THE RETURN OF THEKING
The rain that soaked the 2021 Tour de France peloton in the two big Alpine stages, to Le Grand-Bornand and Tignes, was an apt metaphor for the effectiveness with which Tadej Pogacar doused the ambitions of his rivals for the yellow jersey in that single weekend. The precipitation was not as dramatic as the highlylocalised deluge that triggered landslides and a truncated race last time the Tour came to Tignes in 2019, but this time a different force of nature bent the race to its will.
As the favourites’ group started the Col de Romme on stage 8, the first mountainous day, race followers could still imagine that the Tour was alive. And theoretically, at that point, it still was, though a week of chaotic racing, crashes and even UAE fluffing their first attempt at holding the race together the previous day had still left Pogacar by far the best-placed of the GC riders, and already 90 seconds clear of the two individuals who would share the final podium with him in Paris, Jonas Vingegaard and Richard Carapaz. But there was a visible and tangible difference between Pogacar and the rest on the Col de Romme. As Ineos tried and failed to set up a mountain train and Pogacar’s last remaining teammate Davide Formolo excruciatingly set a pace which had whittled the group down to a dozen or so, Pogacar looked easy, hands loosely on the brake hoods and his legs spinning without perceivable effort. By contrast, Richie Porte, for example, held his brake hoods in a death grip; even Carapaz looked tense and strained.
Pogacar’s first attack, about four kilometres from the top, did for everybody except Carapaz, but it was clear that the body language displayed by each rider was as different as Ecuadorian Spanish and Slovenian. Pogacar’s cadence remained relaxed enough for
