2023-07-24 00:27:50
This Tour leaves the most excellent balance that could be expected
To put it bluntly, it has been the one that has just finished. It has been a good, very good, awesome Tour, in an overwhelming balance, simply enthusiastic, with a pity that this is over.
That is the feeling that describes the moment, that tomorrow there will be no stage or rest day waiting for new deliveries.
A gap that will be brief, luckily the World Cup is here, and in a few weeks we will be back with the Vuelta.
We knew from the beginning that this Tour was going to be good, it was not obvious, but it was very probable, and that the balance would be around these boundaries once it was finished.
We are witnessing an exceptional line of riders who reach their maximum expression in the Tour with Vingegaard and Pogacar, but around them there is a game, a dance of stars and cyclists who run and honor their trade on and off the road.
For example, Matej Mohoric.
Right here I commented that the route of the 2023 Tour was a joke, I didn’t like it, it was short, scant, lacking references in the Alps, bottomless, but you have to sheath it, the route can be brutal that is left to the riders and what they do.
But he has given the stature, it has been worth it.
Vingegaard and Pogacar have honored the history of mountain giants like Marie Blanque, Tourmalet and Puy de Dôme.
They have returned the brilliance omitted in the days of Team Sky, which I am afraid has not happened to the best of our lives.
As far as my memory reaches, I have kept Tours with great affection, especially Indurain’s second and fifth, Marco Pantani’s, 2003’s, with everything that happened and what came after, and the latest editions, especially last year’s.
Outside of here the Tour had entered into a dangerous dynamic, with editions that were predictable, controlled and full of tedium.
Great places like the Galibier, Tourmalet and others were passed with more pain than glory.
All thanks to that generation that has taken control, a generation in which, it must be admitted, Tadej Pogacar is the great catalyst.
When he’s around, things happen and we see them.
Image: ASO/Pauline Ballet
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