Oyonnax—La Grand-Bornand, 150km
In absolute shambles and disarray, the Tour crawled on its hands-and-knees into the first Alpine Stage, the first real mountain stage of this Tour de France. The list of casualties, the body count, and the number of only semi-recovering wounded warriors were are all tremendously high after a week of racing at this Tour. Crashes from spectators holding signs, crashes from nerve-racking traffic furniture, crashes from blind corners and twisting lanes, crashes simply from ferocious fights for positioning. And the Monument-length stage yesterday was raced full gas under the impetus of the stage winner Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) and the shredders of all scripts, the Mighty Aces Mathieu Van Der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) and Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma). They offered no quarter to anyone looking for a transition stage to nurse their wounds or form. And now today, into the Alps it was a brutal wet one. Immediate casualties included Jumbo’s Fallen captain Primoz Roglic the Relentless and the Grenadier Geraint Thomas the Tank Engine, both were nursing some of the worst wounds in the peloton, both would finish at the very back of the gruppetto. A gruppetto really did form immediately on this stage, ready to perfectly measure their efforts to make the time-cut for the stage’s end. But anyone not injured, anyone feeling just half decent, anyone able-bodied enough to help a General Classification (GC) team leader suited up for yet another battle despite the 7 days of racing already chalk full of carnage.
There was not a moment of calm on this stage, no breaks from the action whatsoever. Once again, UAE massively struggled to maintain any semblance of control for the entire first half of the stage. Attacks and breaks were materializing and dissolving like schools of fish in lake teeming with life and activity. At many times, Tadej Pogacar himself—UAE’s defending Tour champion, currently wearing the White Jersey of Best Young Rider and sitting second on GC—tried to make the front splitting groups going up the road, seeming to think that a more reasonable option than relying on his team to get a grip on the race. This entire time, though Van Der Poel was still in Yellow, he did not have a single Alpecin teammate around him. The entire Alpecin team is made up of sprinters, lead-out men, heavy Classics men, and this Renaissance Madman; none of them have any sort of high-mountain climbing prowess. Van Der Poel’s only hope to hold Yellow was to hang on and follow the peloton and specifically archrival Van Aert as best he could. Van Aert’s Jumbo team support was also depleted. His Jumbo teammate Sepp Kuss was attempting to mix it up in breakaways off the front. Wout’s other Jumbo teammate Jonas Vingegaard is also decently placed on GC, and with his much lighter frame he is a much better long term GC bet for the squad. Thus though Wout Van Aert began the day second on GC with over 3 minutes’ lead on Pogacar: he did have free range to seek Yellow for himself, but no team support would be available for today at least. Van Aert, with Van Der Poel, also just continued following the peloton of GC favorites, even when a larger break of climbers and threats to their GC positions went up the road.
This de facto main breakaway for day could not have established itself legitimately until after halfway through the stage. Even once this break was away getting 4 minutes on a GC-peloton finally being loosely controlled by two or three of Pogcar’s UAE teammates, still this breakaway was in constant flux. There were many big and lesser names in it, too many to rattle off once again—surely they would only bog down the reader and listener. Most notably, the tall Dutchman Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious) was adamantly hunting down copious amounts of KOM Points available on this first proper mountain stage containing three Category1 climbs. Yes, yes, at the end of the day Wout Poels would don the Polka-Dot Jersey on the first day the battle shifted from a King of the Hills to the boda fide King of the Mountains competition. On the descent after cresting the first Category1 climb of the day and this Tour, Team DSM’s Soren Kragh Andersen—winner of two stages in last year’s Tour—and Teisj Benoot went on the attack. But none had breath to marvel at their wet-descending skills, all anyone viewing could do was hold their breath. Astana’s Ion Izagirre, a high-quality descender, had to pull out on too wet a turn straight into someone’s driveway instead of risking sliding out. Pulling out such time on the descent, Kragh Andersen was at one point into or close to the virtual Maillot Jaune, but as they hit the bottom of the last two Category1 climbs of the day, the complexion and plot of this stage and this Tour all drastically changed.
