When it reaches Paris, every year, except this Olympic year, the Tour is a routine and tiring party, toasts with champagne in plastic flutes, obligatory photos, childishness of people on the road tired at the end. When the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, exalted by his role as a unique cyclist, climbs the rue From the Moulin Rouge to the Place de Tertre and all the most touristic places in Paris, the cycling race on the road becomes something unique, the epic of the authentic invades the territory of cheap painters, of fake prints, and with Jim Morrison’s grave not far away, in Père Lachaise, the summit of the authentic, the profound. The intimate effort shared with the fans who, behind the crowded barriers, get excited and ask for another beer.
Remco Evenepoel is turning the race that seemed puny into a monument, the sixth monument of cycling, one that only comes along every four years.
And yet, Remco Evenepoel is nothing more than a child with a tourist’s soul, that is his beauty, and his naive smile when, after winning, alone, his second gold medal in eight days on the streets of Paris – equalling the only Olympic double so far by Dutch cyclist Van Moorsel in Sydney – after the time trial in the downpour last Saturday, he gets off his bike even before crossing the line, drawn on the Jena bridge, where the walkers dance, holds it with both hands and poses as any other would pose. tourist in front of the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps that’s why, to know if he would have time to indulge in the ultimate indulgence that only champions can imagine, he anxiously asked the television cameraman on a motorbike who was filming his final kilometres along the Seine for the live broadcast, what time it was.
The anguish was born from the scare, another tourist scare, that he suffered when he got a puncture next to the Louvre Pyramid, on the uneven and bouncy cobblestones. Out of control – there is no middle ground for children, either everything is normal or everything is a disaster – the Belgian phenomenon demanded a new bike from his team. There was no need for urgency. By then he was already more than a minute and a half ahead of the second-placed rider, the tenacious Valentin Madouas, who gave France the silver medal. Behind a group even further back than the one in which another Frenchman, Christophe Laporte, scraped for bronze, came the big losers, Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock, destroyed by the attacks of the unstoppable Belgian.
Evenepoel, hyperactive all day on the bike, especially after passing the Jacques Anquetil monument at the top of the Châteaufort hill, marking the end of the ride through the countryside, along the gentle hills of La Chevreuse, the minimal peloton entered the urban chaos. They climbed three times to the Sacré Coeur, a Flemish cobblestone wall surrounded by terraces and shops. souvenirs. After the first climb, 50 kilometres from the finish, Evenepoel took the lead and, on the flat return, he took the lead without looking back, as is his habit. Progressive accelerations that ten, eight, seven… resisted, little by little. Little by little, the wagons fell behind. After the second climb, only Madouas was able to offer a single relief, and Remco did not ask for one. On the third climb, Evenepoel was alone. The others were enjoying Paris.
After doing some work for the team, Nils Politt, the German tank who raided the Alps and Pyrenees for his boss Tadej Pogacar, parks his bike in front of Les Deux Moulins, the café made famous by the film Amelia. “Les toilettes, s’il vous plâit?”“He asks. He goes into the bathroom, urinates, and comes out cheered on by happy cycling fans with human faces and smiling faces who only dream of having their photo taken alone in front of the Eiffel Tower.
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