His attacks at the Giro d’Italia are still etched in the collective memory. The road was climbing, his sadistic Emirati gregarious were wearing down the rest of the group, Tadej Pogacar he played with the pedals until the moment he decided to make the gap with one click, two at most, without a grimace of effort.
The epilogue of the second stage of the Tour de France, yesterday on San Luca, a steep peak in the heart of Bologna, seemed like a replica of Oropa, Prati di Tivo, Livigno or Bassano del Grappa. But when Pogi turned after the second sprint to measure the size of the void behind him, he found it filled by the shadow of a ghost: his bête noire, that Jonas Vingegaard which took away the last two Tours.
Pogacar’s black mood
Back in yellow after two years of abstinence, Tadej was grey in the face and in a black mood at the finish line for realizing that the superpowers he was gifted with in the squad seem to have no effect against the pale Dane. Asked and obtained to answer (reluctantly) only the first four questions from the reporters, the Slovenian explained that «I let go of the escape, giving up the victory so as not to immediately kill my comrades. I attacked to disrupt the group, I partially succeeded. Jonas? Go strong”.
Vingegaard, is the injury already in the past?
No one can answer for now how the Dane (fresh from a deep pneumothorax and assorted fractures of the scapula and ribs) manages to cope with such crazy pace. The physiologically most credible theses of the day before (he will give in or lose ground in the first week and will only do well in the last, after having got used to the pace of the race) are already to be thrown away.
The only certainty is that, after two stages and ten hours of racing, Pogacar wears the yellow jersey (with protocol obligations included) on an equal footing not only with his nemesis Vingegaard but also with his rivals Evenepoel and Carapaz who yesterday, detached on the steep, returned on the descent. Less brilliant Roglic — in the Red Bull jersey the king of the 2023 Giro has become a toothpick — who lost about twenty seconds like The bardwho immediately gave up the yellow jersey.
The Vauquelin fable
But the Cesenatico-Bologna played in suffocating heat had two other protagonists: the 23-year-old Norman Kévin Vauquelin (zero victories in his career, zero in the history of the Tour for his micro team Arkea, which fights every year not to sink) and a public (800 thousand people according to the organizers) sold out on the Emilia-Romagna roads. After Bardet’s opening victory (usually the French cousins anxiously await their first success until July 14), Vauquelin dragged nine breakaway companions out of the group along the Adriatic coast, then courageously abandoned them in the first of the two climbs to San Luca, where there was only a very narrow passage for the riders to pass.
Fasting from final successes at the Tour for 39 years, France is cultivating a large number of talents thanks to four World Tour teams that pamper them with patience. We have zero top-tier teams and the consequences are visible. After having fought well on the eve, Alberto Bettiol he was expected on San Luca but he arrived twenty minutes late. Maybe because it was his region, maybe because we were passing through his streets, but the blue public (jerseys, flags, banners, writings on the asphalt) still cheers for Pantani and has now replaced Nibali with Pogacar, Italian by adoption.
