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Laporte obeys Van Aert and gives France the first victory in the Tour

Laporte wins the Cahors half. / efe

The French rider completes control of the Jumbo, which protected Vingegaard throughout the stage and then finished off with victory in Cahors

Jumbo is a supermarket chain from the Netherlands. They have everything. On its shelves there is an imminent Tour winner like Jonas Vingegaard, a multi-purpose Swiss army knife born in Belgium and called Wout Van Aert, a ski jumper who has won the Vuelta three times like Roglic and there is even the winner of this nineteenth stage of the Grande Boucle, Christophe Laporte. He is French and it is a relief for his country, which had not yet been released in this edition. Laporte culminated the absolute control of the Jumbo. Van Aert once again calmed down the unruly Pogacar and then protected Vingegaard at the finish line roundabouts. There he took over from Laporte. You win. Van Aert does what he wants. And he wanted his partner to win. Obediently, he did. In just a kilometer and a half he broke away from the sprinters, hunted down the escapees, Wriht, Stuyven and Gougeard, and rescued France at the Cahors finish line. This was ordered by the owner of the race, ‘Hulk’ Van Aert.

The Belgian weighs 78 kilos of muscle. Fast and strong. There are those who ask him to lose weight to be more competitive in the mountains and fight like this to win a Tour. That would unnatural him. More than a cyclist, he is an athlete. He would shine in any physical activity; also in rugby, the most popular sport on earth at this stage. Until there were three kilometers to Cahors, he dedicated himself, together with Laporte, to carrying Vingegaard on his shoulders. That mission accomplished, he granted Laporte those three thousand meters. “The team has given me that confidence,” thanked the Frenchman. He took advantage of it. On the shelves of the Jumbo there is a new victory. Full.

After the unforgettable Hautacam stage in which Vingegaard sentenced this Tour, the first that Pogacar will not win, the French round started from Castelnau-Magnoac, a town with just 800 residents. “Far from everything and in the middle of nowhere,” they repeat there. But in its empty streets grew Antoine Dupont, who is today the great star of rugby and who has led France to success in the Six Nations. A farmer at the top. An example to follow. It is convenient to look at some models both when they are doing well and when everything goes wrong. Merjin Zeeman, head of training for Jumbo, was inspired by a book on rugby, ‘Legacy’, by James Kerr. It deals with the two faces of success and focuses on the decline and rebirth of the All Blacks, the New Zealand rugby team that conquered the world.

The Jumbo comes from Rabobank, the flagship of Dutch cycling that sank into the quagmire of doping. The All Blacks lost their alcohol. Different shortcuts to the same ruin. Zeeman studied the reconstruction of the southern team. He noted the steps. And he has transferred them to the Jumbo, which after defeats as painful as Roglic’s in the final time trial of the 2020 Tour has managed to settle at the top of cycling. The model to follow. If Vingegaard does not suffer a misfortune in the ‘time trial’ this Saturday, he will complete the resurrection of the Dutch squad. To success through the search for perfection, choral work and talent. The Jumbo has taken the throne of the Sky/Ineos.

Enric Mas, down due to covid

The landscape of the stage spoke of rugby and cycling. Echoes. At Sky he was director until 2020, until his sudden death at just 40 years old, the Frenchman Nicolás Portal. The Tour, already with Politt, Honoré, Simmons, Van der Hoorn and Mohoric on the run, passed through his town, Auch. A sign with his image reminded her of the entrance to a roundabout. The platoon zipped up to pat him left and right. Emotional. Before Sky, Portal was at the Caisse d’Epargne, the former Banesto, the current Movistar. It is the only Spanish team on the World Tour and is fighting to maintain the category after a bad season so far. Everything goes wrong. His leader, Enric Mas, lost his options on Thursday due to fear of relegation and, to make matters worse, he did not start in Castelnau-Magnoac due to covid. The withdrawal is almost a relief to him.

Yes, things happened in the nineteenth stage. It also happened that a group of protesters stopped the race. Brief mishap. It was fixed without almost raising his voice. Bernard Hinault, who in the 1984 Tour rammed the protesters, is no longer in the peloton. to fists Two editions before, he had already faced some farmers who asked the French to consume products from the country. Hinault blurted out: “Then why do you cut the race with American tractors?”

And there was, of course, an attack by Pogacar on the final twisty stretch along the banks of the Lot River. Van Aert, always him, cut him off. At his wheel, Vingegaard arrives with the Tour in hand for the final time trial. He is protected by a guy who seems to have come out of a rugby scrum, who exudes strength and who, fortunately for France, left the victory in Cahors for his teammate Laporte. The Tour de Vingegaard is run by Van Aert.

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