Curtain. After three weeks of frantic racing, the Tour de France ended on Sunday with the surprise victory of Jordi Meeus. Another Belgian was expected on the Champs-Elysées, but he missed Jasper Philipsen a few centimeters to clinch a fifth stage. Behind, Jonas Vingegaard let himself go up the Parisian avenue surrounded by his team, a way to celebrate his second success in a row on the Tour. The Dane will have spread his superiority over Tadej Pogacar during the Combloux time trial, which had a massive effect on the race, before crucifying him the next day in the Col de la Loze, the culmination of a 110th edition also marked by an (almost) permanent spectacle, some problems with the motorcycles and, of course, the vibrant farewells to Thibaut Pinot.
- Vingegaard’s amazing time
How not to start with that? It was long believed that this Tour would be played in seconds, with breathless suspense until the last mountain stage in the Vosges on Saturday. And then Jonas Vingegaard signed a hair-raising time trial on Tuesday, the day after the second day of rest. In just over 22 kilometers, the Dane relegated Tadej Pogacar to 1’38. A chasm, especially since the Slovenian himself achieved an ultra solid performance. But the outgoing winner was stratospheric, taking 4 seconds per kilometer from his rival, and double that from a rider of the caliber of Wout van Aert.
Enough to raise suspicions of doping. “I don’t take anything that I wouldn’t give to my two-year-old daughter,” assured the yellow jersey. Its sporting director Richard Plugge meanwhile spent his time explaining that his team was preparing better than everyone else. In the end, 7’30 ahead of Pogacar and almost 11 minutes over Adam Yates, 3rd. Certainly, it works well at Jumbo.
- A very (very) hard course (but swallowed at full speed)
The assiduous followers of the Grande Boucle are unanimous: they had never seen the runners so worn after the first week. It must be said that between the first two stages in the reliefs of the Basque Country, the high mountains on the menu from Wednesday and the arrival at the top of the Puy de Dôme on Sunday, it was damn tough this year.
It didn’t get any better after that, with tracks that were sometimes less hard on paper but which gave rise to an incessant fight, and then the queen stage of this edition – four climbs including the terrible Col de la Loze, before the finish judged at the top of a 20% steep climb at the Courchevel altiport which even made Vingegaard wince, that is to say – placed at the heart of the third week, which finished everyone. In total, the peloton swallowed 30 2nd, 1st and non-category passes or climbs, a record. This did not prevent him from doing it at nearly 42 km/h on average. “We knew it was going to be very mountainous, it’s also linked to the location of the Grand Départ. But I didn’t imagine that they were going to run from the Pyrenees at this pace, ”observes Thierry Gouvenou, the course architect.
- The meager French record
A bit like Roland-Garros, where tradition requires desperate papers to be written on the tricolor balance sheet once all the French have been eliminated, the Tricolores have not shone on the bike this summer either. While they set off with the clear intention of achieving results, they did not meet expectations, like David Gaudu aiming for the top 3 and quickly realizing his limits against the very best. He finally finished 9th, just ahead of David Martin. “I thought myself that they would do better. I imagined a Frenchman in the top five and maybe three Frenchmen in the ten ”, did not hide the boss of the race Christian Prudhomme at the time of the assessment.
Disappointment also on the side of Romain Bardet, never really in the game but never far either, who ended up giving up on a fall. At the finish, only one victory (but what a victory!), that of Victor Lafay, who at least quickly freed us from the fear of zero points by winning with style from the 2nd stage in the Basque Country. Beyond Thibaut Pinot, who we’ll talk about later, Julian Alaphilippe also gave himself a lot in the breakaways, before exploding in flight along the way with tremendous regularity. The French balance sheet is therefore not enough to make us smile. Fortunately, the Vingagaard-Pogacar duel kept us going for almost three weeks.
