Izagirre toasts Beaujolais. This Tour de France is crazy and energy consuming

It is when expectations are high, very high, fueled by days in which every little climb became a good stage to create problems for the resistance of others, by the background of Tuesday so similar to what the runners had before, that it is easy for disappointment to appear, leave a widespread sense of annoyance, of missed opportunity. It was the wrong place in the Beaujolais to have expectations. It is an area of ​​relaxing colours, quiet noises, rural tranquillity. It could have been an excellent excursion, an interim day to observe landscapes. One escape and away, the fugitives looking for a way to win the stage, the others saving energy for the following days and mountains.

It’s pleasant when expectations materialize in reality, indeed when reality slaps expectations, delivers something we hoped for to our eyes, but in silence, without saying it, so as not to seem crazy.

This Tour de France is full of madness. This Tour de France is energy intensive, doesn’t care about energy saving, about the little addition. Multiply, raise to a power, dilate. Detachments and weaknesses.

It was necessary to face it head on twelfth stage of the Grande Boucle, don’t be afraid to attack her, passivity was the main road to exclusion. It was necessary to be a bit of a bully, to be seen at the head of the group, to demonstrate to the others that you weren’t afraid to attack. Of course they were out there Jonas Vingegaard And Tadej Pogacar to tease each other, alone, with no more teammates. They had been lost in the turmoil. Someone was in front, many behind. Vingegaard and Pogacar were about to flee the kingdom they had created.

Many, many, have tried to escape from the company of the majority. At one point the more were the less, the dispersion was total. There were those who tried to escape from those who had already fled without even realizing it. For about eighty kilometers it seemed like we were witnessing a generalized party, an uncontrollable euphoria, where everyone drank and toasted and the happiness was so invasive that it turned into absolute sadness, all of which was being lost. Mikel Landa, Sepp Kuss, Emanuel Buchman, Louis Meintjies, Ben O’Connor they had been invited, they lost everything, they chased with an empty glass among the gentle hills that generate a light wine, pleasant even cold, good for summers. They pondered, wondered if it was all over for them.

Didn’t they know that there is no meditation in Beaujolais, there are no strong flavours, there is the pleasure of drinking, “of taking everything as it comes, because there is nothing better than taking things as they come: you irrepressible desire to live, to think that today is wonderful and who knows, tomorrow will probably be wonderful in the same way”, wrote René Fallet. The writer chose Beaujolais to live and ride his bicycle, because there is nothing better than a bicycle “to enjoy the present and life. Pedaling and stopping, having a drink, chatting: do you need anything else?”.

Nothing else is needed. Enjoying the party and knowing that the moment is coming when the party becomes something for party professionals, for those who have the audacity to continue, perhaps less good reason to stop.

Tiesj Benoot, Thibaut Pinot, Andrey Amador, Mads Pedersen, Mathieu van der Poel, Guillaume Martin, Ion Izagirre, Ruben Guerreiro, Matteo Jorgenson, Dylan Teuns, Victor Campenaerts, Tobias Halland Johannessen, Mathieu Burgaudeau were the ones who had the least good reasons to quit . They found themselves exhausted and out of collective exhaustion. The stage victory became their business. The damage had already been done.

At kilometer one hundred the group was scattered along the route. They were scattered over seventeen kilometres: in front of them, Caleb Ewan and the trusty Jasper De Buyst – who tried not to let him drift – with the voiture-balai at his heels ready to pick them up on board, put an end to an impossible pursuit. They didn’t accept the invitation, they kept on pedalling, they arrived more than 37 minutes after the first one: Ion Izaguirre.

The Basque spun off alone on the last climb of the day, he had the good sense to wait for the end of the quarrels between Thibaut Pinot, Matteo Jorgenson and Guillaume Martin, to wait for Mathieu van der Poel’s blind faith in his going hard and long exhausted, to try and find solitude. He was amazed when kilometers later he turned to see what was happening behind him: he saw the void. He understood that he had finally managed to grab what had often slipped away from his legs: the right moment, the one capable of surprising and disrupting.

Ion Izaguirre really seized the moment. He enjoyed it to the last meter. He crossed the finish line and let out a liberating scream, that of someone who knows he has thrown away many chances in his life. He hadn’t won the Tour de France since 2016. At the time he still believed that one day he could aim to be among the very first in the general classification in a three-week stage race. The facts made him change his mind, led him to prefer the single day, to seek escape as the completion of his soul. He failed many, some he let slip away, today he took her, squeezed her, brought her home. This is how he goes into cycling, sometimes one day is enough and you realize that everything that seemed wrong wasn’t really wrong, or at least not entirely.

Thibaut Pinot and Guilleume Martin enjoyed today, now they look forward to tomorrow. They gained minutes, they got close to the top positions – still far away -, they hope to still have good bottom and legs for the mountains to come. Tomorrow is the Jura massif, the uphill finish at the Grand Colombier. Saturday and Sunday the Alps, two tough stages, not at very high altitudes, but hectic like certain pursuits.

Tour de France, 12th stage. The order of arrival and the general classification