The finale of this first Alpine stage would encompass scaling the Category1 Col de Romme—an 8.8km climb averaging 8.9%—followed by a very short decent and then straight up into the final Category1 Col de la Colombiere climb—7.5km in length averaging 8.4%. Finally, over the top of this would be a 15km descent into the finishing town of Le Grand-Bornand where Quickstep’s Julian Alaphilippe the Musketeer won his first ever Tour stage in 2018. As the breakaway hit the lower slopes of the Col de Romme, it was Michael “Rusty” Woods—the one of Athletics Middle Distance Sub-4 Mile fame—who immediately began chasing down the leading DSM duo. Teisj Benoot was already finished, spent, and going metaphorically backwards. Kragh Andersen would be a tougher man to chase and crack, but this Rusty Woods was up for the challenge! The rest of the breakaway chasers were either pulling the plug on the day, or scrambling to find an answer to Woods’ ride. And behind, UAE was leading the peloton of GC contenders that still included both Mighty Aces, Wout Van Aert and Mathieu Van Der Poel.
As the Canadian Mike Woods was riding past Kragh Andersen solo at the head of the Tour, Tadej Pogacar was down to just the American Brandon McNulty and the Italian Davide Formolo for team support. With only some 40km left in the stage that were all either serious climbing or high-speed descending, Tadej Pogacar must have decided the time was right to stamp his authority on this race. Though he seems on friendly terms with them, surely after a week of dealing with the antics and audacious tactics of the Mighty Aces, Tadej Pogacar had had enough. On this first proper mountain stage, it was time to put the Mighty Aces away to trouble the GC no longer. Young Pogacar had McNulty and Formolo ratchet up the pace as high as they could to shell out as many riders from their peloton as they possibly could. Dutifully the American McNulty began the shelling, riding with all his might. And with 33km left in the stage, it was this Brandon McNulty that had the honor to drop former Tour champion Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) the Shark of Messina…and among others, the first of the Mighty Aces Mathieu Van Der Poel the Renaissance Madman wearing the Yellow Jersey. Mathieu won on Stage 2 and took the Yellow Jersey, he has rode bravely to defend and increase his lead in it for 6 days now. But surely then, with still so much climbing left on the stage, his stint in Yellow had been accomplished and would now definitively end for this Tour. Mighty Ace archrival Wout Van Aert began the day only 30 seconds down on GC, having proven to be a better high-mountain climber already this year and in seasons’ past, surely Wout would finish more than 30 seconds ahead of Mathieu on this day. Ah! But with 32km to go, McNulty had swung off job done for Pogacar. Davide Formolo had come to the front to set the pace, and like McNulty in quick succession he also started shelling out many top climbers renowned in professional cycling. And this Davide Formolo was the one to drop the other Mighty Ace Wout Van Aert, The Swiss Army Knife of the peloton. Though his archrival Wout was dropping, Mathieu in Yellow really had already pulled the plug to pack it in. To ride for GC the entire Tour was never Mathieu’s intention. In fact, Mathieu was almost even against attending the Tour altogether, for it comes on the eve of the Olympics which he has been training for in attempts to win a Gold Medal in the Cross-Country Mountain Bike race, for years the Mountain Bike appointment has been booked on his calendar. To dig so deep riding for GC for three weeks could surely throw all those preparations awry, if they haven’t been already by this brutal week of racing. But, but, meanwhile just up ahead, the other Mighty Ace Wout Van Aert had to ride this out, Wout was not yet fully put to the sword. Wout’s dream of donning Yellow like his Mighty Ace archrival was not yet extinguished. Van Aert is relatively a very heavy cyclist, at last year’s Tour and this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico the cycling world was shocked to see him riding up the mighty climbs so strongly and even at times competitively for Jumbo-Visma team ambitions. Having free-range and a 3-minute cushion on Pogacar and any other conventional GC contenders, if Wout could measure his effort potentially he could limit losses enough to stay within 3 minutes of Pogacar, and then—with Mathieu already pulling the plug—he could now finally move into the Yellow Jersey. Ah! But within 2km, with 30km left on the stage, UAE’s Davide Formolo had given everything he had for his team leader, Tadej Pogacar. And thus, surely part of the same master plan, the Young Pogacar wearing the White Jersey enacted the best tactical defense he could contrive: an all-out full-gas attack!
