A jumbo-Visma runner passes under the whistles. “Prick!”, “Robot!” The group of young people, around ten, explains: “We can’t stand them. Especially Primoz Roglic. And the other Slovenian too, Tadej Pogacar. Where do they come from? ” Roglic, 30, and Pogacar, 21, fought on Saturday for the yellow jersey on the slopes of the Belles-Filles board (Haute-Saône), which turned to the advantage of the second. Under the gaze of fans and many skeptics. At the same time, commentators on Swiss public television laughed: “An alien has just tumbled down. There, we have no words, no explanation… It’s almost too much… There, we remain skeptical… ” The previous week, the former yellow jersey wearer Romain Feillu considered the performance of the two Slovenes suspicious: “We can see that there is something, he declared to West France. In cycling, there is no chance, that’s why I think there is eel under the rock … ” But what does the public think, who come to attend the show on site?
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Marc, in his forties, who climbed the Belles-Filles board by bike early in the morning, expresses his annoyance. “I don’t know if people realize this, if they are aware of what is going on, he said, pointing to the crowd sitting two kilometers from the finish line. We always hear that cycling is the sport where there are the most doping controls. It may be true, but what is certain is that the bicycle has a connection with it. ” The man, who comes “Now on the Tour especially for the atmosphere”, is tired of “Always suspect”. “The Jumbo-Visma this year, the Sky in previous years… But asking questions is pretty healthy, isn’t it?”
Enzo, who has put his cooler down a few meters below, thinks not: “Why be there if you don’t believe it?” It just doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s because there are no more French people who can win the Tour, is that it? ” It was visual clues, the law of coincidence and a sense of déjà vu that sparked suspicion. The domination of the Jumbo-Visma, the team of Primoz Roglic, which scatter the other climbers and impose its “train”; Tadej Pogacar’s ascent record in the Peyresourde pass (Hautes-Pyrénées), almost a minute faster than the previous mark, set by Alexandre Vinokourov and Iban Mayo in 2003, two runners convinced of doping; her other record performance in the Belles-Filles board; the emergence of two runners from the same country; the impression of relaxation they emit on television …
Thomas left his parents at the bottom of the “plank” and hiked up. He evokes the case of the Belgian Jumbo-Visma, Wout van Aert, winner of two stages. “He’s a sprinter, a puncher, a roller, a climber. But how does he do it? I have been following him for a long time, I saw him in cyclo-cross competitions, in Koksijde in Belgium. He was very strong, but I never thought it was possible. “
“Possessed”
The 30-something, who lives in Dunkirk, continues: “The two Slovenes are probably not the only suspects, but I think they suddenly landed in the peloton.” He shrugs his shoulders: “Anyway, with doping, you always discover the truth ten years later.” Thomas’s uncle, Jean-Louis, disgusted by Richard Virenque, the Tour de France 1998 and the Festina affair, stopped following the bike for a while. “And then we forget. It must. Otherwise there would be no one on the side. You have to take it all for what it is: a beautiful show. ”
The uncle and the nephew come back to their meeting the day before, in their hotel, with a UCI race commissioner “Responsible for checking motor bikes” : “He explained his job to us: he looks at the weight of the bikes and checks with a thermal camera that they are not hiding an engine. Thereupon, he’s sure of his luck. “ What about doping? “He said, ‘That I don’t know.'”
Thomas scrolls through photos of the runners on his phone, taken at the top of the climb to the Glières plateau, on Friday. “Looks like they’re sick, possessed. Look at their eyes they pop out of their heads he says, half moved, half dumbfounded. I do not know what to think anymore.”
Romain Boulho
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