Tour de France, penultimate stage: Groves wins in a solo breakaway. Milan takes the green jersey.

A rain-soaked Tour, a bit grey and melancholic, now all focused on Paris where this Sunday, with the arrival on the Champs-Élysées, after 3 unprecedented passages on Montmartre, the race will end, celebrating the fourth victory of Tadej Pogacar, almost unchallenged dominator of a very explosive Grande Boucle up to the Pyrenees and then folded in the second part where the yellow jersey limited himself to managing his advantage over his rival Vingegaard (+4 minutes and 24”).

In Pontalier, in a penultimate stage where everyone was free to ride, like at the end of school, Australian Kaden Groves won, taking advantage of a series of crashes among the escapees in the finale, preceding Van Den Broek and Pascal Eenkhoorn.

Fourth was our Simone Velasco, also trapped in a group crash. The curious thing, which doesn't happen often, is that a sprinter like Groves (seven wins at the Vuelta and two at the Giro d'Italia) triumphed after a solo breakaway lasting at least fifteen kilometers. A feat worthy of a "finisseur," rather than a sprinter, which gives a good idea of how the Grande Boucle is now almost over. In any case, it's a fine victory that gives Alpecin Deceuninck their third victory after the opening ones by Philipsen and Van Der Poel, winners in Sanremo and Roubaix, who withdrew from the Tour due to pneumonia.

And the big names? Calm and unhurried. They arrived at their own pace after more than seven minutes. No one felt like taking any more risks, especially Pogacar, who in recent days has begun to show signs of fatigue, especially psychological ones ("I can't wait to get home, to a normal life, doing normal things"). He too, wearing the yellow jersey for the 53rd time, is feeling the burden of three weeks almost always carrying the responsibility of leading the race.

Finally, good news for Jonathan Milan, 24, from Friuli, winner of two stages and now, mathematically, the green jersey of the Tour. A splendid achievement for the Italian sprinter, first in Laval and Valence, who takes the points classification, ahead of, imagine, Pogacar himself, who, in addition to the yellow jersey, also takes the polka-dotted one. Luckily, he leaves something for the others, too.