A weary but satisfied Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) completed the final mountain stage of the Tour de France with his seventh place on GC all but guaranteed and the memory of a day in yellow and a stage win to spur him on for more in 2024.
Riding his first Tour de France, the 2022 Giro d’Italia winner has had a rollercoaster race.
A dramatic triumph in the Pyrenees and first-week maillot jaune were then followed by a long battle for a top overall standing against not just the other GC contenders, but also both a spell of illness and some energy-sapping injuries incurred in a major 60kmh crash early on stage 14.
Suffering from a large hematoma and back injuries in his back for most of the rest of the Tour, Hindley slid off the provisional podium that day and then out of the top five.
However, as the race moved into week three, he managed to put an ever-stronger brake on the downward spiral. He ended by finishing the last high mountains stage in eleventh place, less than a minute down on winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and will ride into Paris 14:44 down on race winner Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) but still in seventh.
The Australian will naturally be wondering what could have been after the crash and illness, but at the very least, as he said after stage 20, “I think I can walk away with no regrets.”
“There were lots of ups and downs but I left everything out there on the road and we’ve come away with a stage win and a day in a yellow jersey, so it’s not so bad,” Hindley pointed out.
Being new to the Tour, “I didn’t know what to expect, of course, but GC-wise, you always want to be right up there in the mix.”
“I felt like going it was going in a good direction, but I had some illness and also this crash as well which is still affecting me a bit.”
“But that’s all part of it, and I’m just really happy to make it to Paris and finish my first Tour of France. So I’m pretty satisfied with it.”
Second in the 2020 Giro d’Italia then the outright winner in 2022, Hindley feels more than motivated by his Tour de France stage 5 success, yellow jersey and seventh place overall to return to see how much better he can do in the future, he promised.
Not all riders managed to bridge the divide between top-level Grand Tour racing in the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France, but Hindley’s performance this July has proved to both himself and his team that he’s mastered that particular challenge.
“I definitely want to come back and see what else I can throw at this race,…
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