The best climber in the world has won the second consecutive Tour.
“I’m done, I’m dead”: with these few words, spoken in a faint voice, Tadej Pogačar raised the so-called white flag as he struggled in the first meters of the ascent of the Col de la Loze (28.1km at 6%, at 2304m), the highest point high, the queen stage of this Tour. A profound crisis, of which the UAE cyclist is rarely the victim, but basically a crisis that was not entirely unexpected, even if it was difficult to imagine it of this magnitude. At the finish line, the Slovenian rider paid seven minutes ahead of the winner of the day Felix Gall (AG2R), but above all five minutes behind the yellow jersey Jonas Vingegaard, who thus sealed the second consecutive success in the Grand Boucle.
If we rewind the tape of the week and go back to Sunday the 16th, nothing foreshadowed such a sudden and dramatic epilogue to the fight for the general classification. On the rest day, with the entire third week still to go, including the time trial on Tuesday 18th and the Jura massif on Wednesday 19th, the gap between Vingegaard and Pogačar was just 10 seconds. Furthermore, the feeling was that Vingegaard came out of the second week in slight difficulty, more mental than physical compared to last year.
A 22.4 km uphill time trial was scheduled for Tuesday with arrival in Comblux, in the Haute Savoie and the historian in the discipline led to some decidedly unbalanced predictions towards the Slovenian rider: instead the exact opposite happened and precisely in the race against time Vingegaard has definitively put the tombstone on Pogi’s ambitions to fill the gap. With a monstrous testin the sense that he was a real alien, an extraterrestrial who with abilities too superior to human ones, the Dane crushed Pogačar uphill, giving him a good 1 minute and 38 seconds.
Again, Vingegaard’s victory could also be imagined, but certainly not of these proportions. What’s more, not that Pogačar had a bad performance: he finished in second place with 1 minute and 20 on Wout Van Aert: his was also a sensational race, but Vingegaard’s showdown made Pogačar’s one pass as that of one in deep crisis. It is possible that this defeat was a bad blow for the Slovenian, especially from a mental point of view and may have had a certain influence on the following day’s collapse, even if in the post Col de la Loze interview, Pogačar spoke of a lack of strength in the legs, not enough nutrition and no mental breakdown. The Slovenian saved second place in the standings thanks to the great support work of Marc Soler who escorted him to the finish line, preventing him from sinking definitively.
On Thursday 20 the last stage was staged as a hunting ground for sprinters, 184 km from Moûtiers to Bourg en Bresse and the clamorous news is that Jasper Philipsen did not win, who had triumphed in the previous four stages dedicated to sprinters and who thus conquered the green jersey of the points classification. Instead, it was the winner Kasper Asgreen, who thus saved an anonymous Tour for himself and above all for his team, the Quickstep. The Danish rider also came close to victory the day after, but on Friday 21st he was tricked at the finish line in Poligny by a few millimeters by the Slovenian from Bahrain Victorious, Matej Mohorič. With Mohorič’s success, Bahrain took home the third stage victory of this Tour, after the successes of Pello Bilbao and Poels.
For Mohorič this is the third career victory at the Grand Boucle and he was the protagonist of one of the most moving interviews of these days. After crossing the finish line, he burst into tears when the official victory arrived and, shortly after, he spoke freely on the microphones, always on the verge of tears of the effort, of the commitment, not only of the cyclists, but of all those who work in the world of professional racing, he told how much every cyclist who participates in the Tour deserves to win it, for the courage and effort of every day, he spoke of the special energy he unearthed during the sprint to beat Asgreen , even if he started as an underdog. He talked about Gino Mäder, the teammate who passed away a short time ago after an accident at the Tour of Switzerland. He dedicated the victory to him.
Exciting was also the moment of ride Of Thibaut Pinot sul Petit Ballon (9.3km at 8.1%) on Saturday, where there were thousands of his fans who awaited the arrival of the Frenchman, the last one on the roads of the Tour, because he will retire at the end of the year. In fact, Tibo is originally from the Burgundy area and he knew that on that climb there would be many to cheer for him, including friends and family. At the end of the match, after receiving the “fighter of the day” award, he declared to the microphones of Eurosport: “It was extraordinary. I felt incredible emotions today. I took on today’s race to win and I think the strategy was the correct one, unfortunately I lacked the legs to stay in the group that fought for the win. On the Petit Balon it was pure madness. I have the best fans in the world and this moment will stay in my memory forever. It’s beyond the result, it’s more than a victory. I’m also happy to have finished at a good level and to have shown that I can race the Tour as a protagonist”.
The stage on Saturday 22nd was that of redemption for Tadej Pogačar, who crossed the finish line first, burning Jonas Vingegaard on the sprint. He cheered a lot, maybe even too much, as he wrote on Instagram a few hours later, admitting that the last few days of the race were very tough. In the post-race interview you reiterated that you sought victory at all costs, after the very hard days spent on the bike: “The worst moment [di questo Tour, nda] it was every time Marc Soler watched me trailing behind him on the ascent of the Col de la Loze. His gaze was the most terrible moment”. Beyond the drama in the fight for the yellow jersey, the data on Pogačar’s stage victories in the Tour is already sensational: they are eleven, the first to succeed before the age of twenty-five. Furthermore, it is the fourth year in a row that he has finished the race on the podium, second place ahead of teammate Adam Yates, and the fourth that he conquers the best young rider classification. Who knows where he will want to go.
Saturday was also the day of glory for Italy. Although that of 2023 was the “leanest” expedition in history in terms of Azzurri in the race, only seven, in the end one of the seven came to light. Giulio Ciccone (Lidl Trek) won the climbers classification and on Sunday she paraded in a polka dot outfit from head to toe, including the bicycle. After thirty one years he brings the red polka dots back to Italy: the last one to win this special classification was Claudio Chiappucci in 1992. In this arid period for the Azzurri, the rider from Abruzzo is the best card we can offer at the moment uphill.
Giulio Ciccone took the question of polka dots seriously. (Ph: ASO / Pauline Ballet)
Finally, there’s Jonas Vingegaard who wins the Tour for the second time in a row, embellishing these three weeks with his sensational victory on Tuesday 18th in the time trial. He won the Tour of Authority, inflicting very high gaps on all the riders in the top ten. Not since Nibali’s Tour, in 2014, have we seen such high delays between first and second and between the first and the rest of the riders vying for the podium. Except Paris-Nice (won by Pogačar), he has won all the stage races he has participated in this year: Gran Camino, the Tour of the Basque Country and the Tour of the Dauphiné. He suffered – perhaps only mentally – between the first and second week where he was detached from Pogačar both on the Tourmalet and on the Puy de Dome. On Sunday he marched with his teammates on the Champs-Élysées on the day of the surprise victory of Jordan Meeus (Bora Hansgrohe) that burned Philipsen and Gronewegen on the finish line. The Dane, from the top step of the podium can boast without a shadow of a doubt the label of the strongest climber in the world at the moment and is aiming very strongly for the Vuelta, which he will race as co-captain together with Roglic. Appointment in September.