Hirschi finally wins the award for his tenacity

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The Tour passes through Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat and takes off his hat to honor his favorite son and reminds him that many times the important thing is not to win but to find a place in the hearts of the fans.

It is even more difficult, since the Tour has known 62 different winners and few, perhaps none, have the charisma of

, that wonderful runner of the 60s and 70s who added eight podiums without managing to wear a single day of his life. yellow jersey.

Of course, that conclusion, that sometimes winning is not the important thing, is acquired with age, when the bicycle has already been hung in the garage forever.

At the moment, victory is the only thing that matters.

And that's why

feels frustrated, because he has won so many times that he can't bear his drought, a year and two months without raising his arms.

Perhaps that is why the movement that cost him disqualification on Wednesday, because such in his eagerness to reach a stage that he loses control over himself for a moment.

And to make matters worse, he fears that the green jersey, his already seven times, almost all by a landslide, will be unattainable this season, well tied as

has it

.

That is why Bora squeezes throughout the stage, because he hopes that the Irishman will be cut off in the second category port that is crowned at 16 kilometers from the finish line and that the Slovakian can pass it to seek a victory, at least a good one position that earns you points in your desired ranking of consistency.

But the only thing they get is that the day's break, in which

and

fight,

dies before his time.

45 kilometers from the end, the longest stage of this Tour restarts, with knowing glances among the best in the general classification.

They seem to say among themselves that today is a truce, that it is better to save the strength for the strenuous day that awaits on Friday in the Massif Central.

Or for Sunday's, with the Grand Colombier as the inescapable final fireworks.

So those who move are runners looking for the stage and nothing else, which is not a little, while the race bosses watch the scene with indifference.

Alaphilippe's frustration

Is

the first lights the fuse and followed by

three runners the Sunweb one after another.

The Catalan looks at them and immediately concludes that his rival is not Andersen, but doubts whether it will be Benoot, the presumed leader, or

.

But he knows that the movement of the German team is not random or improvised, that they have a plan, because it is the squad that is working the best on this Tour, even if they do not have great riders that make that group work look too much.

Schachmann

, a bad partner, joins them and the five of them make their way until on the hardest ramps of Suc au May, the Sunweb turns their cards face up and shows at the end that the ace of their deck is Hirschi.

The 22-year-old Swiss, a star of the future and perhaps now of the present, had been second to

in Nice and third in Laruns, on that occasion after seeing his 100-kilometer adventure thwarted by Roglic, Landa, Pogacar and Bernal.

And he would think that he did not want to be Poulidor, not at least for the moment, and that what he wanted was to win.

So Hirschi, rigid on the bike, not moving the pedals but pounding them with power and determination, crowns alone and throws himself into the descent as if this Thursday was his last chance to be the protagonist of a photo on the Tour, although it will not be.

Soler gives up, exhausted by the effort, and Alaphilippe tries to make up lost ground although he knows better than anyone that it is already late.

Because Hirschi's victory, the first of many to come, is already inevitable and, incidentally, so is his space among the big names on this Tour.

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