“Comfortable, mythical and with an incomparable power of seduction.
7 out of 7.” Since the winter of 2018, Magnus Cort Nielsen's Instagram account has looked like a slightly elevated version of Guide du routard.
Hotels, bike-cafés, refuges lost in the depths of nowhere… The Dane notes with the assiduity of a top of the class the quality of the places where he puts his bike and his blond mane.
So we started to imagine what he could write about the polka dot jersey he's been proudly wearing for seven days now.
Magnus Cort Nielsen is the man we didn't expect at the start of the Tour de France.
The Wout Van Aert rocket and the potential Cannibal Tadej Pogacar, no problem, are a delight from the start and do justice to their reputation as pillars of victory.
In the midst of this exceptional couple, a 29-year-old Dane with a wriggling mustache and the name of Viking brought everything you expect from a first week: freshness and audacity.
The organizers can say thank you.
His solo epics at home escorted by red and white flags (well, well) brightened up the Nordic triptych.
On his own, he put on a show on this famous Saturday of the 2nd stage promised to the 18 km of hell above the Great Belt, raising his arms at the top of the Kårup Strandbakke hill in front of an ecstatic crowd.
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The record is a little truncated, it is not as such a mountain, but he became at that time, the first cyclist to pass nine times consecutively in the lead of a Grand Prix of the mountain.
Before him, the champion in the matter was none other than the Eagle of Toledo, Federico Bahamontes, in 1958.
"It's as if I had rolled along a huge party for two days"
This Thursday, July 7, departing from Tomblaine (Meurthe-et-Moselle), it is a more calm man than we thought who gets out of the EF Education-EasyPost bus.
“What I achieved in Denmark of course was a climax.
It's as if I had rolled along a huge party for two days, ”he modestly congratulates himself.
A particular memory in mind?
He thinks for a few seconds, as if he had to sort through everything he put in storage.
“Yes, there is a place: a very old and very impressive water tower painted in red and white with my name in the middle.
»
Magnus Cort Nielsen at the start this Friday in Tomblaine (Meurthe-et-Moselle).
LP/Cyril Simon
Difficult to know much more about the profusion of emotions which must have assailed him on his lands then in France.
Perhaps he will be more talkative once the tunic is passed on to an alpine climber.
Because yes, he assures him, placidly: “This jersey, I'm afraid of losing it today or tomorrow.
I no longer see myself with Sunday.
» Missed bet.
The public will still easily distinguish it this Sunday between Aigle (Switzerland) and Chatel Les Portes du Soleil (Haute-Savoie).
Now his role is to support Rigoberto Uran and Neilson Powless.
Hoping that an exit voucher will be granted to him afterwards.
What if his next escape finally ends with his arms in the air?
Probably not in Carcassonne, on July 17, where he had for the first and only time raised his arms on the Tour in 2018. This stage risks ending up in the hands of a sprinter.
But hope seems more possible in the Pyrenees, near Andorra where he lives, far from his small native island on the Swedish-Danish border.
Sacred best combatant in the Vuelta last summer, he could in any case do it again this year.
If he was not the most famous Danish rider in France before this Tour, he has undoubtedly become one.
