The race is available for three days to be enjoyed with one of the most intense battles to wear yellow in recent years.
Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, both riders with damaged equipment, will go head-to-head for one of them to win the ultimate glory on the Champs-Élysées on Sunday.
There can only be one left, one dressed in yellow, in the intense duel in the Pyrenees sun. Everything is ready for the Tour to be painted with its best colors, gutters flooded with the public, overflowing passion and a lot, a lot of heat, another phenomenon that can be decisive. It had been years since there had been a duel between the leader and a runner stripped of the yellow who does not give up, who does not surrender.
“I’m going to attack whenever I can”, threatened this Monday off, Tadej Pogacar, the great star, the cyclist who was given as the only clear contender for victory before starting, the one who ran in excess the first week and the one who he forgot to eat and drink at the Granon, a very serious mistake, to open the way to victory in Paris for Jonas Vingegaard.
In the last 33 years nothing like it had been seen. The time has passed Miguel Induraintransition tours, the fucking doping, the trip to nowhere in Lance Armstrongthe domains of Alberto counter, Chris Froome… but always, except for a crash, except for disqualifications, the one who started as the favorite for the yellow jersey, that’s how he arrived in Paris.
You have to go back to what is considered the best Tour de France in the last 40 years to find the intense duel between Greg Lemond y Laurent Fignonlived in 1989 after missing peter slim in the prologue of Luxembourg, and far from surrendering, fighting like a wild boar to repeat the victory of the previous year. Unforgettable the great stage of the Segovian of Superbagneres, with the monuments of the Pyrenees, including the Tourmalet, absent this year from the race script. He ran away with Robert Millartoday Philippa York, special envoy of the British press to the Tour, and took three minutes out of all of them.
more memories
A few days I was wearing Lemond yellow and others Fignonwho lost the race in his native Paris, on the last day and by just 8 seconds, in a final time trial at the Champs ElyseeIt is that it has never been programmed again in case a Frenchman leaves an entire country crying and speechless again.
Precisely, Parakeetcontributes what he thinks Vingegaard must do to win the Tour, in the face of attacks from Pogacar announced on a loudspeaker in Carcassonne. “You must go full throttle and if you can’t follow Tadej Let him go and try to give in for just a few seconds. He has a cushion of 2.22 minutes to manage.”
The wall of Péguère
The festival begins this Tuesday with the weakest, although longest, of the three Pyrenean stages. There is no high finish but there is a Wall of Péguère, short, that grabs, where they placed nails in 2012 in hooliganism so that more than 30 cyclists could puncture. If he attacks Pogacar, he must then carry out a 27-kilometre individual time trial to Foix. On Wednesday everything is more classic and on Thursday a hard nut to crack, in You won’t tell meabove the skies of Lourdes.
“The yellow jersey must go to the Pogacar wheel until it bursts”, says Pedro Delgado
“The mistake of Vingegaard would be to try to put more time into Pogacar, who must try to isolate the yellow jersey to attack in the final two stages of the Pyrenees from the start of the last climb. The Slovenian cyclist is still my favorite to win, but if Vingegaard he doesn’t have a bad day it will be very difficult to win the Tour again. So far the Dane has shown that he has explosiveness and has always been able to neutralize Pogacar without apparent problems”. This is how another Tour winner tells it, Óscar Pereiro, winner of the 2006 edition. “Vingegaard can afford to lose a few seconds in each stage,” adds the former Galician cyclist. “But Pogacar must reduce to at least 40 seconds the debuff with Vingegaard if he wants to win the final 40-kilometre time trial race on Saturday,” says Delgadotoday TVE commentator.
“Vingegaard’s mistake would be trying to get more time out of his rival”, adds Óscar Pereiro
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“I don’t dare to give either of them as the final winner. What I am sure of is that there will be a great duel in the Pyrenees,” says Enric Mas, a luxury observer in the confrontation of the two stars of this Tour, and who hopes to profit from a race that is reaching its Pyrenean phase -third week, everyone more tired, a heat as terrible as running on foot with a stone in the shoe- with the Jumbo and the UEA without sufficient troops to control it, protect the maximum to their leaders and be aware, at the same time, that someone a few minutes away does not take advantage of the troubled waters by slipping into an ungovernable escape.
Make game!
Pogacar He admitted this Monday that he already knew what happened to him at the Granon. He found his supply bag with unused gels and bottles. He threw it away believing that he was vaccinated against the bird. Sep kiss is the almost only protector of Vingegaard although Wout van Aert is worth everything. And it’s not that it scales that bad either. Pogacar He mainly has a Catalan (Marc Soler) and a Pole (Rafal Majka) to watch his back in a face-to-face duel for a garment that only one of them can wear in Paris. Make game!