Libourne—Saint-Emilion, 30.8km ITT
It was a subdued Race of Truth today, with none of the fireworks of last year. If this were a Final Test before school would be out for summer, then everyone passed. Most not with A’s, but with B’s and C’s, because this Final wasn’t really going to shift anyone’s grade for the semester one way or the other. There were probably only three A’s on the day. Deceuninck-Quickstep’s Kasper Asgreen looked impressive in the Danish TT Champion’s skinsuit as he rode to second place on the stage. But Jumbo’s Mighty Ace Wout Van Aert flaunted his A+ Swiss Army Knife Range once again as he beat second place Asgreen by 21 seconds to take a second stage this Tour to accompany his legendary Ventoux victory. This was Van Aert’s first Tour TT stage win, he has been chasing it for three years, but up until now he had ONLY been winning bunch sprints, crosswind stages, and the aforementioned Double Ventoux high mountain stage. And the Mighty Ace Van Aert was not the only Jumbo Wasp to receive an A grade today. For the second Tour TT in a row, Jumbo’s Jonas Vingegaard has finished in third place on the day.
For a skinny climber both of Vingegaard’s TTs this Tour have been extremely excellent, and they also bode well for his future career as a Grand Tour contender. We all really discovered Vingegaard at the beginning of the season, he impressed throughout the Spring to earn his place on the Tour squad, but what he has accomplished at this Tour has been remarkable. Despite already knowing him, Jonas Vingegaard is the Revelation of this Tour—as UAE’s Marc Hirschi was last year. The 24-year-old is about to finish second in his debut Tour de France. The hype was there for Ineos’ Egan Bernal and UAE’s Tadej Pogacar when they entered the World Tour, this was in no way the case with Vingegaard. Now of course, Pogacar has beaten him by over 5 minutes this Tour—or will tomorrow. But for Vingegaard to have been Pogacar’s biggest challenger, for Vingegaard to have been the only one to exploit a chink in Young Beowulf’s armor all Tour on Ventoux, for Vingegaard to have gone blow-for-blow with Young Beowulf on the Col du Portet: is an incredible accomplishment. Jumbo have found or have groomed yet another Diamond in the Rough into a Grand Tour contender like they did with Primoz Roglic the Relentless and Steven Kruijswijk the Human Coat-Hanger before him. Ineos’ well of depth and talent seems bottomless, but with Roglic the Relentless, the veterans Steven Kruijswijk and Tony Martin and George Bennett and Robert Gesink, Tom Dumoulin coming back, Van Aert Swiss Army Knifing, Dylan Groenewegen in the sprints, Sepp Kuss growing, the emergence of this young Jonas Vingegaard, a slew of strong support riders, and surely other young talents emerging like Tobias Foss: Jumbo-Visma is set up well for years to come to contend with Ineos, Young Beowulf Crowned King Tadej Pogacar, and anyone else in the sport of cycling. Jumbo-Visma still has yet to win the Tour de France, but they did not cocoon away after last year’s La Planche devastation, and they did not throw in the towel this Tour. Roglic’s GC campaign went up in flames all the way back on Stage 3, Robert Gesink crashed out, eventually Tony Martin and Steven Kruijswijk succumbed to injuries as well. Despite losing half their team, Sepp Kuss won the Queen stage, Wout Van Aert took wins on Ventoux and in this TT, and Jonas Vingegaard has finished on the podium. Surely the Jumbo-Visma Wasps should hold their heads high as they wrap up this Tour de France.
The man in Yellow, the man at the center of the cycling universe, Young Beowulf Crowned King Tadej Pogacar had JUST an average day at the office. This was the first Tour de France TT he has lost in his career—admittedly, kind of a goofy or loaded stat, but fun to note. Perhaps he took zero risks whatsoever to ensure or soak in his win. Or perhaps the heat was getting to him a bit, the commentators were saying this was the hottest day of the Tour thus far. Anyways, Tadej Pogacar remains the champion in waiting, he is the undisputed top cyclist in the world. He has dominated this Tour de France from the first mountain stage, and he seems poised to dominate many more Grand Tours to come, like the men who had dynasties of old: Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, Indurain, and Froome.
Actually, now that I mention him, let us switch gears and dwell on Chris Froome who has managed to complete this Tour de France for Israel Start-Up Nation, despite a nasty crash on Stage 1 all the way back in Brittany. Chris Froome—for full clarity, a former favorite rider of mine—looks in a similar position to what Quickstep’s Mark Cavendish was in last year: well past his prime with seeming writing-on-the-walls that he should hang ‘em up, for never again will he return to the top. What does he make of his era being over? I am not at all saying that he will never win again, but if he does he will do in a different era. Froome’s and Cav’s era of specialization is over, even tomorrow The Swiss Army Knife Van Aert might spoil Cav and this last great feat of specialization in the sport. Froome chases that elusive 5th Tour win to join that elite club. All that is left in Froome’s career is to win one more Yellow Jersey. He will never target anymore Giri or Vueltas. He will never win Liege-Bastogne-Liege or any other Ardennes Classic. He will never even race Strade Bianche, let alone Milan-Sanremo or any Flemish Classic. Froome’s whole career has been built around winning the Tour de France. It is the biggest race in the world, it is the only race that transcends the sport, he cannot be blamed for that. But what does he think seeing Pogacar, Bernal, upcoming Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-Quickstep), Alaphillipe, the Mighty Aces, and the countless younger talents still surely about to emerge? Is Froome impressed that they do not just peak for July—or does he think they are spreading themselves too thin? Does Froome believe or understand or acknowledge that this new generation’s greatest strength seems to be their versatility?
