On Sunday, Simon Geschke was allowed to put on the obviously very popular mountain jersey of the Tour de France for the first time.
Photo: imago/Sirotti
So far, this Tour de France has mainly brought disappointments for the German cycling pros. Sprinter Max Walscheid is still nibbling on the consequences of a fall from the beginning of the tour, but John Degenkolb is doing his new job as top assistant of the DSM team with passion and overview. But he would also like to work longer in the sprint preparation for his captain Alberto Dainese than just up to the three-kilometer mark, he said dryly to “nd”. Apparently, however, it still lacks a few percent of the maximum performance. Lennard Kämna is the biggest unlucky raven of this tour so far. He was less than 100 meters up to the Planche des Belles Filles to win the stage. The breakaway was finally destroyed by the three best drivers in the field: Denmark’s greatest hope, Jonas Vingegaard, flew past Kämna, as did defending champion Tadej Pogačar and his compatriot Primož Roglič. The North German was only fourth.
On Monday, the second rest day of the tour, only Simon Geschke, who was born in Berlin, had reason to smile. He was already in the breakaway group at Kämna’s tragedy and had cleverly secured four mountain points. Geschke accepted the mini-award for the most combative driver of the day as a consolation prize, as he told »nd«, after all he too was denied the stage win. In his head, however, he had long since forged a plan for something bigger.
Two days later, on Sunday, he was back in the breakaway group – and engaged in a thrilling battle with eventual stage winner Bob Jungels for the mountain points on the way to the finish. Geschke, who now lives in Freiburg, was ahead of Luxemburg on the first climb. He then broke away and on the next mountain, as a soloist, conquered so many points that he was one point ahead of Geschke in the overall ranking. The 36-year-old fought desperately further back to avoid being caught by the oncoming field. “I died a few deaths in the last climb,” he later described his suffering. But he persevered and got two more mountain points – exactly the number he needed to overtake Jungels in the mountains classification again. »It was a big goal of mine to wear a classification jersey at the Tour de France. Now I’m happy that I’ve achieved it and that the suffering was worth it,” said Geschke.
For stage victories, despite a high level of form that has not been reached for a long time, he apparently does not have the strength to put all younger riders in their place like he did with his only Tour stage victory seven years ago. The professional who drives for the French Cofidis team is still trying. And he is now experienced enough to keep a plan B in mind. The points jersey is proof of that. However, he himself considers it quite unlikely that Geschke will carry it to Paris, after all, the highest peaks of the 2022 Tour, which bring in a particularly large number of points, are all yet to come.
Geschke currently has a completely different concern anyway: “I want to enjoy the next stage in my jersey and hope that Covid doesn’t put a spanner in the works,” he said on the rest day. His teammate and captain Guillaume Martin had already been withdrawn from the race the day before because of a positive corona test. The fear of one’s own test result is therefore currently greater than that of the highest mountains of the tour.
