Egan Bernal bloomed in yellow while unique Alpine dramas unfolded as a wonderful Tour rode towards its conclusion
The most meaningful touch of the 2019 Tour de France was not the slap Luke Rowe gave Tony Martin after the German had tried to run him into the gutter, leading to the expulsion of both riders from the race. It was the touch of hands between Julian Alaphilippe and Egan Bernal as they rode in the peloton towards Paris, a salute from the man who had brought the race to life to the one who was about to take the spoils: a moment summing up a race that, over the course of three weeks, had rekindled old enthusiasms and enraptured new audiences.
What, someone had asked me as I sat glued to the TV one afternoon in the middle week of the race, do you see in this? I tried to explain how a three-week Grand Tour resembles cricket in its prolonged complexity, but with one big difference: imagine a five-day Test, a 50-over one day match and a Twenty20 game being played simultaneously, with all the different priorities, internal rhythms and contrasting techniques superimposed on each other. And, again as with cricket, the elements play a vital role in ways that are often hard to predict.
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