If the asphalt were the tumultuous Ariège that refreshes them when they arrive in Foix, Hugo Houle would glide effortlessly through its waters, like the duck that floats happily between the stones of a waterfall and abandons itself in the current that carries it.
But Houle doesn't float, nor does he seem to mind not having feathers or wings.
He is a cyclist.
The Tour is a steamroller.
The cyclists are their shadow sunk into the burning asphalt, crushed, although they delude themselves thinking that they are so strong, that their pedaling is so hard that it hurts the ground.
It is the illusion that deceives all athletes, the one despised by Houle, who pedals laboriously, a 31-year-old from Québec, who has never gone with the flow, and laughs at the dreaded Péguère Wall, at its impossible slopes more than 30 degrees in the Pyrenees.
A Canadian who as a child spent July mornings watching the Tour on TV and racing his brother can't be afraid of anyone.
Neither to the mountains nor to those who chase him through the mountains with which he dreamed, to those who chase the dream that has guided him for 10 years, since his gaming brother, the little brother, the most talented,
was hit and killed by a motorist while jogging, leaving him lying on the road.
“One day I will win a stage of the Tour for him, I promised myself back then,” says Houle, and, after winning the stage in Foix, alone, with time to get all excited, he shows a crucifix that he wears around his neck.
"It belonged to my brother."
Houle arrives alone, which he tries and fails Tadej Pogacar, the one with a light heart, who also laughs with fear and attacks and attacks, and, worryingly for his illusions, shows his limits again.
He does not attack the Péguère wall, which was going to be inaugurated by the Tour in 1973, but Luis Ocaña, the dictator of that year, prevented it, because, he said, and everyone understood, his descent was very dangerous.
It was the stage that would pass through the places of his tragedy of 71, his memory, the Col de Menté, the Portillon of his father, Luchon.
Without Péguère, Ocaña wins the stage and sinks Fuente, who was challenging him.
In Péguère, where everyone was waiting for him, in the hardest part, Pogacar did not move.
He is content to resist, to keep up with Kuss for his Vingegaard.
He only attacked the Slovenian at Lers, an easier port.
Attack and brake.
Rap
Light.
And Vingegaard, the yellow shade of the white jersey, everything is so easy, and again talkative, he has fun.
“His attacks are good for me.
For me, the harder everything is, the better.”
Beneath the asphalt of Limoux, where the escape of 29 forms, leaving Carcassonne, they occasionally find buried dinosaur bones from the
Blanquette
vineyards , their white
frizzante
fresco that reminds cyclists who practice a primitive art, that perhaps they themselves can be seen as dinosaurs, on the verge of extinction.
They read alarming news.
If the global warming continues at this accelerated rate, in 20 years it will be so hot in July that it will be impossible to run the Tour.
One glaciation exterminated the dinosaurs, another will put an end to cycling, but it does not seem that such matters concern Enric Mas and his Movistar any more than the realization, one more day, that if something can go wrong, it will never go wrong right.
He has Jorgenson on the run, another cold rider, like Houle, from Boise, Idaho, near the Rockies.
He can even win the stage in which Mas has failed again, but he falls on the last descent.
Vlasov, one of the Mallorcan's territory in the general,
he gets into the escape that keeps the Jumbo entertained all day;
No more.
“Mea culpa”, says the Majorcan.
"He was locked up when he was formed."
He then tries the team in full butterfly effect.
Mas moves in Lers, anticipating the attack of the big ones.
When the big guys attack, Mas stays.
The butterfly is a flutter without consequences.
“In Péguère I should have been further ahead.
The sensations today have been more or less good, for the rest.
Let's keep trying.
I hope I have strength."
“In Péguère I should have been further ahead.
The sensations today have been more or less good, for the rest.
Let's keep trying.
I hope I have strength."
“In Péguère I should have been further ahead.
The sensations today have been more or less good, for the rest.
Let's keep trying.
I hope I have strength."
The tour is simple.
Two fight for victory and 10 try to hold on as long as possible.
There are no more mysteries.
Nairo and Thomas, the wisest, know it, they have the strength and they execute it perfectly.
The others dance.
But it stays.
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