MOUSEJAW, SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA-

Yeah yeah yeah. The tour ended a week plus ago. Listen bub. I’ve been prepping for a little movie that rhymes with Smedpool and Bluverine. I am a busy reporter. I have things to go, places to do.

I watched this year’s Tour de France really for the first time, with any daily interest. I’ve made pals you see with several individuals from various parts of Europe, where cycling matters. To talk with them about the race, the stage winners, the crashes and controversy made me feel like I belonged to an elite club. Cyclists. Those people who in an urban setting annoy the holy fuck out of every driver. And I love being in the company of people who can piss people off with ease.

I think the Tour matters more to the average Euro because it’s really a battle of the individual against self. It’s more concerned with the cyclist pushing themselves beyond limits than with team success or championships for God and Country. That isn’t to say there isn’t tribalism in the Tour or Europe, just that it doesn’t approach the level of Us versus Them in the U.S. The Patriots winning a Super Bowl is as much about team and fans/locals shitting all over everyone else, for example, as it is the struggle of a championship effort. Cycling is an old sport, but fringe one for this part of the world. Long stages, with periods of non action. You’ve got to pat attention to the minute details. you’ve got to learn a new language to understand, and not French. The language of the cyclist.

Who knows if the race was always this way, or if it is more of a recent thing. The language is no inaccessible but the faster you pick it up the faster you enjoy the race. The primary thing to understand is the winner of the overall Tour is only one of several rewards that riders can push for. The Yellow jersey is for the overall time leader and the most well known outside cycling aficionados- the one you think of when you think of the race. There are also winners for Sprinting, for Mountains, and for New Riders. Some riders excel at multiple things- like the overall winer Tadej Pogačar from Slovenia. Pogačar is not only one hell of an overall rider but he’s damn good at the mountain stages too- both going up and pushing as he does, but pushing and punishing going downhill as well.

The rider I enjoyed most this Tour was the young rider from Eritrea, Biniam Girmay. The 24 year old won 3 stages of this year’s Tour, becoming the first Black African to win one, then winning two more. That feels ugly to say, but cycling is not a cheap sport. There are hundreds of reasons why it hasn’t taken off in Africa, or America or other places. It may start to now though, as Girmay showed not only skill as a sprinter, but a knack for strategy and placement during Sprints and finishes, finding holes and places to sit until the moment was right to strike and push to the front. He went on to claim the Green jersey- the Points Classification- this year as well, another first for an African rider. The riders grab points for winning stages or sprints during the race. Its odd for a cycling novice like myself at times because you hear and see these sprinters so much over the case of the 20 plus days of racing, but because they are winning sprints doesn’t necessarily translate into being among the leaders overall. Girmay finished 113th out of 141 finishers overall. Finishing at the top of the leaderboard wasn’t in Girmay’s plans this year. To say that this year’s Tour, Girmay’s second, was his official coming out party for the larger world stage and not just to cycling nuts would be an under statement. And again it underlines the reality of the race- some riders and parts of teams are riding for what they can- not to win, because they know they have no shot to win, baring some miracle or disaster.

Which brings us back to Pogačar. He finished 6 minutes ahead of his rival Jonas Vingegaard. Watching the pieces of the broadcasts I was able to (I wasn’t getting up in the wee hours of the morning daily to watch entire stages) you at times forget about him. Some stages he would be back with the Peloton, minutes behind the leaders. There was even talk on more knowledgable sports sites about how Pogačar was even winning stages he did not need. Imaging someone in the U.S. saying that about the Celtics? Or any team in the NFL. That’s really how dominant Pogačar is. He can decide which stages strategically to go after to collect the best overall time, and execute flawlessly. Certainly having the team behind him he does helps, but from what I saw and what I heard, Pogačar is an attacker. Or more accurately, an ambush predator. He lies in wait, resting until he has to spend his energy to strike. He’s also largely liked by the other cyclists and seems to have little of the narcism of other riders like Lance Armstrong. He won his third Tour de France this year, winning it all in 2020 and 2022. He’s entering his prime as a professional, so it’s safe to assume he has a fantastic shot of winning more.

Which leads of course to the insinuations and whispers of PEDs. Pogačar has never failed a drug test, and cycling has spent time and money to try and rid the sport of performance enhancements that tainted past editions. It’s an impossible task as there are enough people willing to push that envelope that you’ll never fully be free of it. Lance Armstrong for years claimed he never failed a drug test, when of course in fact he had failed one, but had it swept under the carpet. There is no evidence or facts that show Pogačar is cheating. You can’t say he is clean with 100% accuracy, because who really knows but him. But as of today, no one has the goods that he is. That’s the rub with the sport. You’re going to have to take results on face value until proven otherwise. Makes you gunshy to pick a favorite and root for them.

The Tour as always was about endurance of the body and mind. And while they finished in Nice, and not the stroll into Paris as is traditional (the Olympic in Paris, starting this week made that a logistical impossibility), it was a fine finish to another great 21 stages of racing.

It made me want to go get a road bike and get out there.

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