The world’s best cyclists have been battling one another in the Tour de France since late June. But the Tour is won in the high mountains. And the highest mountains are just ahead.
The Pyrenees and the Alps stand in the way of the July 21 finish in Nice, and the two prerace favorites are right where they were expected to be: near the front of the pack.
Jonas Vingegaard, the Danish two-time defending champion, and Tadej Pogacar, the 2020 and 2021 winner from Slovenia, are joined by the Belgian cyclist Remco Evenepoel for now. But Vingegaard, 27, and Pogacar, 25, are expected to resume their two-man race for the yellow jersey when a traverse of the Pyrenees begins on Saturday.
Pogacar leads the field by about one minute after success in the race’s first pass through the Alps. But Vingegaard seems to be recovered from an injury he suffered earlier this year and could have the wherewithal to land a third straight Tour.
There’s already been a record and historic firsts.
Much of this three-week-long race has been flat so far. When there are no challenging mountains to break up the field, the riders stay bunched, and a different type of athlete, a sprinter, often wins the day.
And this year, the flat stretches of the Tour have produced notable moments.
On July 1, the speedy Biniam Girmay of Eritrea became the first Black African to win a stage of the Tour. A crash about a mile before the finish sowed chaos in the field, but Girmay was able to stay safe and pull away.
“This victory means a lot to me, to my team which has been waiting a long time to win a stage, for my country and also to all of Africa,” he said after his win. “Now we are really part of the big races.”
For good measure, Girmay, 24, won two more stages, on July 6 and 11, and leads the green jersey competition for best sprinter.
Mark Cavendish, 39, of Britain, has never been a contender to win the Tour, but his sprinting prowess had earned him 34 stage victories over the years, tying the 1970s superstar Eddy Merckx for most stage wins in Tour history. Win No. 34 came in 2021. Cavendish did not race in 2022 and crashed out in 2023, so he had to wait until this year, his 15th Tour, to break the record and win his 35th career stage. He did so on July 3.
“Every little detail has been put toward specifically today. You see what this means. It doesn’t mean we are going to be top of the U.C.I. rankings or anything,” he said, referring to the international cycling rankings. “But the Tour de France is bigger than cycling isn’t it?”
On the day of Girmay’s historic win, Richard Carapaz became the first Ecuadorean cyclist to wear the yellow jersey, albeit briefly.
There’s a duel within the race.
If there were any doubt that the race for yellow was strictly between Pogacar and Vingegaard, it was laid to rest on Wednesday, in the Tour’s second big mountain stage. With about 20 miles to go on the Pas de Peyrol, a mountain pass, a group of elite cyclists caught the last breakaway rider and then Pogacar struck, making his move up the steep grade. Vingegaard pursued, but fell about 30 seconds behind.
The stage was not over, however. Vingegaard chased Pogacar down, and the two contenders raced side by side through the Massif Central with the rest of the world’s great cyclists well behind them.
Vingegaard, whose fitness was a question heading into the Tour after he broke his collarbone in a crash in April, got the psychological boost by winning the final sprint by mere inches. Going into Friday’s flat stage in southern France, Vingegaard still trailed Pogacar overall by 1 minute 14 seconds. (Evenepoel was actually in second, 1:06 back, but because he can’t match the big two in the high mountains, he is probably racing for third place.)
Riders approach the Mediterranean finish line.
On Saturday in the Pyrenees, though, a 1:14 lead may suddenly look like nothing. First the riders will climb one of the Tour’s most fearsome mountains, the Tourmalet. Then, after another tough climb and two speedy descents, the stage will finish on the slopes of the Pla d’Adet, another mountain.
The Tour cheerily describes this stage as “a festival of summits.” Few of the riders will be enjoying themselves.
There are more tough climbs on Sunday, as well as on July 17, 19 (including Cime de la Bonette, the Tour’s high point at 9,193 feet) and 20. Crucially, several of these stages have an uphill finish. With no flat or downhill stretch after the final climb for the weaker climbers to catch up, the strongest men will benefit.
And it will all play out in the heat of southern France: Temperatures have been in the upper 80s Fahrenheit recently, causing a few riders to drop out.
On July 21, the Tour will come to an unusual end with a time trial. And in a first, the race will finish in Nice, rather than Paris, to steer clear of the coming Summer Olympics. After more than 2,000 miles, there will be a winner.
All the mountain racing may decide the Tour before then. But given that both Pogacar and Vingegaard are riding well, and that oddsmakers are currently calling the race a tossup, the time trial could be a dramatic finish.
That would evoke the closest Tour in history, which happened to be the last time a Tour ended with a time trial. In 1989, Greg LeMond, an American, made up a 50-second deficit to the French cyclist Laurent Fignon, winning by just eight seconds.
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