It seems like a long time ago when Philipsen was nicknamed “Jasper Disaster”, because of his propensity to be a little clumsy and head in the air, on the bike as in life. This year, the Belgian from the Alpecin-Fenix team did not come to make the crowds laugh. On arrival, even if he will have missed the last on the Champs, the green jersey will have imposed himself against the inconstant master of the world sprint, with four stage victories, well helped by his luxury fish-pilot Matthieu Van der Poel.
We can only just blame him for trajectories sometimes bordering on legality… and for having taken away Mark Cavendish’s chance to beat Merckx’s stage victory record on the Tour de France (35), upon arrival in Bordeaux (7th stage). But it is not by doing in the feelings that one becomes “Jasper The Master”.
- The show on the “transitional” stages
This edition has further accentuated the trend drawn last year: there is no longer an easy stage (my good lady). The days that we used to call “transition” no longer exist, and rather innocuous routes on paper find themselves the scene of an epic battle from kilometer 0. We think of the 10th stage between Vulcania and Issoire, won masterfully by Bilbao, or the 19th on an even more lambda profile, won by Mohoric on Friday. “Everyone drives flat out all the time, I don’t understand much anymore,” sighed Alaphilippe during the second week, when you had to try eight times before taking the right breakaway. Confirmation, in any case, that these stages sometimes offer much more spectacle than some with out-of-category passes, such as the 13th, arrival at the top of the Grand Colombier and almost the most boring of the Tour.
- Pinot alone in the Petit Ballon
Goosebumps…and that damn dust in the eye. For all those who love cycling even a little, Saturday’s stage in the Vosges will retain a special place, up there in the department of the most beautiful memories of the Tour. Seeing Thibaut Pinot wiggle alone in the Petit Ballon and coming in first in “his” bend, where several hundred of his biggest fans had made an appointment for an anthology fiesta, we dreamed about it without really believing it. But for the last stage which counts of his last Tour de France, the little prince of Mélisey did things well. “It was great to live, only happiness”, reacted on arrival the hero of the day, not far from tears. Its sporting director Marc Madiot could not prevent them from sinking.
Pinot did not finally succeed in snagging a last stage victory before the keel, but he tried everything. Escaped four times in the mountains, including Wednesday in the Loze stage, he will have lacked a bit of legs to finish the job. But with him, it’s been a long time since it’s been a question of victory or defeat. He will have kept the flame alive until the end, awakening over the past 10 years a passion that had preferred to put itself to sleep to put an end to disillusionment. There were some with Tibo, but always sporty, and they do not measure up to the slew of emotions left in Porrentruy, Alpe d’Huez, Tourmalet or Prat d’Albis. To quote someone who knows him well, “T’ES GRAND” Thibaut.
- The public/problems with motorcycles
There will be a before and after Tour de France 2023 for ASO. The organizer of the Grande Boucle was forced to admit it: he let himself be overwhelmed by the mass of spectators who traveled along the roads this year, and in particular in the passes. Almost every climb has been taken over by a public younger and much more festive than before. So much the better for the show and the images, but not always for the runners. Encouraged as never before, they are also more vulnerable, especially when the newcomers do not necessarily have the codes of a cycle race. Several runners have thus tested the asphalt because of behaviors that are more unconscious than malicious.
Another problem, the crowd of spectators on the climbs made certain passages difficult for the following vehicles. We thus saw two motorcycles prevent Tadej Pogacar from attacking Jonas Vingegaard at the top of Joux Plane (14th stage), then a real traffic jam was created in the Col de la Loze (17th stage), with several cars and motorcycles left stranded in a hairpin bend, forcing many riders who arrived behind to dismount, including Vingegaard and Pinot.
“We are overwhelmed by a new audience that we did not expect. It may be the Netflix effect, or the intensity of the Pogacar-Vingegaard duel. In any case, we find ourselves a little deprived. We had hot spots before like Alpe d’Huez and Ventoux. But there it is everywhere, ”notes Thierry Gouvenou. We will have to sit down to find solutions, perhaps review the size of the “race echelon” (the rules that govern the operation of follower vehicles in the race). “We will think about all this calmly. It is the price of success. We will have to adapt and we will all have to adapt together,” announced Christian Prudhomme.