Covid?
Gone and forgotten.
Instead, Belgian ball man on Mont Ventoux.
On the evening of the day on which the Tour de France had sent its drivers twice over the Mont Ventoux, three unfortunate and perplexed gendarmes were standing in the village square at the destination Malaucène.
What to do with all the party people?
They let it go.
A few meters away, three hours earlier, Wout van Aert was the first to cross the finish line.
The Belgian champion had won the monster stage of this year's Tour of France, an unusual challenge even for tour conditions, which led over 190 kilometers and 4600 meters in altitude.
Proud mountain kings behind
The celebration on the village square was dominated by black, yellow and red, the Belgian national colors.
The cycling-crazy nation adopted Malaucène and the region around Mont Ventoux decades ago.
If you drop by here with your racing machine in spring or summer, you sometimes feel like you are in a Belgian cycling province, some accommodations such as the Résidence "Les Cyclistes" have Belgian TV channels preset.
Now van Aert had won this tremendous stage as a soloist, had left all the proud mountain kings from many different nations behind one after the other. No climber who could follow him. Reason to cheer for his compatriots, many of whom had camped up on the slopes of the Ventoux and already celebrated the day of the decision, on which van Aert, 26 years old, fulfilled a heartfelt dream for them.
He was the first Belgian since Eddy Merckx in 1970 to win a tour stage that led on or over the summit of Mont Ventoux. Comparing any other racing driver to Merckx, the greatest in the history of this sport, is out of the question. But on Wednesday a lot could be heard about it at the foot of the Ventoux. Isn't van Aert someone like him? One like the great Eddy? So incredibly versatile? So aggressive? A master on every terrain? Wasn't he second in the mass sprint the day before the Ventoux stage? Wasn't he cross world champion? Isn't he a brilliant time trial, an adventurously good downhill racer? Isn't he an all-rounder like the great master?
All of these questions can be answered with yes. But of course van Aert is not a Merckx. His successes are breathtaking: he won the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia five times. He won 525 road races and 98 on the track. He won world championships, classics and six-day races, he won sprints, mountain stages and individual time trials. In his first Tour de France, he won the overall standings, took seven stages, won the mountain classification and the green jersey of the best in points. More is not possible. Because he won the most and wanted to win everything, they called him the cannibal.
Van Aert is far from such a track record, and yet he reminds Belgian fans of Eddy the great.
Van Aert, they hope, will no longer be used as a noble helper in the Jumbo-Visma team after this tour, this time he first drove for Primoz Roglic and after his injury-related retirement for the Dane Jonas Vingegaard, third in the overall standings.
At Mont Ventoux, his team leadership gave him free travel once, and the result was one to dream of for the fans.
What could he gain, they say about their new darling, if he could drive on his own account every day.
Sprint, mountain and runaway stages.
Just everything.
And so, on this Belgian holiday, a touch of Eddy Merckx floated above the village square of Malaucène above a cloud of alcohol.