At the foot of one of the huge headframes of the Arenberg mine, closed since 1989, the Jumbo-Visma riders, dust stuck to their faces, return to their bus one by one, their bodies stiffened by fatigue, their backs bent by the weight of a “real shitty day”, will say Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert, where bad luck struck relentlessly, sparing neither the Yellow Jersey nor the two leaders. From a distance, they make you think of the black mouths who worked there for almost a century; haggard silhouettes come back to haunt the place and stagger towards their brick houses after a firedamp strike.
Van Aert, Vingegaard and Roglic had a hellish 5th stage on the Tour
