Ok, I’ll keep this brief today.
Egan Bernal and Team Ineos Grenadiers – So Bernal cracked. I wrote the Jumbo-Visma piece yesterday that they have officially made it to the top. Now, I was confusing myself throughout the day about whether this was like the passing of the torch or the vanquishing of a mighty one before. Up until this point it has always been a mighty individual vanquished. Merckx, Hinault, Indurain. The Ineos team WILL reload and as far as I can tell they have much more young talent that Jumbo. So they will come back. Now in the heat of the moment where I confused myself was what about Egan? It’s a breath of fresh air to see that a Sky/Ineos rider will not win the Tour for the first time since 2014, but I really like Egan Bernal. When he gets shelled that bad, I didn’t know what to think. With a day of sleep, I come to the obvious conclusion: he had a horribly bad day and it cost him the Tour. I feel bad that Sky/Ineos’ youngest/most-“inexperienced” Alpha was the first one to screw up, but at least he’s still unquestionably a proven winner. Now my worries come from the fact that we have seen Bernal extremely vulnerable before Pogacar has ever shown any sort of crack in any armor throughout his short career. Roglic is in the driver’s seat to win the Tour and has looked tied for the best climber with Pog, but 2nd at your debut Tour would be a good result for Pogacar. And purely because we’ve never seen any weakness from him, I am scared that we are looking at Bernal fitting into a Gimondi-Ullrich role to Pogacar’s Merckx-Armstrong role. It is much too early to tell, we need probably 2 or 3 years to understand if that writing is on the wall, but when I saw Bernal drop yesterday these nightmares were flashing through my head. At this point above all, I root to see “The Greatest Race of All Time”…which means I do not want one man to set up a dynasty of five or seven wins in a row, that is my greatest fear.
Jumbo-Visma on top – I was confusing myself a little about them as well as I wrote yesterday’s piece—but I think I managed to correct my thinking in the long editing process. As far as I gather, for the past 5+ years, Jumbo-Visma’s goal has been to be a top Grand Tour team. They officially achieved that yesterday utterly defeating Ineos with still 5 riders on the front. What I was confused about is, are they the new “empire”? And the answer is no, I mean Ineos will potentially win the Giro next month with Thomas and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bernal goes to the Vuelta and wins it (don’t know what that means for Froome—but I don’t think Egan should care). I look at Jumbo as well, and Kuss and Van Aert seem like their young guys at 26 years old a piece vs Ineos with Bernal and Sivakov both well under 25. So it’s more so, congrats to Jumbo, for the first time in years Ineos is not the best team at the Tour thanks to yall’s efforts. But we and Jumbo are not delusional enough to think that they are the new masters of the Grand Tours. Ineos still has the deep pockets, but at this point they are no longer the only top dog…AND, it must be noted, Jumbo-Visma will rarely ever be considered an underdog going forward.
Bennett/Sagan battle for Green – I said it all in that frustration piece, I stand by that. I have no problems with refs saying Sagan should be penalized, but it shouldn’t have been for position on the stage: fine him $30 grand, I don’t care just don’t decide a jersey competition for something that is highly controversial about whether it was intentional or dangerous. But that’s what they did, I doubt he wins green: all the Intermediate Sprints come early in the remaining mountain stages, I don’t know how Bora are gonna possibly drop Bennett. Which is a shame, because it would have been a very interesting battle for Green that we haven’t seen in a number of years; and I would have been happy to see Bennett earn it, because it was Sagan’s own fault he didn’t come into form until the second week; but that call….unless Bennett wins by 50-60 points, I will not forget the refs had a hand in his victory.
King of the Mountains Competition – This has been nonexistent. And the Cosnefory has been a horrible rep of the jersey—nothing exciting and dynamic from him, going out the back far too early on big mountain stages. I’ll also say, the polka-dots are arranged vertically this year and it looks really bad, they should be lined up diagonally like the stars on the American flag, or even just make it completely random with different sizes and that would look better.
Bardet dropped out with concussion – I’m very indifferent to Bardet to be brutally honest. The replays of his standing up and falling over to get on the bike is scary to me and I’d lean towards something should have been done there, I’m not sure he should have gotten on that bike right away, but I’ll leave it at that. Best of luck to him at Sunweb, if he wants to be a major cog in their dynamic set up, excellent I’m excited to see it; if he wants to be sole leader with everyone working for him, boring and I’d bet against him.
Quintana time loses 4ish minutes – He was in the Bardet crash, and I can believe that that is severely affecting him. Sucks, understandable, but damn we all want to see you do well and in order for that to happen you gotta avoid crashes Nairo!
Enric Mas – Moving up, let’s see how much further he can sneak up. Movistar need results.
Mikel Landa – No attack yesterday, what gives? Too scared to lose a good spot or Jumbo pace so dominate? Typical Tour, honestly. We can’t complain: either the pace is too severe and/or everyone is more afraid to screw up and lose current place than risk it all for a higher one.
Richie Porte – Looks good, I wouldn’t mind seeing him in the top 5, even top 3 and make me eat my words. If he continues climbing like he has and then has these gaps for the TT, he’s the best TTist in 3-9 GC positions…or he was at one point.
Adam Yates – Looks good, obviously finish out Top 10 GC if you can, though I wonder if your position is hurting teammates’ opportunities for the breakaway? Anyways, glad to see he’s finally having a good Tour.
Superman Lopez – Same comments as Landa, he’s not exciting right now. He’s moving up positions because people like Bernal and Quintana are blowing up. Fine, and he could achieve a good result, but come on, Superman should be more exciting than this.
Rigo Uran – Looks good, and besides Porte he’s the most surprising, but like Landa and Superman I’d like to see him attack or something.
Rog and Pog – The GC is undecided, but I’m 95% sure a Slovenian is going to win the Tour for the first time. It’s exciting which one is not yet determined. But I can’t get over the fact that Pog is basically Rog’s little brother. They are friendly to each other, more so than usual, and I don’t blame them. And I totally believe both really want to win the Tour, but I get that sense that Pog will not be that upset if he loses to big brother Rog, because Pog understands that Rog is at his peak and his time will be over soon, while Pog is still maturing and just barely behind Roglic’s abilities already. At 21 he knows he’s still got time. I guess it would be crazy if Pog beats Roglic…like how does Roglic take that? Can Rog ever beat him again or is that the changing of the guard right then and there? But I think Roglic is gonna win the Tour, because I don’t even know how Pogacar could even attempt to gain back the 40 second deficit, because both are equal climbers and Pog benefits from Jumbo’s dominance until it is time to attack himself. And I predict Roglic WILL have a better TT (though Pog beat him in the Slovenian TT Nats a few months ago DURING lockdown).
Ok, not sure I care about anything else. No idea which days a breakaway even has a chance, it does feel like we’re coming to the business end of the Tour. I wish the Rog-Pog rivalry was spicier, but it seems this this unorthodox Tour is coming back to some sort of tradition where one by one the favorites are reduced, and we should be thankful it is not yet wrapped up completely and this year it will not be won by an Ineos rider. We’ve also been lucky that the majority of individual stages have been good races in themselves, which thank God—it is that simple. Anyways this has been hard work for me, I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ll be happy to take a real break when we reach Paris.
Oh, sorry one last thing: yes, yes, Movistar are leading the team’s classification…and by a solid margin.
Cycling Odysseys 