The Tour loves Biniam Girmay, the African sprinter who wins his third sprint in the scorching Midi, leaving Wout van Aert in the dust. And to compensate for so much excessive love, which, like energy, flows and is neither created nor destroyed, he continues to take it out on Primoz Roglic, who falls again, lets his bleeding shoulder show from under his torn Red Bull jersey, and loses 2m 27s in 12 kilometres that he pedals dejectedly, without energy, without even the desire to do the act of furious pursuit when, in a procession as solemn and silent as one of Holy Week in Zamora alongside five Red Bulls in a row.
Tadej Pogacar, yellow sun, smiles as much as Girmay, author of a hat trick in the Tour, a rare feat, and says that he had the time of his life, that he enjoyed the stage and the scenery and even the heat. His compatriot Roglic, meanwhile, slips silently to his team bus, where the doctor would treat his wounds with plasters, apparently superficial except for the deep wound to his soul.
There is no peace for Roglic, no mercy for the fallen, no transitional stages in which the peloton dozes and sweats in the heat of the Midi along the peaceful and mighty Lot, and the beautiful vineyards of Cahors with so many bunches that they begin to fatten on their vines. Life imitates the Tour, so implacable, and curses the Slovenian, who falls on the dumbest day of the Tour at the dumbest moment of the stage, 12 kilometres from the finish, caught between the wheels of accelerated sprinters who respond presently without thinking, soldiers in battle, to the pinganillesque demands of directors of nerves. A narrowing of the road forced by a raised concrete ledge and the distraction of the Kazakh Lutsenko, who only thinks about his Cavendish, cause the fall and prolong the love affair between the Tour – and it is in its nature, like its uncontrollable forces – and the Slovenian, which began with the fanfare of furious trumpets in the last stage of the 2020 Tour, when, superbly wearing the yellow jersey, he was vilely defeated by the then brilliant youngster Tadej Pogacar in the time trial of the Planche des Belles Filles. In the following Tour, which he began as leader of his Jumbo, he had to retire due to a fall after seeing how the Tour fell in love with his Danish teammate Jonas Vingegaard, whom he showered with goods, firsts and promises. In the 22nd, after falling for the third time, and before abandoning again, he contributed to Vingegaard’s victory by beating Pogacar on the Galibier, sweet revenge. A month later, he also abandoned Evenepoel’s Vuelta, which he was trying to win for the fourth time, due to a fall. He left Jumbo, fed up with Vingegaard and a Vuelta that should have been left to Sepp Kuss, to lead Bora, now Red Bull. In April, in Itzulia, he fell, like Vingegaard and Evenepoel. Both are leading the Tour while he is bleeding.
Roglic, who was fourth in the general classification, 2m 15s behind Pogacar, and is now sixth, 4m 42s behind, is overtaken by Almeida and Rodriguez and his aching ears are filled with songs of praise and compassion from his rivals, the condolences, once again, that a champion never wants to receive, more punishment from the Tour, which becomes, almost, the furious God who punishes desire. Remco Evenepoel, who gets a rival off his back, regrets the pain of his colleague, and blames nerves and “so much junk” (that’s how he refers to the jungle of roundabouts and directional islands that turn the road into an enemy of cycling) that was piled up in the final kilometers. “I am very sad for Primoz,” summarizes the leader Pogacar. “I know for a fact that he had prepared very well and that in the last week he was going to fly. I hope that nothing is broken and that he continues. We all know he is a great fighter and that he can probably still win a stage or something like that.”
The old men of Spanish cycling give way to the strength of Carlos Rodríguez and the ambition of Juan Ayuso and, blurred, they dissolve, they disintegrate into the landscape, except for Mikel Landa, so happy and so dapper, and he even lifts his ass and leaves his hands up on the handlebars so as not to get off when the strongest accelerate. On the way to Lioran, Ion Izagirre, who won a stage in 2023, retired on Wednesday, and the other winner of the 23rd, and sixth in that general classification, Pello Bilbao, ill, ended up in the sprinters’ group. The rider from Gernika retired on Thursday, and Enric Mas, the other great veteran, lost two more minutes between the heat and the vines.
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