Allow me to offer a new theory, an epiphany of an unproveable hypothesis formed as I write at this moment. The prominent going theory for how this new generation of youngsters is emerging well before the traditional peak years of a cyclist is because they have trained with power meters from a very young age and this has caused them to start an excessive quasi professional training regime many years before anyone born before 1991 did. I think that’s a good theory, but now I want to add to it. My love of Swiss Army Knife and Renaissance Man Range is well established, and I am a firm believer that Range makes these headliners of the generation better at every aspect of the entire sport—each like decathletes setting outright world records in 7 of 10 events. All the top names of the new generation developed some sort of Range by applying their trade first beyond just the Road Discipline. Of course, they enjoy the variation of succeeding at multiple disciplines, but why don’t the Mighty Aces (the oldest ones besides Alaphilippe) finally commit to just the Road for their prime years, and specifically major in one area of the cycling calendar? First, they are fully aware their multi-discipline successes are making them greater across the board. Second, they simply have a stronger desire than the previous generation to win a diverse array of different races. Here is my perhaps novel new idea: Could the wall-to-wall cycling coverage that has developed and become easily accessible to all over the past decade helped spur this new generation to abandon all specialization? There will always be sports fans that exclusively love the Tour, watch it for the three weeks each year, and that will be enough cycling for them. But year by year, “If you build it, they will come”: If you offer more access to bike racing, there is a committed and growing audience who will watch ALL of it…and I think most of these guys of this new generation did watch all of these races as they became more accessible via internet streaming over the past decade. When Chris Froome was getting into racing, Strade Bianche did not even exist. Meanwhile Alaphilippe, Van Aert, Van Der Poel, Pogacar, and Bernal all came of age watching this cool new race and surely all of them said: “That is a hard, beautiful, and unique race…I want to win that someday.” It was a watershed moment of this new era to see all five of them in the final selection of Strade together this year. And they watched the Giro and the Vuelta each year as well: I would bet a mortgage that if Egan Bernal and Tadej Pogacar were told they could only win two Grand Tours in their careers, they would both rather win a Tour and a Giro than just two Tours; this is not so with Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas. Tadej Pogacar at Liege—which he won—was quoted as saying: “There is more to cycling than just the Tour.” Yes, just the simple desire to compete across the calendar is fueling this new generation to greater heights that old Chris Froome and his generation of one-trick ponies shall supremely struggle to match.
Young Beowulf Tadej Pogacar is poised to win this Tour de France by more than five minutes—the largest margin in years…and yet we are in a Second Golden Age of Cycling. In the original Golden Age, the cycling world saw Coppi, Bartali, Bobet, Kubler, Koblet, Magni, Robic, and others clash titanic swords at the Giro and the Tour; but they also saw all the Italians and the rest line up in hopes to win the first major battle of the season at Milan-Sanremo, and they all would hope to cap off the season with a win at Il Lombardia as the leaves would fall; the Italian Fiorenzo Magni won three Tours of Flanders in a row in the harshest of conditions; Fausto Coppi raced Bobet, Van Steenbergen, Ockers, and others at Paris-Roubaix and Fleche Wallonne; and of course all targeted the World Championships every year no matter the terrain. Similar unending World Wars across the cycling calendar are now constantly commencing between Alaphilippe, the Mighty Aces, Pogacar, Bernal, and many others…and there is always a next thing to look forward to. The Olympics are a week away, the Vuelta after that, then Worlds in Flanders and an Autumnal Roubaix. But even though there are many objectives in cycling, what about cycling’s greatest and premiere event that all know transcends the sport, the Tour de France? In May, Egan Bernal dominated the Giro, here in July Pogacar has even more thoroughly dominated the Tour. Surely, a showdown between these two at their bests is something we greatly desire to see here at the Tour, but what if that will be an anticlimactic one-sided battle? What if neither Egan Bernal nor Remco Evenepoel at their best can seriously challenge Young Beowulf Crowned King Tadej Pogacar at the Tour de France in what I propose is this Second Golden Age of cycling? How can this be the Second Golden Age if we are in the Pogacar dynasty of iron-might dominance? Only 2 titles into the 5 or 7 or 8 Tours de France Pogacar is going to win? Perhaps we are, but it seems to me we have seen signs that the other versatile headliners will always mount some sort of fight to Pogacar—whole teams even, look at how Ineos and Jumbo retool ad infinitum. Additionally, it seems the well or fount of new young challengers is far from going dry. And finally, I hope or think these Grand Tour routes should and will be opened up even more.
