Display in red and yellow. Red for leader, yellow for Jumbo. A perfectly planned and executed operation. A display of superiority in the staggered management of attacks. The Jumbo is overwhelmingly superior and wants to be noticed, to be seen. A work of titanic goldsmiths. Vingegaard won the stage, Kuss, second, retains the red and Roglic made third on the day in which Remco Evenepoel imploded to bursting in what may force him to rethink his future goals.
Remco bent the knee. And he did it very early, at the beginning of the climb to the Aubisque. A double surprise, totally and prematurely. And with him, although that was less important, Joao Almeida. That was the shocking news of a magnificent day of cycling. A day worthy of the grandeur of the environment. From where the stage started, the Portalet is not a big deal, a third pass with four kilometers of moderate ascent. But as an appetizer it was indigestible. And maybe, unexpectedly, it sat badly with an Evenepoel who, then, from the first skirts of the Aubisque no longer raised his head. It was K.O from breakfast.
Suddenly, the race was experiencing a commotion. And, as the occasion is painted bald, Bahrain (betting on Landa?) took matters into its own hands and contributed to begin to break the peloton into numerous and irregular pieces. Michael Storer crowned the Aubisque (16 kms. with a maximum slope of 17% and an average of 13%), of special category, and formed with Landa, Elissonde, Kron and Rodríguez a small group in the vanguard. It was hot and people were suffering.
How will the podium finish?
The Aubisque pickle ended up leaving ahead a score of chosen, in what constituted the hierarchical bud of the stage, waiting for what the Tourmalet would bring: Kuss, Vingegaard, Roglic, Gesink, Kelderman, Mas, Ayuso, Soler, Landa, Vlasov, Caruso, Martínez, De la Cruz, Carthy, López, Buitrago, Rubio, Uijtdebroeks... Note, in the relationship, the header with the Jumbo repoquer, the team that rules, that commands, that imposes.
In the Spandelles, first, Gesink was a torture machine on a rough asphalt that clung to the decks. Storer jumped, in search of the points and, incidentally, although he did not care, the six seconds of bonus. It did matter to Vingegaard, who grabbed four. And Ayuso, who swept away with two.
The Tourmalet started, also of special category, 19 kms. of maximum slope to 13% and medium to 7.4%. By itself it is an endless slope. If you finish a brutal day, it becomes a wall. Under Gesink's always sacrificial initiative, the hemorrhage began, drop by drop, man by man.
Demarró Vingegaard to 8 kms. of arrival. Back side fights were played in the game of thrones. The overall is now headed by the three Jumbos: Kuss, Roglic and Vingegaard. Ayuso, fourth, hold on. But, fifth, too, but less. There is still a race: the closure, right now, of the Pyrenees with Larra-Belagua; the two Asturian stages, with the Angliru and the Cruz de Linares. And even the Segovian mountains.
But the current impression is that the Jumbo dominates and the only unknown lies in the possible changes of parts on the podium.