The last week in the Tour de France was a merciless week.
The sections in the Pyrenees were tough, but very successful.
We knew that every day we would try to put Israel Premier Tech riders on the run - and that's exactly what we did.
In stage 16 Mike Woods and Hugo Hall were there, and Hugo in the ride of his life gave us a second win in this column.
We were all moved to tears.
He is an amazing guy, and the fact that he dedicated his victory to his brother who passed away ten years ago did not leave a dry eye with us.
We weren't satisfied with that, and even in stages 17 and 18 we were at the front of the race and in the breakaways, but these were the last opportunities for Taddei Pugacher to make a change in the general ranking and those days were largely full gas from the beginning to the end, and the breakaways did not survive to the finish line.
In stage 17 I did a lot of work to help Woods get into the breakaway, and in stage 18 I experienced a good and successful day for me on a personal level when I was relatively on top of things, and one of 25 riders who remained in the peloton - the one stuck close to the yellow jersey wearer at the end of the first climb.
Of course, after the attacks started on the second climb of the day, I didn't keep the pace, but it was definitely a happy and successful day to finish the stages of the climbs.
After the Pyrenees, another flat day passed (full of side winds and not easy at all) and another section of 40 km against the clock - and here we are already on our way to Paris.
Guy Niv (right).
Do it, photo: AFP
It's great fun to finish another Tour de France, and it's just as exciting.
In 2020, there was indeed a feeling of making history, and I had moments from this race that I will never forget in my life, but it was the year of Corona and my family could not come to be with me in Paris.
This time they are here, accompanying me throughout the last week, and I am happy that they are here to share these moments with me.
From there we didn't see him again
The day we lost Chris Froome to the Corona virus, everything happened very quickly.
He suddenly complained of a sore throat, and asked the group doctor to perform an antigen test - "just to be safe".
From there we didn't see him again, and he didn't appear at the starting line of stage 18. It sucks for him to end the current Tour like that, which was a step forward for him after a very difficult period that included recovery from a big crash, but I'm convinced that he will return to the Tour and Paris in the future.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us