If you listened to my Stage 5 Time Trial report, I mentioned the Tour organizer’s nightmare where Big Mig Miguel Indurain and the Texan Lance Armstrong would so thoroughly dominate a first week Time Trial that they would have already built up an insurmountable lead on GC. So often did they too quickly seal those Tours, the current Tour Race Director Christian Prudhomme has avoided any sort of decisive first week TT for a decade. This year Prudhomme’s route design included a first week TT that seemed to have been decisive but did not seal Pogacar’s victory—especially not with the Mighty Aces’ breakaway antics yesterday. But there is another historic Tour Race Director nightmare that is less avoidable. Whereas a first week Time Trial Stage need not be held at all, inevitably there must always be a first proper mountain stage about a third of the way through every Tour de France. The danger is always that one mighty alpha in a class above the rest could win the race in the first big mountain range—the Alps or Pyrenees, whichever comes first—before the Tour is even half over. In recent Tours, the only strategy Prudhomme has attempted to combat this too-real nightmare is to slightly subdue outings into the first big mountain range of each Tour. Thus, last year’s Tour only spent two days in the Pyrenees on the race’s second weekend, and thus this was the first of only two days in the Alps this Tour. Surely, today’s stage ended with a descent with the hopes of a small GC group finishing together with things remaining tight for Yellow for the next mountain days to come. But as stated, after a week of brutal racing because of crashes and audacious tactics, Tadej Pogacar did not get the message from Prudhomme about slowly developing the GC hierarchy over the course of the three weeks. With no team support left, Tadej Pogacar was prepared to take a commanding lead of this race on this first mountain stage alone, no matter the ideal designs of the stage. Yes, yes, with this double-punch up the Romme and Colombiere to be ridden in basically one combined effort, Tadej Pogacar had enough terrain to dash all hopes of his rivals and any who wanted a tight GC race all the way to Paris.
With 30km to go, Tadej Pogacar attacked the peloton of remaining favorites…and today O! surely he rode with the strength of Young Beowulf. Only Richard Carapaz the Jaguar of Tulcan (Ineos Grenadiers) could follow Pogacar’s Beowulfian acceleration for any length of time. Yes, yes, throughout the 2019 season the young Pogacar came onto our radars—another of the talented teenagers skipping the Under-23 ranks. But it was over the course of the 2020 Tour where for three weeks, we saw Pogacar daily enact a Beowulfian “Rise.” In the Anglo-Saxon epic set in that people’s ancient homelands in present day Scandinavian lands bordering the North and Baltic Seas, the Rise and Fall of the title warrior is chronicled. Surely, surely, so mighty of a king must the real-life Beowulf have been: his descendants who migrated across the North Sea centuries later were still composing lays and legends about what must have been a mythic Rise and Fall worthy of his middle-aged kingly accomplishments. The Rise of Beowulf took place at Heorot, ally King Hrothgar’s great hall. It was there Beowulf had sailed, coming as the only mighty one with hope of defeating the evil monster Grendel and his equally monstrous Mother beneath the lake surface. When Beowulf left for Heorot, he was only still yet an upcoming warrior on the cusp of manhood. When Beowulf returned home from defeating Grendel and his Mother, he was more than the “New Sheriff in Town,” he was the new Young Warrior King who would bring unrivalled prosperity and protection to his kingdom for the next 50 years. Such parallels of Rising can be seen in Pogacar’s career-narrative thus far as well. Surely his 2020 Tour victory of Compatri-cide, of Mentor-i-cide, of metaphorical Fratricide was no less a character-defining feat than Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel. And thus it is: Tadej Pogacar has earned the “Young Beowulf” moniker not just because of his impressive riding-strength, but more so because of this parallel epic and mythical Rise. Whether Pogacar has slain Grendel’s Mother yet or not remains to be seen or discerned, but today on the Tour de France O! surely he took up that all-successful role of Young-Beowulf-Crowned-King. Today, today, he waved his scepter at will ordering affairs as he wished, stamping his kingly authority on all Tour GC matters.
