Previous The Tour reaches its peak: a podium, seven contenders and two stages
Youth is the time to devour today without thinking about tomorrow and
Tadej Pogacar
So radiantly young, he doesn't even stop to think that he has a lot to lose, because in his ambitious mind only the possibility of victory appears. There is also in this attitude a point of unconsciousness, even recklessness, which the Slovenian transforms into reliable determination, as superior as it is on this Tour, to fuel his impulses. What does it matter that he is the tyrannical leader of this race if I am not going to be able to savor him until I reach the Champs Elysees, what is he expecting more unbearable, he seems to think. Pogacar wants it all and he wants it now and that is why he attacks and wins the queen stage, because while the rest of the mortals yearn to be recognized by those around him, he simply wants to prove to himself that he is the only boss of this race.
On the roof of the Tour, the top of the very hard
Col de Portet
,
Pogacar
wins for the first time (more will arrive) dressed in the yellow jersey and he feels happy about it, because he knows that nobody has given it to him, that he has not been ignored for fear as happened in Tignes, but has run into two fierce rivals and has managed to defeat them in the last meters. Endured
Jonas Vingegaard
and
Richard Carapaz
the rush of the Slovenian, denying the exhibition certainly had in mind, and the prize will
surely be the podium in Paris.
Rigoberto Uran
, his biggest rival, could not stand the leader's ordeal although he still relies on the time trial to cut the minute and a half that distance him from the Ecuadorian. Nor could
Enric Mas
answer
, who is already forgetting the Paris box despite limiting losses after giving up 13 kilometers from the top. Good stage on the other hand for
Pello Bilbao
, who strengthens his top10.
The outcome did not catch anyone by surprise, after 100 flat initial kilometers of great tranquility, with a low-level escape (four Frenchmen included, to shine on the country's National Day) ahead filling minutes of television. The ascents of
Peyresourde
,
Val Louron
and
Portet
remained for the final 60
and at the beginning of the first of them everything changed. The
Pogacar
UAE
broke the calm by lining up the group and soon reducing it to about 40 units. The passage through Val Louron was calmer, the team of the leader may not be so bad, but in Portet the fireworks were restarted, permanent during the 50 minutes of final climb.
Those final 16 kilometers are divided into two parts.
The initial seven correspond to the road that leads to the classic
Pla d'Adet
and then, in a twist, the final nine starts that were asphalted in 2018 to take the Tour to Portet for the first time.
The UAE was working until those first ramps began, eliminating
Mas
.
The Spaniard gave up very soon and smelled of debacle, but rebuilt to lose just 2:27 at the goal.
Seen as seen, not so bad for the leader of
Movistar
, who even rises a place in the general (now he is seventh) at the expense of
Lutsenko
.
HAIR, MOST NOTABLE SPANISH
Bilbao
tried to anticipate
Pogacar's
move
, knowing that he was not a threat to the Slovenian. But is that the leader, bully, wanted everything. He ordered his faithful Majka to neutralize the Spanish and launched his expected attack, as devastating as could be envisioned. Only
Vingegaard, Carapaz, Urán, O'Connor
and an admirable
Castroviejo
endured the first stake. In the second, half a kilometer later, he was alone with the Dane and the Ecuadorian, his travel companions, and up to the final ramp.
Pogacar tried again on two occasions, as he was looking for the solo exhibition, but his companions were holding on to his wheel. He was not going to be able to release them with the ease he imagined, so he opted to cooperate, knowing himself the fastest of the three.
Vingegaard
gave him a hand, but
Carapaz
looked the other way when they asked him for relief. "Jonas came and told me that he thought he was bluffing. I thought the same thing: it was a matter of tactics,"
Pogacar
said later
, suspicious. Well done.
Because in the absence of a kilometer and a half, the head of the Ineos ranks changed the pace in search of stage victory.
He managed to make Vingegaard yield, but the Dane, all pride, knew how to suffer to return to the lead with just 200 meters to go.
It was then that Pogacar released his final blow, the one that was going to give him the victory in the queen stage, regardless of tomorrow, which includes
Luz Ardiden
and
Tourmalet
on the menu
, the mountainous culmination of this Tour that only speaks Slovenian.
Blessed be his youth.
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