Froome’s Tour wins in 2015, 2016, and 2017 appear close because of course design in my eyes. When Froome had the time margin he needed that was it, there was no need or opportunity to rip open the GC gaps further as he did like Hercules on the 2018 Giro when his back was against the wall. For the suspense and spectacle of the race, of course these Grand Tour organizers like keeping the GC close—to the point where one untimely puncture could cost a GC rider 30 seconds and the Yellow Jersey in Paris. With the rise of this new generation, it seems to me these fine-tuned Tours to keep the GC close are unsustainable. These new heroes are going to continue denotating and ripping these GC races apart, and I believe this can be a good thing. Look at this Tour, Pogacar denotated the GC on the first mountain stage worse than Miguel Indurain in a time trial in the ‘90s where he would beat second place by more than 3 minutes. For the week leading up to that, in a hilly and crash-marred first week, Alaphilippe and the Mighty Aces brought the peloton to its knees, and it had to limp on for another fortnight of war. Grand Tour organizers can try to make the courses even tighter and more fine-tuned to attempt to keep the GC decided by seconds instead of minutes…Or they can recognize and lean into the reality that the heroes and giants of this generation are prepared and trained-up to unleash every watt they can muster mid-Tour with no thought for tomorrow. It seems foolish to me to give Pogacar another fine-tuned course that he will just blow up again when his best defense is offense. The audience loved seeing the Mighty Aces ride away from everyone together as if it were just another November Cross they were routinely obliterating. In this Second Golden Age of cycling, these Grand Tour organizers should serve up courses that lend themselves to more gigantic heroics. Lengthen the stages to soft up all the legs and let the true champions go head-to-head. Put in more time-trial kilometers to open up the pool of GC contenders. Add more climbs for aspiring Kings of the Mountains to spar across. And find more hilly and lumpy stages perfect for an audacious versatile headliner with great Range to steal a march and ambush a top man leading a Grand Tour with a seemingly unassailable lead.
We saw Chris Froome in 2018 turn over a 3-minute GC deficient to his main rivals with a modern-day long-range attack that was likened to the daring of Eddy Merckx the Cannibal, Fausto Coppi the Champion of Champions, or Charly Gaul the Angel of the Mountains. All of us were gripped beyond belief at what we saw, Froome did something we all thought no longer possible. And yet in 2019, Bernal was on the cusp of a similar ride into Tignes before landslides neutered the stage. Here in 2021, Pogacar did a similar ride on Stage 8 on the first day in the Alps to put this Tour away with over a fortnight remaining. These Herculean rides of old are not dead, they could be rekindled regularly by this new age of mythical Titans. In 1948, Gino Bartali took back some 18 minutes on Jean Robic and a young Louison Bobet in one day on the Queen stage of that Tour. Did you follow that sentence closely? Bartali took BACK 18 minutes. Yes, he was down more than 18 minutes by that point in the Tour, but he had not yet given up. This is a new and special generation, these guys are talented and audacious enough to at least continue trying those long-range Froome attacks—perhaps soon multiple riders shall go for broke like Froome and Bartali successfully in a single Tour. Perhaps in a few years they shall come within half the magnitude of those Golden Age attacks. Let this be the hallmark of the Grand Tours during this current new era. Let the final GC standings be decided by many minutes, but let Wout Van Aert win flat TTs by minutes as well to keep in contention, then let Pogacar and Bernal win mountain stages by even more, and let Alaphilippe and Van Der Poel keep them all on their toes by launching audacious ambushes on 200+km stages of unrelenting lumpy terrain or crosswind-swept plains. All of these riders have already taken memorable victories in larger-than-life race-shattering style in wildest-and-most-epic-dream of circumstances. They do not seem like they will be slowing down anytime soon, and these World Tour teams are reloading with ever more capable new talents each year like Jonas Vingegaard or Ineos’ Tom Pidcock who are already drawing swords against the now established Young Titans. Cycling is always chalk full of heroes, but truly, truly the performances we are seeing now from this new generation are the most versatile since the days of Sean Kelly and Bernard Hinault, or even Eddy Merckx before them. These young riders today race with the ferocity and courage of Achilles and Hector, by their exploits on two wheels alone they are crafting themselves into larger-than-life legendary characters that compare to Coppi and Bartali—Achilles and Hector—and all the rest of the warriors of the First Golden Age of cycling. To pinpoint exactly when it started is a matter for another time, but there is no denying after what we have seen this Tour—despite or by the dominance of the Young Beowulf Crowned King—it is clear the Second Golden Age of cycling is in full swing.
Cycling Odysseys 