In Dijon they make world-famous mustard and the cursed sprinter Dylan Groenewegen, a high-flown testosterone pumper, wins the Tour stage because 60 million years ago the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, two large islands adrift at the time, decided to approach the continent and crash into its immense mass, a tectonic shock for the ages. From the tremendous impact the Alps and Pyrenees rose in the seams and scars and also because of the shock, France stopped tearing itself apart in the East. What should have been a sea became a very long, deep and very flat ditch with high walls on both sides in which grow the vineyards of Burgundy, Beaujolais and the Rhône, and there is a town called Chardonay, and along the bottom of the ditch flow gentle, mighty rivers that fertilize the land so that mustard grows and crabs breed. The Benedictines travelled quietly along the roads to Cluny to invent the Romanesque style, and along the well-paved roads the Tour runs at full speed (more than 46 km/h, the fastest stage of the course) stirred by the winds, a red carpet for the adrenaline and the madness of the fans, which ends, after various fights, with a sprint victory with a photo finish by the Dutchman Groenewegen, who is nobody’s friend and with a tiny black roof, pointed like an owl’s beak, covers his sensitive nose, and turns his black glasses into an armour mask, and it hurts to see it, aggressive, and it also brings a smile because it also looks like a naive Papageno from an opera. “I use them because the person who sells them to me tells me that I go faster with them,” he explains. “And I don’t know if I go faster or not, but if they tell me that, I use them.”
It is the sixth victory in five Tours for the 31-year-old Dutch champion, famous for the violence with which he sent his compatriot Fabio Jakobsen into the barriers in a sprint at 80 km/h at the Tour de Pologne. Jakobsen underwent a face transplant, a long process of re-education to eat and talk again and to win sprints again. After a spectacular comeback, in 2024 he is, however, a shadow of his former self, and was only 29th in Place Wilson after the most canonical sprint of the 11th Tour. He had trains, he had accelerations, and he even had Van der Poel’s launch for his friend Philipsen.
As the wind blew from the side, after each turn of the narrow and capricious road, the friends of the air, the Belgian Lottos, and the anxious Vismas and Ineos, tried several times to ambush Pogacar with violent attempts at fanning out at such speed that seeing them cross narrow and boxed streets of dusty villages in single file it is not difficult to imagine the terror that the ancestors of today’s peaceful inhabitants must have experienced when the hosts of barbarians, friends of pillage and destruction, advanced through the tectonic trench (Graben, say the geologists who teach us that there would be no mountains without seas or sprinters without climbers) towards the south, invaders.
On the Montrachet fan, 75km from the finish, Pogacar was left alone in front. It was an illusion that illuminated the Vismas, who were out of control for 10 kilometres. “It was an example that in the Tour when there is a bit of crosswind, even if it is not enough to cause damage, there are going to be problems,” says the Slovenian. “It was quite a stressful day, but in the end I am happy that it was not a very long stage, that we did it quickly.”
Once calm had returned, Jonas Vingegaard, Juan Ayuso, Joao Almeida, Primoz Roglic, Remco Evenepoel and Carlos Rodriguez finished the stage without further incident, with their heads perhaps already occupied by the 25-kilometre time trial that will follow the same Graben and will take in the best Burgundian pinot noir vineyards on Friday to deliver the second verdict of an intense Tour. The last time trial of the last Tour was deadly for Pogacar, who lost all hope against Vingegaard there. “Yes, I recognised the route a long time ago. And I like it because it is about power, it is not just the aerodynamic factor that decides,” says Pogacar. “It will be interesting to see how it goes.” This year, the Evenepoel factor comes into play, the world champion of the speciality, who is making his debut in the big loop and who the yellow jersey votes as the favourite. “He is the world champion, he is the best. He has certainly prepared very well, but I think I will also do well,” says the Slovenian. “And I am sure that Evenepoel is very prepared for the whole Tour.”
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