An impressive Pogacar resurfaces in the Pyrenees

Everything was cordoned off, though Tadej Pogacar he seemed like a free soul. Emmanuel Macron – that’s why the finish line looked like a police barracks – I couldn’t have a better view. I was in the car of Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour, a better view than on television. The president of France, in a shirt with sleeves, witnessed the great image of the sixth stage. There were 2.7 kilometers to the finish line of the summit of Cambasque, above Cauterets, on July 6, 34 years after Miguel Induráin made his first run in the French Tour at the same place. Macron, Prudhomme and the whole world were watching. Pogacar pinned Jonas Vingegaard to win the stage and cause the Danish rider to wear yellow with a hint of bitterness.

Screaming, tumult, rock-deep people, bitter traffic jams, but a fantastic reward. It feels like the Tour is in its third week, but only six stages have passed when the Tourmalet flew over the race route, accompanied by the Aspin and the complicated finish of Cauterets. A gift because now we will have to sleep nervously, with little rest, but wishing that this Friday’s sprint in Bordeaux and the coastal finish, Valverde style, on Saturday, in Llemotges, will pass soon, before the Puy-de-Dôme arrives to think that even the passage through the Pyrenees will have been a comedy for which everyone is waiting at the most wonderful summit of the Massif Central, at the gates of Clermont-Ferrand.

Did anyone believe that Pogacar was dead at the feet of the Marie-Blanc? Grotesque error. “I was either packing, or that.” His wrist hurt, his legs were heavy and, on top of that, he collapsed at the finish line when he was informed that his cycling girlfriend had crashed in the women’s Giro – inexplicably being celebrated anonymously in the height of the Tour – , and spent the night in the hospital. Too many posts for one day. But he can do everything, even with a supersonic Jumbo and with a legendary cyclist like him, Wout van Aert, who escaped at the start, who waited for Vingegaard on the descent of the Tourmalet, and who drove him in a float until his Danish boss tried unsuccessfully to eliminate Pogacar 4.6 kilometers from the finish.

The Jumbo was clear. The Tourmalet was the mountain to try to put the Tour on a tray in its leadr. And it was the area of ​​La Mongie, where the entrance to the ski resort is and is the hardest part of the climb, the place where Vingegaard would try to eliminate Pogacar. If on Wednesday he failed in the first Pyrenean stage, the Tourmalet had to be the grave.

To etzibar bravely

They knew that Pogacar had not been able to compete as he would have liked due to the fall suffered in Liege in April. “What happens in the spring has nothing to do with what will happen in July”, Vingegaard had said at the departure from Bilbao. The Jumbo had to brave Pogacar in the Pyrenees, because if it had been a more classic Tour this first week it would have helped the Slovenian phenomenon to get in shape towards the mountains that always appeared in the middle of the race.

But it is a different, magnificent Tour, which has not wanted to group all the hardness in the last days and fail in the idea, as happened to the Giro. More things have happened in six days in the French round than in 20 stages in Italy. And that is the enormous greatness of the Tour.

That’s why the gutters were wildly crowded. Thousands of people were passionate about it. Even the weather respected the heroes of the Tour. It started to rain a few minutes after Pogacar raised his arms after crossing the finish line because he didn’t even want to give a second to Vingegaard in a Tour that may be decided by the minimum and the penultimate day in the Vosges. The Slovenian star reduced to 25 seconds, almost a sigh, the difference with Vingegaard, surprised, probably not believing what was happening to him on the bike. They wanted to knock out Pogacar definitively, he made his team the perfect offensive and the one who ended up giving up time was him in front of a prodigy, the one who wins the Paris-Nice, the Tour of Flanders and whatever gives him the appetite.

The Tour, with six days passed, has already stayed in what was announced; a duel between two and the rest to watchalthough in the rest there is carlos rodriguezthe Spanish promise that runs for Ineos this year and Movistar next year, and that is at the moment as fifth overall while fighting for the third place on the podium. Going up one more rung is mission impossible.

2023-07-06 17:31:21
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