It was raining a lot on the edge of Valence after stage 17 of the Tour de France in July. After days of baking heat, the sky had turned black on the edge of the Ardèche; if real life was a school English essay, the phrase pathetic fallacy would be on everyone’s lips. The world’s biggest bike race has a habit of bringing everyone back down to earth, metaphorically as well as literally, as the majesty of Mont Ventoux the previous day was followed by a sprint on an arterial road, hemmed in by grey offices.
The sense of doom was increased by the chaos at the finish, where a prankster had somehow got onto the course, and a crash in the final kilometre which led to a handful of riders contesting for the win, which went to Jonathan Milan.
Or so we thought. In an interview this week, his UAE Team Emirates-XRG colleague Tim Wellens revealed that Pogačar visited hospital that evening due to knee pain, and that there were fears that he would have to leave the race. It is remarkable that this didn’t come out before, given the world we live in, but I like the mystery, the intrigue.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly thoughts on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Of course, his departure didn’t come to pass – the Slovenian went on, kept his yellow jersey through the Alps, and won by over four minutes in Paris. It was clear in the last days of the Tour that this was a different Pogačar, however, one who didn’t win on Ventoux, on the Col de la Loze, or in La Plagne.
This did not pass unnoticed; in every press conference in that final week, Pogačar was asked some variation of the question ‘what’s up?’ or ‘are you bored?’ from the assembled press. The answer, though, was not “my knee hurts” but…