Tour de France: Was this the cycling of the future?

The great duel between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar at this year’s Tour of France opens a new era in professional cycling. If everyone drives as cleanly as they claim.

fit would have gone wrong. Jonas Vingegaard almost drove his tour victory to the wall. At that moment he had already won everything. At the time trial on Saturday, when he just had to bring his big lead over Tadej Pogacar home, he lost his balance for a moment on a descent and was driven out of the road into the gravel in a left-hand bend, towards a rock face. Now a fall and an injury that would prevent him from continuing and all would be lost.

Vingegaard just got the curve. “I almost went into cardiac arrest,” he said later. In his comfortable situation, with Paris in mind, which he reached as overall winner this Sunday, how could he have taken such a risk on a descent? “I didn’t feel like I was taking too many risks,” he said. That could have been the misjudgment of the year, but he rolled on to the finish in Rocamadour, where he was met by team-mate Wout van Aert, who gave him a slap on the back.