Tour de France. Jasper Philipsen followed the old rule

Three things Roland Barthes remembered well of his six years as children Bayonne: chocolate, mosquitoes, running naked in the fields. It seems strange, but there is something that links swampy areas to running naked in the fields, as if it were an irresistible attraction. Creedence Clearwater Revival lead singer John Fogerty sang the same on the track “Born on the Bayou”: Running through the blackwood, bare / And I can still hear my old hound dog barking. John Fogerty had ever been in the bayou, he was from California, but playing country rock one can only end up along the Mississippi in some way, even if only with the imagination. Sometimes coincidences manage to surprise. Even more those in the names. Bayonne, or Baiona in Basque and Gascon, should derive from the Gascon bajones, swamps: the area between the Adour and Nive rivers was a huge swamp; Bayou, on the other hand, comes from bayouk, which in the Choctaw language – a native American population – meant tortuosity but also an unhealthy environment. Roland Barthes wrote that “it is useless to be surprised by coincidences, they can simply happen because reality is complex and multifaceted and there are more events that present similarities than we are led to think”. He added: “Often coincidences have no meaning, they are only approaches of meaning that we make erroneously, bringing together different knowledge and trying to find similarities”. If you want to look for them, you will find a lot of them. Like what Neilson Powless it is of Native American origin as the term bayouk sounds so similar to Bayonne; like the fact that Laurent Pichon won the first five races among professionals always in territories that were swamps. Neilson Powless and Laurent Pichon would have liked to reach Bayonne, the finish site of the third stage of the Tour de France, in front of everyone, otherwise you wouldn’t go on a breakaway. They chased each other for a long time, each with his own motivations. The former wanted to strengthen the dots on his best climber jersey – he has racked up another seven and now they are eleven more than Tadej Pogacar –, the latter with the crazy idea of ​​being able to win a stage. It went well for the American, he did a bit of theater at the top of the côte, a tribute to the fans of white and red polka dot clothes, the right way to feel important and make them feel important; not to the French, but that’s not a problem, he’s a striker, one who isn’t afraid to go on the run. Neither Victor Lafay it seems to be afraid of the loneliness of the pursued. Today he did about twenty kilometers in front of the group in order to forfeit a few more points to continue wearing the green jersey. She did the calculations well, tomorrow she will carry it on her shoulders too.

The Tour de France, after two eventful stages, several little hills and some surprises in the Basque country, allowed itself, for its arrival in France, a quiet procession towards Bayonne. A long chase without any anxiety to the fugitives, a quick preparation for the first group sprint of the 110th edition. Jasper Philipsen was the first to pass under the Bayonne finish banner and by margin, ahead of Phil Bauhaus and Caleb Ewan. Clear victory on the road, victory suspended for a while at the end of the race. Minutes that seemed like hours to Philipsen: he was huffing like an ordinary person in line at the registry offices of a big city. The finish line was at the end of a long semi-curve, Jasper Philipsen was in front, he had taken a trajectory that slightly cut the roadway from left to right, near the barriers, Wout van Aert had taken the inner one, the one close to the barriers protections. Coinciding trajectories, but without malice on the part of the former, just the old and still valid lesson: take the center and aim for the outside. However, the jury seemed not to remember the old and always valid lessons. He thought about it for a long time, evaluated well, then realized that nothing irregular had happened. It is the second time (it happened on the first stage) in three days that Wout van Aert chooses the least suitable place to pass his opponents.

Perhaps it should have gone like this, at least by coincidence: Jasper Philipsen was born in Mol, which like Bayonne has a unique chocolate, a different way of production compared to all the other Belgian countries.

Perhaps it should have gone like this, regardless of the coincidences: the finale was a succession of big corners, good supporters were needed to keep the pace very high and Alpecin-Deceuninck had the best. Above all, you had Mathieu van der Poel who honed even more his skills as a pilot fish, as a springboard.

We’ll see if the wonderfully synchronized mechanism of the Belgian team will repeat itself tomorrow: we arrive at the circuit, there are many big corners, we’ll need the team.

Tour de France, 3rd stage. The order of arrival and the general classification