Within a kilometer, the Jaguar Richard Carapaz was dropped and punished for his attempts to follow Young King Beowulf. But Richard Carapaz was not the only one to be put in his place by the Young King freshly sitting upon his throne. Though they had over a five-minute headstart, Young Beowulf Tadej Pogacar chased down the entire breakaway up the remainder of the Col de Romme and the Col de la Colombiere. Mike “Rusty” Woods was eventually caught in the final kilometers towards the top of the Colombiere by Bahrain Victorious’ Dylan Tuens—the man who won in 2019 on the gravel-extended La Planche Del Belles Filles. Despite being so close to the top of the climb, Woods could not hang onto Tuens’ high pace. But behind Pogacar was coming even for these men who were all the way at the very front of the race; even they had trouble escaping from him. Young Beowulf Pogacar would catch Mike Woods in that last kilometer before the summit of the climb. Pogacar would crest that summit less than 15 seconds behind stage leader Tuens. Tuens only managed to hold off the regal Young Beowulf, because he took many risks on the descent whereas Pogacar took none. Yes, yes, Pogacar had already made all sorts of gains for the day, he did not need to take any descending risks that would comprise what he had already achieved. By the top of the Colombiere Pogacar had put 3 minutes into Carapaz and any conventional GC riders within a stone’s throw of him, and almost 5 minutes into Wout Van Aert. Yes, surely Pogacar had now dashed Van Aert’s hopes of moving into first position on GC and taking over the Yellow Jersey.
Bahrain’s Dylan Tuens would go on to win the stage by some 45 seconds ahead of Michael Woods and Ion Izagirre who caught Pogacar and then out sprinted him in the finale. The finishing sprint was of little concern to Pogacar who had taken his cautious time on the descent. Other riders from the breakaway trickled in one-by-one, but all Pogacar’s conventional GC rivals that are left came in 3:20 after him—the likes of the Jaguar Richard Carapaz, Astana’s Alexey Lutsenko, EF’s Rigoberto Uran, Jumbo’s Jonas Vingegaard, Bora’s Wilco Kelderman, Movistar’s Enric Mas, and Groupama’s David Gaudu. Finally, just under 5 minutes after Pogacar had finished, Wout Van Aert the Mighy Ace crossed the line to solidify the current GC Top Ten. Young Beowulf Tadej Pogacar moved into the Yellow Jersey this evening having taken the race lead. The conventional GC rivals just named are now nestled somewhere between 4:30 to 6:00 behind Pogacar. Meanwhile, remarkably Wout Van Aert still remains second on GC at only 1:48 down on Pogacar: this Mighty Ace’s quest to don the Maillot Jaune is not dead yet.
Yes, yes, at this moment it seems this Mighty Ace Wout Van Aert The Swiss Army Knife of the peloton, is the greatest challenger, perhaps even the last-hope-challenger to Young King Beowulf’s dominion this Tour. On this first mountain stage Pogacar has declared to all he is the strongest rider, the King with an Iron Grip, the Public Enemy No. 1, and by-far-and-away the man to beat this Tour. But the UAE squad around him have not yet proven they are the strongest team at this Tour. Now, no other team has proven stronger than UAE either. But, but, Van Aert is still in striking distance to at least continue his GC quest for Yellow. Yesterday Wout instigated a 30-man breakaway on the flat that put 3 minutes into King Pogacar the Young Beowulf. With Pogacar being such a strong Public Enemy, perhaps Van Aert or another GC rival really could find enough friends to help pull off similar breakaway coups as we saw on Stage 7. We are in the Second Golden Age of cycling after all: such wildly unrealistic daydreams like this come to life on a daily basis nowadays. Pogacar’s Beowulfian Rise seems to have been completed last year, his regal reign began then and there, now he must defend the throne. And now the unconventional top threat to his kingdom comes from the Mighty Ace who is The Swiss Army Knife of the peloton. To what lengths shall Wout Van Aert go to draw the score even with his Mighty Ace archrival Van Der Poel? Almost purely out of desire to not be outdone by Mathieu, shall Wout mount a full-scale GC rebellion to challenge Pogacar’s Beowulfian dominance?
Cycling Odysseys 