At seven-thirty in the morning, the sun filters through a brown mesh blind into my hotel room in Laško. Outside, the steep, green hills of Štajerska are struck by the same warm light and beneath them, in the parking lot, an armada of cars and trucks alights with activity. Mechanics from the Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team spin pedals and listen to the sounds they make, making a diagnosis. Staff pack up belongings. Bikes are perched and secured atop the roofs of cars. Soon they will leave the hotel after their breakfasts of rice and bread.
We are entering that special period before the Tour de France where cycling’s practitioners scatter themselves across Europe. Some, like Jonas Vingegaard, have already made their grand statements in the mountains of France, actions which speak definitively for themselves. Others, like Tadej Pogačar, have vanished into the chilly, anemic embrace of altitude, subjecting themselves to the rigors of reconnaissance. Others still decamp for Switzerland or Belgium to make their marks there. All will re-emerge on that fateful first day of the Tour de France and each will show the world what they brought from abroad.
Yet our cyclists outside, and many others, have descended upon Slovenia. Unlike last year, in which the race was smothered by Pogačar himself, this year’s will be an open race. The contenders include Domen Novak and Diego Ulissi of UAE Team Emirates, Davide Bias and Lorenzo Fortunato of Eolo Kometa, and Jayco-AlUla’s Filippo Zana, the latter three coming off a great Giro d’Italia. On the Slovenian side: Novak, second last year and mentioned before; Luka Mezgec, the key leadout man for Dylan Groenewegen; Gal Glivar, the emerging star from Adria Mobil, and, of course, Matej Mohorič though this year in a stage hunting role. There will be no time trials and the whole thing will be decided on Saturday in Kobarid, near the bright blue waters of the Soča river.
But now, we are in Laško, where they make the beer of the same name. The stage will start in Celje and will end, like last year, in the spa town of Rogaška Slatina. The whole affair for me is like a family reunion. It is as though life has been reset back to its summer condition, recalling inevitably that first summer where everything was perfect because it was new and expansive. We are only allowed one or two celebrated summers for a reason, perhaps to orient us for the rest of our summers. Yet it is a cruel fact of life that no two summers can ever be the same. They may look the same, feel eerily so, but will transpire differently beneath the great weight of that familiar, humid sky. For the cyclists also. As I said, last year the race was a slammed door, and now, even as they play the same songs on the radio, it’s wide open.
The smallness of cycling is always interesting to me. In Celje, at the Kongresni Center, about a hundred people mingle around, including the new mayor, Matija Kovač, a young socialist who upset the political landscape by usurping the five-time rule of the previous mayor. He is probably the most famous person here aside from maybe Mohorič. Last year, in Nova Gorica, not only was Pogačar present but also the Eurovision stars Joker Out (before Americans knew about them.) Hence, in attendance also were about 200 teenage girls.
The Celje scene is sleepy in comparison. Quiet normalcy. Riders’ parents show up. Only the Slovenian press and myself are there. The lifers. The announcers use the same goofy airhorn sounds as though ten thousand fans showed up. I love races like this. They are the easiest to cover and the best to attend, as a fan or as a journalist. You should go to the Tour of Slovenia if you can because you will get remarkably close to the athletes in a way that is not possible in other situations. Besides, the purpose of home is to return when it is at its least extraordinary. When there are no Pogačars and Joker Outs but there might be in the future. The project of being is long.
For the cyclists lining the stage, the canopy has opened to the sun of opportunity and they depart slowly, fade into traffic leaving nothing but people waiting to leave. You would be surprised and perhaps disappointed at the quotidian nature of the whole affair. But this is what makes cycling what it is, one of sport’s few populist institutions, free to watch at the point of access. Small children line the steps and wave flags. They will remember this day better than anyone, the day when they waited on the steps of the dvorana and saw a special parade.
Nothing in Slovenia is ever so far. The line tethering the start and the finish at Rogaška Slatina is taut. It takes forty minutes to get there but only because there is construction on the roads that cut through the lolling landscape separating Štajerska from Croatia. It is, I remark over and over, the same as last year, like living in a comfortable TV recap. Groenewegen might win again, too. He’s certainly the strongest, him and Phil Bauhaus and it’s not close otherwise. In Rogaška Slatina, after parking the car, we (me and Igor Tominec of RTV) sit for coffee and watch race officials mill about. Here in Rogaška Slatina, they made glass, glass that decorates tables around the country and glass that was useful, strategically, to the Nazis during the occupation years. Someone at the table tries to stream the Tour de Suisse but there is no coverage.
Then there is waiting.
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