An exhibition by Bob Jungels prevents the long-awaited Spanish victory

The days go by, the account grows, like a debt that tortures Spanish cycling.

Four years since

won in Mende.

In Les Portes du Soleil, near the Swiss border, a real possibility of ending the obsession of those who ruled with tyranny not so long ago vanished.

So close and yet so far

, two domestiques with the day off, second and third a handful of seconds from an exhibition.

[Narration and rankings]

Because we had to pay homage to

, one of those triumphs that are remembered for life.

Because of how, but also because of the context of a guy marked by evil fate, disappeared from the map of those who raise their arms.

The Luxembourger crowned the second climb of the day, made a gap on the descent and endured like a titan, more than 40 kilometers of pure agony on all terrains, with

stalking him when the terrain got hard (he was 20 seconds away from catching him ), to give his small country a triumph that he had not known since the

brothers .

After the fireworks, the explosive preliminaries in which

already wanted to mark territory, like an unapproachable torrent, the mountain arrived.

Not yet the highest mountain, because the Alps will come on Tuesday, after the second rest stage.

But there was a serious advance in Haute-Savoie, in a goal that the Tour only reached once, back in 1975, with

.

But in the Puertas del Sol they wanted to speak Spanish, there were precedents.

There, at the Critérium Dauphiné,

won a stage against

in 2012. And the Murcian, along with Verona, Castroviejo and

, sneaked into the noble breakaway, with guys of such stature as the perennial

- he never gets over the desire to march- or the Colombian veteran

, who is still one of those who never stop being favorites, second in the 2017 Tour. Among others.

Yoan ValatAP

They made their way and left the toast to the UAE, the only question for King Pogacar.

Because he lost the

and covid lurks, uncontrollable.

, another of the few nationals, kept his distance before the last pass, Pas de Morgins, very long and stretched out.

It was enough for the team of a more timid leader this time, just a blow in the last meters, well answered by

who appears in the Alps as the clear and almost only candidate.

"We did the rhythm that we liked, and we went like that until the end," confessed the Slovenian.

Because the day belonged to Jungels, winner of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2018, of a stage in Bergamo in the 2017 Giro. The rebirth of a class cyclist, but since signing for Ag2r-Citröen, he has only suffered misfortune.

He was hit by an ambulance at the end of 2020, in the 2021 Amstel Gold Race he suffered a fall that caused a head injury and that same summer he was diagnosed with endofibrosis of the external iliac artery for which he had to undergo surgery .

Even his participation in the current Tour de France was in doubt until the last minute due to Covid-19.

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