6 things I'll remember from Week 1 of the Tour de France
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My overall impression of a Tour de France is closely tied to my last memory of it. Three days ago, I was planning to write what a "good Tour de France" truly meant, and whether knock-down, drag-out yellow jersey battles were really all that mattered. To that point, the race had moved sleepily towards its few highlight finishes. The only end-to-end thriller had been Stage 1, which was animated more by rain than competition.
Then Stages 7-9 happened, and the discussion seemed moot. This year's Tour de France has delivered GC fireworks as well as lulls when you can sit with the scenery, lazily googling team sponsors and trying to find English translations of Guillaume Martin's Socrate à Vélo.
Unless you are a Thibaut Pinot True Believer, this has been an undeniably "good Tour de France" so far, with every indication that it should finish in a thriller. The main characters have emerged, all with their own likable qualities and unique vulnerabilities. And the biggest set pieces are yet to come, each an opportunity to eliminate or introduce more elements that will round out this Tour's flavor profile.
But though the potential of this Tour is high, it's important to document how it has been so far. For two reasons:
1) This might be all we get. As I write this now, rumors are swirling about positive and negative Covid-19 tests among riders, team staff and race officials. When press releases go out Tuesday morning, we could find out that well-placed, big name riders have been thrown out. We could find out that the race has been canned, in fact. Hosting this event right now is incredibly stupid.
2) Even if the Tour goes the distance, it might not live up to its potential. If a Tour is like a wine, last year's was smooth and full-bodied, but had a sort of watery finish. Julian Alaphilippe's and Thibaut Pinot's gritty campaigns both came to unceremonious ends, leaving us with another by-the-playbook Sky/Ineos win. (Which is unfair to what Egan Bernal accomplished, I know, but it's hard to look past his sponsor's history.)
We should steel ourselves for the fact that right now might be as good as it gets. Lock this moment up in a safe space in your brain, because what's to come could change your perception of it for the worse.
If the Tour ends today, here's what I will remember most fondly.
Primoz Roglic winning the yellow jersey, rightfully
I think Tadej Pogacar has been an incrementally stronger rider through nine days, but Roglic has had the better race. Mostly, that means that he and Jumbo-Visma did their part to avoid getting left behind in the peloton splits during Stage 7's crosswinds, but every Tour has moments when riders need to prove their situational savvy. Roglic passed that test, and more.
No first week that I can remember has ever been so comprehensive, serving up crosswinds, crashes, attacks, ascent finishes, descent finishes, and both medium and high mountain stages. Roglic came into the Tour as the betting favorite, and has defended himself even when isolated. He has ticked off all the boxes of a Tour winner, less a time trial that we know he should dominate. I'm comfortable calling him a Tour champion, even if the Tour doesn't go the full three weeks. This year has been weird; we can make exceptions.
Tadej Pogacar's endless verve
Pogacar made a vow Monday: "If I have the legs, I attack."
The idea that one should "attack" one's "opponents" and "try to go faster than them" is oddly novel for an event that calls itself a "race." The most consistent grand tour-winning strategy has become getting a wicked strong set of teammates to make sure you never bleed time, then steal stage wins only when everyone else has been pummeled into submission.
The 21-year-old Pogacar is showing that the simple methods still work. He was relentless on Stage 9, launching three attacks on the Col de Marie Blanque until he finally dislodged all but an ultra-elite group of riders in Roglic, Bernal and Mikel Landa. Where some might have given up after their first speculative poke, Pogacar committed to the effort and showed how fearlessness unlocks potential.
Marc Hirschi's ironman attack
Of course, Hirschi was even more fearless Sunday, and got burned. He was outsprinted by Pogacar and Roglic by less than a bike length each on a day when he spent about 90 kilometers alone, summiting two Category 1 climbs and descending like a madman, only to be forced to sprint like hell for the win that was rightfully his ... and settle for third.
Hirschi also finished second on Stage 2 after being outfoxed by Alaphilippe. There's no shame in either of those consolation prizes, especially for a 22-year-old. Hirschi is unquestionably the most heroic rider of the Tour so far, and he has years ahead of him to rack up one-day wins.
Still, my heart breaks for him a little bit. Ninety kilometers all alone and the two of the best cyclists in the world just had to swoop in at the end. Jerks.
The Julian Alaphilippe moment
Alaphilippe isn't in the form he was last year, and that's fine. We knew that simply from the fact that he hadn't won a race all year. Which isn't to say he was in bad form entering the Tour, just that the skinny puncheur who won our hearts in 2019 probably wouldn't be in contention to win late in the third week again.
The fact that he gave us anything during the 2020 Tour is a bonus. The way he won on Stage 2 is a gift far beyond anything we could have asked for. He went solo with 13 kilometers to the finish, drawing Hirschi and Adam Yates on his wheel. Then with 100 meters to go, he bolted for the line into a block headwind. If he had gone earlier, Hirschi likely would have outsprinted him. If he hesitated a moment longer, the hard charging peloton might have swallowed him whole.
Instead, he got to kiss the sky and wear the yellow jersey again, igniting France's fever dreams. Then he slumped against the barrier and burst into tears. Alaphilippe's father, Jo, passed away in June after a years-long illness, and Alaphilippe entered the day wanting to win for him. We didn't deserve to share in that moment, and I'm grateful he allowed us in.
Caleb Ewan's silky sprint
Stage 3 was a snooze, but I could watch this forever.
All the new names I learned
I didn't know how to pronounce Pogacar (Po-GA-char) before this Tour. I'm now reflexively betting on Hirschi to podium in every Classic I see him enter. Nans Peters is my new happy-go-lucky French fav. I was already terrified of Wout van Aert's potential but I'm even more scared now. NEILSON POWLESS (USA USA USA) DESERVED THIS BIRTHDAY BREAKAWAY WIN. SEPP KUSS (USA USA USA) WAS A POWERHOUSE ON STAGE 4.
The characters and plot of the Tour de France haven't changed much in the seven years I've been covering it closely. In hindsight, Bernal's yellow jersey victory last year at 22 signaled a sea change. Cycling's youngest riders are crazy good, and FUN. They attack often and with flair, and they're already taking out last generation's contenders. If the Tour ended right now, I would remember it as the event that introduced cycling's future to the world.
So this has been a good Tour de France so far?
Great, even, but I want to be clear: even if this first week had been its typical, lugubrious self, I probably still would have enjoyed it. I subscribe to Rouleur's stance that the Tour de France is not about a "bike race." It's an annual commercial for a country, foremost, that grew in notoriety in part because, for a long time, no one could watch it. Rouleur quotes Jean-Marie Leblanc, Tour director Christian Prudhomme's predecessor, about the race's dirty secret:
“It was a sports event that spectators couldn’t see, unlike a football match where spectators are present, or any other sports event. So people imagined the contest from the summaries – often in epic style – which were sometimes perhaps a little out of proportion, enlivened by the journalists, whom themselves didn’t see a lot, or at best saw things incompletely.”
The competitive aspect of the Tour de France has been overrated for a while, yet the idea of the race is so romantic, that journalists and fans can't help chasing it every year. I'm one of those romantics, and I'm at least a little bit proud to say that writing this fits within that mythmaking tradition.
Whether a Tour de France is "good" depends on how much you're willing to invest in lore and kayfabe perpetuated by people like me. But if you're only absorbing the race by reading this newsletter, I promise the action hasn't been exaggerated much. Sometimes stages reveal themselves slowly, forcing you to carefully suss out and amplify their nuances. Other times, they unfold as a series of detonations like they did this weekend, and the mythmaking work is done for you.
I mean, who doesn't like explosions?