Tour de France Stage 21 recap: Sea change
Congratulations Tadej!#TDF2020 pic.twitter.com/zH3vOZtp6y
— ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) September 20, 2020
The Tour de France often unfolds lugubriously, like a slow meal. This year's felt more like a well-produced Netflix series. Each stage was snackable on its own; each stage also did just enough to advance larger narratives that needed more than a day to tell.
The lack of filler was refreshing. We were introduced to exciting secondary and tertiary characters who could have bigger roles in future editions. Each stage was cleverly designed to be memorable on its own, and not simply a way to eat up time and kilometers on the way to the next proper set piece.
And like a good series, the ending left us flabbergasted. Tadej Pogacar's time trial performance will go down in history, turning a race that we thought we had understood on its head. Like a good narrative twist, it revealed to us what we should have been seeing all along: That aggression and panache wins. That cycling can be as simple "just get your bike across the line first."
The race felt like an extension of what Julian Alaphilippe showed us last year when he damn near won a yellow jersey by trying to win every day on the road. Where there was one of him last year, there seemed to be dozens like him this year, a bushel of young, punchy swashbucklers going for broke because what else are you supposed to do during a bike race?
If you're watching cycling for the first time, that must seem like a bizarre revelation. But as someone who became deeply invested in the Tour during Sky/Ineos' domination of the yellow jersey, it's unbelievably refreshing. Jumbo-Visma are a brilliant team, and it was nice to see a team in brighter colors control the race, but they were still following the Sky playbook: maintain a healthy lead, and don't risk an attack that has even the faintest possibility of backfiring. The winning name and jersey colors were different, but until Saturday we were on our way to watching the eighth Sky-like win in the last nine years.
To be clear, I would have been ecstatic at a Roglic win. He is level-headed and hardworking. When he signed with Jumbo-Visma in 2016, he said he'd like to win a Tour de France within five years. It would have been fun to see that foresight and effort paid off for someone so clearly dedicated. I like the idea of kismet.
But Roglic winning wouldn't make me feel alive like Pogacar did, nor would it have been truly be fitting in a Tour that featured nine breakaway victories and gave us heroes like Marc Hirschi, Richard Carapaz, Lennard Kamna, Alexey Lutsenko, Nans Peters, Soren Kragh Andersen, Daniel Felipe Martinez and more.
I don't know that this year was a sea change for the sport, but from where I sit, watching a sprint unfold in the dimming sunlight on the Champs-Élysées, it feels like a sea change, and I'm happy to bask in that feeling for a while before giving the matter any proper thought. And how can you not be excited for the future of the Grande Boucle? Jumbo-Visma will be a force again next year, and Ineos and Egan Bernal are expected to return with vengeance. We may also see a few of cycling's young superstars who couldn't make the trip, like Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel. And as the next generation takes the reins, we'll get last hurrahs for riders with whom we've spent the last decade -- like Richie Porte, who finished on the podium for the first time at 35 after years of hard luck.
And for the foreseeable future, we'll also have Pogacar, the simple, young, amiable Slovenian rider who raps terribly and just won a Tour de France at 21 because he understood that being in first place mattered.
Tours in the past left me feeling like I ate a meal, too: full and satisfied and ready to lay down and be done with the thing. For the first time, I want the next Tour to start tomorrow. I love these characters, and I can't wait to see the ways in which they evolve and the arcs they form. I suppose it's a good thing that we will only be waiting nine months for the next one, but that still feels like an agonizingly long time until Season 2.
Right, there was racing Sunday
If you've seen any Paris stage, you've seen this one. Everyone was jolly and taking pictures until the riders got to the circuit around the Champs-Élysées. There was a four-man breakaway of Connor Swift, Greg Van Avermaet, Max Schachmann and Jean-Luc Perichon that was reeled in at the start of the last lap. Jostling for sprint positioning began, and Sam Bennett won, putting the perfect capstone on his green jersey campaign.
Cycling and Black Lives Matter
✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿#notoracism #BlackLivesMatter #TDF2020 pic.twitter.com/Cc8HtnNioE
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) September 20, 2020
On Sunday, riders finally acknowledged cycling's silence on the Black Lives Matter movement, writing #NoToRacism on their face masks ahead of the stage.
Kevin Reza, the only black rider in the peloton this year, had complained about cycling's lack of support for the movement. Road cycling is an exceedingly white sport, and has largely skirted discussions of racial equality as a result. Its lack a diversity is most apparent at the top of the standings. Reza, who finished 137th on the general classification, admitted that, "I don’t carry as much weight in world sport as Lewis Hamilton in Formula One or LeBron James in the NBA."
The idea for the #NoToRacism face masks was borne out of the riders' union group chat. Education First's Tejay van Garderen explained their process. It was nice to see teams make statements where previously there were none.
Still, the gesture only means so much if it doesn't persist or affect real change. (And it should be noted that this was a rider-led action; UCI and ASO, the Tour's organizing bodies, did nothing.) Reza, who started Sunday's stage on the first line of the peloton, was measured but hopeful ahead of the Tour's final day.
"It's necessary to continue and see what we can do," Reza said. "It's difficult to talk about it, to make yourself understood. A wrong word and it can be distorted.
"Today I feel capable and free to talk about it."
One last bit of fun
I'm real happy for Richie Porte.
Watch UAE Team Emirates directors and staff lose their shit during Tadej Pogacar's time trial.
Eddy Merckx was NOT a fan of Jumbo-Visma's tactics.
Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogacar are still total buds.
The Tour's race-upending Slovenian contingent arm-in-arm:
The Slovenians. #TDF2020 pic.twitter.com/h7AT0u40Zz
— daniel mcmahon (@cyclingreporter) September 20, 2020
Rigo, soaking it all in.
The final podium and winner's speech.
FINAL standings
STAGE 21
- Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-Quick Step) -- 2hr 53min 32sec
- Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) -- "
- Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) -- "
- Alexander Kristoff (UAE Team Emirates) -- "
- Elia Viviani (Cofidis) -- "
- Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) -- "
- Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) -- "
- Hugo Hofstetter (Israel Start-Up Nation) -- "
- Bryan Coquard (B&B Hotels-Vital Concept) -- "
- Maximilian Walscheid (NTT) -- "
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
- Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) — 87hr 21min 04sec
- Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) -- +59sec
- Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo) -- +3min 30sec
- Mikel Landa (Bahrain-McLaren) -- +5min 58sec
- Enric Mas (Movistar) -- +6min 07sec
- Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) – +6min 47sec
- Tom Dumoulin (Jumbo-Visma) -- +7min 48sec
- Rigoberto Uran (Education First) -- +8min 02sec
- Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) — +9min 25sec
- Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-McLaren) -- +14min 03sec
GREEN JERSEY
- Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) — 380 points
- Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) — 284
- Matteo Trentin (CCC) — 260
- Bryan Coquard (B&B Hotels-Vital Concept) -- 181
- Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) -- 174
POLKA DOT JERSEY
- Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) -- 82 points
- Richard Carapaz (Ineos) --74
- Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) -- 67
- Marc Hirschi (Sunweb) -- 62
- Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) -- 51
No stage preview because the Tour de France is over
They only do 21 of these things.
Expect one last newsletter at some point this week going over superlatives, and what the future of this newsletter may be. In case you miss it, thank you so, so much for following the Tour with me.
Go outside and get a burger.