The Pyrenees part in waves. Balder than the Alps, whose trees plunge into the valley, but no less precipitous. Today, there was the feeling that something must happen. In places like this, at cyling races like these, things happen. The air was thin but fresh in the lungs, its scent a mixture of water and earth. The sun burned harder all the way up there in these mountains, but it is still cool outside and everything is green, even though it hasn’t rained for some time. This Tour de France, the rain almost never reared its head. The heat baked the backs of men. The slow-motion way we change the world became apparent in a way that wasn’t so slow.
We walked across the river which sat low in its bed. Weaving through the down-mountain resort infrastructure, past bars, past people in spas despite the heat. And then we got into a ski lift to the top of Peyragudes. On the other side of this mountain is Luz Ardiden. So often, the Tour is a mirror of itself. Past and present staring at one another. Last year, I was on Luz Ardiden a far different person, feeling things, agonizing. Today, I just wanted to work.
Despite working, it was quite nice to see the cattle and their offspring graze on a lazy hill, to see from above the meandering brook cutting into pale grass, to trace the laces of mountain bike paths. It’ll be a long wait for the something that should happen to happen. When we left the press room, Pinot and Lutsenko were in a two-up break. When we got to the top of the mountain, it’d broken apart. Riders were scattered all over the road and would be reabsorbed, and in the end their efforts would be forgotton on a stage like today’s, a GC day, as it were.
Not wanting to walk down to the finish out of fear of missing the riders coming to the busses, we took advantage of the UAE Team Emriates bus pulling into its alloted slot because we knew they’d let us watch on their TV. And so we all sat down on the hillside and leaned against the grassy slope, watching. In the distance, the litter-like presence of the Tour de France’s infrastructure, and even further, a great romantic peak emerging from above the clouds.
The thing that was supposed to happen burned inside of us. Today was the day Tadej Pogačar needed to try and depose of his rival Jonas Vingegaard in order to pull some seconds out of his time gap. Stitch things back up. Pogačar was running out of time to do this. But the kilometers ticked down and the anticipation became unbearable until it really was unbearable. And on the penultimate climb, Pogačar fought, wresting violently out of the wheel of Brandon McNulty, who had done the turn of a lifetime and wasn’t done doing it.
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