It is part of the appearance of the Tour de France that in the usual sea of flags along the route, the colors that make up the flag of the host nation dominate: blue, white, red. It is no different on the edge of the long ascent to the Tignes reservoir, the destination of the ninth stage. But if you drive up the street on Sunday morning, you can almost get the impression that the waiting spectators can still see a white-blue-red flag more often than the French tricolor, the stripes of which are arranged horizontally instead of vertically and one on the top left Coat of arms can be seen: two waves, a mountain with three peaks and three gold stars. That is the flag of Slovenia, the now formative nation of the tour.
The Slovenian spectators wait in vain for one of their drivers on Sunday. The previous year’s second and original co-favorite, Primoz Roglic, got out in the morning, worn down by the consequences of a fall, which caused him to only make it to the sprinter group the day before. Her other great hero, however, Tadej Pogacar, comes by in the yellow jersey – and as great as the cheers among his fans may be, the critical parts of the audience are disturbed by the 22-year-old.
In this way, a single rider has not broken down the entire peloton for a long time
The route planners integrated the weekend in the Alps into the program as the first major test of the tour – and it turned out to be an unbelievable demonstration of power by last year’s winner Tadej Pogacar. Saturday was intended as a gallop, Sunday with the arrival in Tignes as a decisive section, but Pogacar made a big show from the first day: He simply drove out of the group of favorites more than 30 kilometers from the finish, rushing at a mad pace over the Col de Romme and the Col de la Colombière, and from the scattered breakaway group he caught up one after the other, as if playing one of those jump-and-run games on the PC in which the main character collects as many coins as possible got to. And although he was still noticeably reticent downhill to the finish line in Le Grand-Bornand, he distanced all other ranking drivers by at least 3:20 minutes, most of them by considerably more.
“Hors Categorie” was the headline L’Equipe, not categorized, based on the usual names on the tour for the most difficult of the difficult climbs such as Tourmalet or Galibier. On Sunday, in turn, Pogacar stepped up again in the day’s victory of the Australian runaway Ben O’Connor – and again distanced the rivals by half a minute.
There are still almost 2000 kilometers to contest, mean things like Mont Ventoux and two mountain arrivals in the Pyrenees are still waiting – and yet it seems hard to imagine that there will be another tour winner than Pogacar if he does not fall or fall ill. O’Connor is currently runner-up overall, two minutes behind, but the actual theoretical challengers like Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz (Ineos) are at least five and a half minutes behind.
Hypnotizing looks: The American Lance Armstrong (left) and the German Jan Ullrich (right) were bitter competitors for years.
(Photo: Gero Breloer / dpa)
In other times, when Eddy Merckx was still driving, such actions as those from Pogacar to Le Grand-Bornand were quite common. But in the recent past there has seldom been a rider dismantled the rest of the peloton in such a way. It is customary for the top favorite to pick a day for the overall win when he wants to demonstrate to the rest of the crowd how good he is and who is number one in the field.
But the Briton Christopher Froome, for example, drove just a minute out of the toughest competitors when he started in 2013 and 2015, which brought him and his Ineos team so much skepticism and so many debates about his performance values. And the super doper Lance Armstrong only drove 120 seconds out of his legendary attack in 2001, when he gave the sufferer for a whole day and then hypnotized Jan Ullrich with a look back on the final ascent to Alpe d’Huez.
6.3 watts per kilogram of body weight – that is at the absolute limit of the natural
Certainly: such comparisons always lag a little, it always depends on many components, the exact route, the quality of the competition. Perhaps the distance would have been a little closer on Pogacar’s triumphant ride if Roglic or Ineos captain Geraint Thomas hadn’t been handicapped, but it was quite a freak show in any case. And Pogacar, who likes to take the initiative anyway, made no secret of the fact that it should be exactly that. “Of course it was the return coach,” he said; up until then he had been attacked again and again, and “attack is the best defense”.
But this kind of solo is also the best way to fuel skepticism. Pogacar has had it since last year, when he was two minutes faster than Roglic in a spectacular mountain time trial on the penultimate stage and wrested the tour victory that was still believed to be certain. In the first week of this year’s tour he even triumphed in a flat time trial – although with a weight of around 67 kilos he is not exactly blessed with the stature of a classic time trial.
On Saturday he stormed up the Col de la Colombière at an average speed of 20.8 km / h. For his ascent to the Col de Romme (8.7 kilometers long, an average of 9.4 percent steep), the diagnosticians estimated his performance values at 6.3 watts per kilogram of body weight; that moves at the absolute limit of what is considered natural among sports scientists. The environment at his UAE team – the team manager Mauro Gianetti, for example, used to work in a leading position in the chronically doping-infested Saunier Duval team – does the rest to increase suspicion.
He would now only call Pogacar “Pogastrong”, explained Antoine Vayer, who was a trainer at Festina in the 1990s when the great doping scandal was exposed and is now one of the most meticulous observers of amazing achievements: “Amnesia is the fundamental disease in cycling,” tweeted he.
But nobody should forget this Pogacars trip on Saturday anytime soon.