Sport grew as a metaphor for life, but it is more important than life itself, and when rebels crystallize, they gain power. Like Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, who enchant fans with their ability to generate the unexpected, the surprising, and bore them because they turn the never seen into what is seen every day. Repeated things are boring. Cycling lives like in the times of Eddy Merckx, 50 years ago, only one above, everyone fighting to be second, but worse, because in the race in which Pogacar is not there is Vingegaard, two who cannibalize the peloton and do not fight against others but against history, so unique, so important, and it only makes the heart that enjoys real life happy to see how Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič suffer, aspiring superheroes, before runners like Matteo Jorgenson, so human that they hurt and excite .
In the Strade Bianche, eight days ago, Pogacar left alone 81 kilometers from the finish line and converted the followers, some of the best cyclists of his generation, into the most admired, Pidcock, heavenly a year ago, Mohoric, unreachable in San Remo, in a group of impotence, “petrified lead soldiers,” Alex Roos masterfully describes in L’Equipe. Pogacar, still almost 26 years old and already two Tours, one Flanders, two Lombardies, one Liège, is an enigma from another world, fans agree, and five days later Jonas Vingegaard devours the Tirreno-Adriatico as he devoured a month ago O Great Way.
Journalists call him copy because, like Pogacar, he refuses to arrive accompanied to a finish line after a stage that has a minimum of mountain passes – three stage victories in Galicia, two in Italy, in San Giacomo, on Friday, in Monte Petrano, the Saturday, in the mountains of Abruzzo and in the Papal Marches—he laughs and says that he doesn’t give a damn what anyone says, that he is only interested in Frida, his daughter, Trine his wife, and the alliance he kisses in each victory, and in July the Tour, and the Spaniard who arrives, Juan Ayuso, 21 years old, second in the two stages, second overall after having won the time trial on the first day, tries to follow his wheel in each attack, holds on a few meters and suffocating, and he smiles and says: “I ran out of air, my legs exploded, but I’m happy, I’m the first of humans.”
Ayuso is also the generational replacement. As are Matteo Jorgenson, or Matty J., his nickname, 24 years old, or Brandon McNulty, 25, stars in Paris-Nice, gregarious of Vingegaard and Pogacar, respectively. Two Americans who reminded the nostalgic that almost two decades ago world cycling was Yankee, Armstrong, Landis, Julich. Then, the void. Until now.
The duel that in sun race It should have been between Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič, two presumed tenors of the next Tour, it turned into a fight between two secondary players, two big kids who are friends and are happy to lose one to the other. The winner was Jorgenson, a lanky, red-haired Californian of 1.90 metres, who grew from 20 to 23 at Movistar, to whom, when his time came, the almighty Visma could have given him more affection than Eusebio Unzué. “I never thought I could win a WorldTour race like this,” Jorgenson said, “but he has changed everything so much here at Visma… In every detail, in every aspect, everything is different.” In the face of his attacks, and those of his compatriot and friend McNulty, from Phoenix, Arizona, so close to the Bates Motel in Psychosis, Evenepoel, in his debut in France, could not imitate Pogacar and Vingegaard, his models, and had to settle for the prestigious victory in the last stage, that of the col d’Éze. Roglic, who according to the coach who took Bora from Jumbo, Marc Lamberts, is as strong as in 2023, when he won the Tirreno thanks to bonuses, returns home with material to meditate on the intelligence of his departure from Jumbo , so strong, to Bora, where Vlasov grinds his teeth when they tell him that he has to help him, where, in the team time trial, only two were left with the Slovenian halfway, and when he gave strong relays he had to lift his foot, because he was left alone.
Unfortunately, for the fans, the aliens Pogacar and Vingegaard will not meet face to face until the summer, until the Tour tiebreaker (2-2 so far). Both will continue to fly over unopposed territories, perhaps. Pogacar will meet Mathieu van der Poel on Saturday the 16th in the Milan-San Remo and with no one later in the Volta. Another reality check awaits the Dane in April: Evenepoel and Roglic in the Tour of the Basque Country.
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