Days like Stage 9 of the 2022 Tour de France are some of my favorite in Grand Tour racing. Yes, I love the days where almost every type of leader’s jersey seems to be up for grabs, when the eventual stage winner comes out of a haggard reduced bunch sprint after working together to stay away over, when an inconceivable weather event rocks up and imposes a higher will on the race. But the finale of Stage 9 was a welcome break to all the madness, one where the sport boils down into a competition between two people on two wheels each.
In the broader scope of this year’s Tour de France, not much happened on the road from Aigle, Switzerland to Châtel Les Portes du Soleil. The maillot pois for the king of the mountains was the only jersey that changed hands going from EF’s much-loved Dane Magnus Cort to a deserving Cofidis’ Simon Geschke. Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard launched away from the group of favourites with only a few kilometers remaining and widened their gap to the rest by another three seconds, further cementing the duo’s dominance in the race so far.
Watching the race from home one can be forgiven for missing that final attack by Pogačar in his maillot jaune. I only found out while writing this that it was Pogačar who instigated the move and not Vingegaard. However, we missed that move for a reason and that reason was Bob Jungels and Thibaut Pinot.
By numbers alone cycling is much better at producing “losers” than “winners”. Even in stage racing with its sub-prizes for mountain and sprint points, young rider’s and general classifications, and the often nebulously defined “combativity” award there are way more riders who “lose” than “win” on any given day. Yes, obviously there is something to be said of the noble domestiques who rarely have any intention of winning, but on paper they still do not win by the sport’s metrics. Of the 165 riders who started stage 9, if every jersey changed hands, someone won without taking a jersey, and someone else won the combativity award) there would only be a total of six winners on the day. Only 3.63% of the peloton would have experienced any sort of “objective” win.
While cycling may not churn out many winners by the numbers, it reigns supreme at setting them up to be, to borrow a term from Kate, moral winners in the future. Cycling is a difficult sport where you must literally overcome mountains that have frustrated entire empires and the roads built by them. This adversity is the event itself. We attach ourselves to riders not because we see ourselves in their talent, but because we see ourselves in their struggles. With the age of social media we no longer must relate to a rider on even that abstract of a level. We’re given a window into their lives and personhood off the bike as well and this, too, is what makes us cheer when they win. The day’s protagonists, Bob Jungels and Thibaut Pinot, are in a particularly interesting situation: both are moral winners.
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