a group in the middle of nowhere.

He doesn't even think about keeping the yellow jersey anymore.

Then he receives the order to stop, to wait for Vingegaard, who is late, to work so that his Dane does not lose the Tour before it starts.

Solidarity work gives him so much energy and motivation that he only loads, heavy wagons behind his wheel, with all the stragglers among the best, Mas, Vlasov, Bardet, Thomas, Yates... And he brings all of them closer to Pogacar, already exhausted.

And as a prize, he saves,

for 13s a yellow jersey that I thought was lost.

And he is so ambitious, and so cured, that he regrets it.

“I had big plans and I could only chase,” he says.

"I'm disappointed that we couldn't do more in the final hunt."

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