Consummated much of his creation, on the ninth day Tadej Pogacar rested.
Leveraged at the head of the peloton with his angels flying at him, the leader of the Tour left the mortals to do.
In the alpine Swiss valleys, from a Saturday movie, so orderly and spectacular, and wonderful asphalt roads, the protagonists were the secondary of the Tour, ignored until now.
Of his flesh and bones, and his heart, cycling is made.
And a little bag of ice on the hump to beat the heat.
The first of the so-called mountain stages, two first-class ports close to 1,500 meters, was won in Châtel, on the other side of the border, downhill, by the 29-year-old Bob Jungels from Luxembourg, a Matt Damon at the pedals, according to his many fans, who happily celebrate his victory, the first in two years with the French Ag2r, emphasizing that at least it adds some beauty to the race.
But the savvy fans answer yes, that the winner of the 2018 Liège will be very handsome, but that he is also very stubborn, like the runners of old, who, after hitting the ball with a good signing, only met expectations and salary the year your contract ended.
His victory heals in a certain way the bitterness of his team, which arrived at the Tour excited with the idea of putting his Australian O'Connor at the top and,
The combativeness was provided by Thibaut Pinot, the Frenchman who at 32 years old, fed up with not being able to deal with the tension that crushes and depresses those who try to win the Tour and cannot, has returned to the starting point, to his spectacular beginnings in fearless climber.
He finished fourth and won the applause of the French fans, so hungry, nostalgic for a forgotten glory, forcefully in love with this profile of the runner, the defeated fighter.
Pinot was not even second despite the fact that on the last ascent he approached the Luxembourger, a rider of class and power, not only handsome, to the point of almost touching him and scaring him.
Two Spaniards, Jonathan Castroviejo and Carlos Verona, men of the team and by trade, who stopped looking back for a day, worried about their leaders in the Ineos and Movistar, taking their breath away, to look ahead, think of them, a beautiful reward for their work.
Both, like two other veteran and expert Spaniards, Ion Izagirre and Luis León Sánchez, and the four of them make up 44.44% of the entire Spanish peloton, nine, this Tour, took the break of 21. Izagirre wore himself out working so that Geschke , his partner in the Cofidis, dressed in polka dots, and Luis León could not do much,
but Castroviejo and Verona calculated too much, measured their forces and the movements of Jungels and Pinot, and moved decisively, but late.
They narrowly missed the Luxembourger, leaving the Basque in second place, 22s behind Jungels.
"I almost never have opportunities to be on the run, I have spent too much, I have been working hard all week," says Castroviejo, tied to his obligations to Thomas and Yates every day except one.
“Jungels took a lot of time in a few kilometers, and I had the legs to win and I couldn't.
And I'm angry about that."
The counters keep spinning.
There are already 79 stages of the Tour without a Spanish victory;
105 counting the big three, Vuelta, Giro and Tour.
At least Enric Mas, always ahead, saw how one of his rivals, Vlasov, gave up a few more seconds in the heat, and another,
Pogacar, a slave to his strength and vitality, is incapable of not appearing on the screen at some point.
He does it in the final sprint on the slope for fifth place, no less.
When asked why he does these things, a sprint that gave him a bonus of 4s in Lausanne and 3s in Châtel over everyone except for Vingegaard, glued to his wheel, the Slovenian boy answers with an ex officio response, “to thank the work of my team all day, the strongest team on the Tour”, and with one of the soul.
“I like sprinting,” he says, “because when I started I was such a tadpole that I was always getting beaten up by the more developed ones, and I was determined to learn to sprint to beat them.”
And Vingegaard, as petite as he is, will surely think he is sincere.
Wasn't he, the Danish climber who instead of mountains that are not in his country,
defied the wind and thus became stronger, also a small boy who was beaten up by his teammates on the soccer team?
Both are the giants of the Tour,
now.
You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on
and
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
.
