Tour de France: 100th victory for Tadej Pogacar, the aspiring Cannibal of world cycling
How wonderful this Tour de France is!
An extraordinary Luna Park, full of surprises, where every day you can try new attractions. A young and explosive cycling that leaves you breathless.
How breathtaking is this hundredth victory of Tadej Pogacar, the Slovenian phenomenon of the Uae who, year after year, stage after stage, redraws the history of a sport that seems to have found a new dimension thanks to a brood of champions who do not know the old rules of cycling. The old transfer stages are no longer there, those long interludes where you ran with the balance just to avoid making mistakes, to avoid wearing out your strength.
No, this is another world. Now, especially at the Tour, it is a relentless challenge, fought tooth and nail even in those stages where, usually, space is given to supporting actors while the big names sharpen their weapons in anticipation of the big mountains and time trials.
One hundred of these days! The new triumph of Pogacar, who incidentally is also World Champion, comes in the fourth stage of the Grande Boucle - 174 kilometers starting from Amines to the finish line in Rouen - in an explosive finale where Tadej outsprinted the best of the world's competition, namely Mathieu Van Der Polel (who remains in the yellow jersey with the same time as Pogacar) and the Danish Jonas Vingegaard, the Slovenian's great rival for the final success in Paris.
What can I say? The Gotha of world cycling enclosed in the handkerchief of a sprint. All in a day still characterized by escapes, counter-escapes and several falls in which the Italian Mattia Cattaneo and the Irish Ben Healy were also involved. A cycling with the devil in its body that was seen in the North, without ever a break or a moment of tiredness.
Pogacar's victory, the one hundredth of a career that is beginning to overshadow even that of Eddy Merkcx, is obviously a special victory. Because it traces, at 26 years of age, an initial assessment of a rider who has now become the dominator of contemporary cycling. Among his successes, in fact, stand out 3 Tour de France, 1 Giro d'Italia, 2 Tours of Flanders, 3 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, 4 Tours of Lombardy and last, but not least, the World Championship in Zurich in 2024.
A complete champion, the Slovenian, who in the stage races finds only one real opponent: Jonas Vingegaard who twice (2022 and 2023) managed to snatch the Tour de France from him. However, Vingegaard manages to beat him only in July, in the French race. During the year he almost always disappears.
In one-day races, the role of party pooper is played with great punctuality by Van Der Poel himself, as he demonstrated this year at the Milano Sanremo and Roubaix.
Returning to the Tour, it should be remembered that this Wednesday 9 July, the fifth stage, features the first time trial, a 33-kilometre, almost flat, test with start and finish in Caen, again in the north of France.
Pogacar, who also took back the polka dot jersey for best climber, will try to give a first shake-up to the general classification which, however, already sees him in first place with Mathieu Van Der Poel. Behind Pogacar, only 8 seconds behind, is Vingegaard who will do everything to put a spoke in his wheels.
As a third wheel, among the big names, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel could emerge, who so far, between falls and fans, has not had much luck. A specialist in time, the Belgian has the opportunity to recover a delay - of almost a minute - that otherwise could become a heavy handicap. But watch out for those two: Pogacar and Vingegaard, as they have shown, have no desire to make discounts or do charity. It is not in their DNA. They are not good Samaritans. They are predators, extraordinary hunters of goals.
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