There was a time, not so long ago, when anyone who spoke of the Plateau de Beille (16 kilometres at 8%) would say “Platoooooo de Beiiiiille!” in the apocalyptic voice of Didi Senft, the devil who has been jumping in the ditches for so many Tours, and added, whose very name sends shivers down your spine. That time has passed, swept away by a cyclist, a phenomenon that, like Halley’s comet, only shines in the sky once every few decades, and leaves everyone with their mouths open in admiration and rapture, and even rivals applaud. It is the Tadej comet, which on Sunday illuminated the Plateau de Beille, which has perhaps already become an astronomical observatory waiting for, who knows when (cycling champions are born when they want, not when the astral order determines it), a similar phenomenon.
“We have witnessed the fastest climb in history,” proclaims the following day, a rest day in the Tour, which is approaching the Alps, the same Tadej Pogacar, who comes down to earth, returns to being the child he always wants to be, so mischievous, and says that on his bike ride he stopped at a bakery and ate “the best brownie” of his life, but don’t tell that to Gorka Prieto, his nutritionist.
The numbers leave cycling scientists and technologists, who are legion, scratching their heads. The first five kilometres were launched by Matteo Jorgenson, Vingegaard’s lieutenant who took on the climb to all, With six more kilometres behind the Dane, Pogacar completed the climb in 39m 39s (three minutes less than Marco Pantani’s magic in 1998), averaging 23.8 kilometres per hour. When he attacked, responding to Vingegaard’s last gasp, with five kilometres to go, on the hardest section (9.5%) he maintained 26.6 kilometres per hour for one kilometre, and completed the last five in 11m 41s. Vingegaard, second, who lost 68s in five kilometres, also beat Pantani’s record. He did not go below 40 minutes, but those who know his data claim that he needed a power of 6.7-8 watts per kilo to maintain his speed, which suggests that the Slovenian could have reached 6.9 or 7 watts per kilo. “It was the best day of my life on the bike,” said Vingegaard on Monday. “And I guess it was for Pogacar too, because I think it’s the best climb ever seen in cycling.”
Those who observed him closely did not hide their feeling of having been protagonists, supporting actors and witnesses of a great wonder. Unclassifiable. “He is greater than Eddy Merckx,” says Michael Rasmussen, the Danish cyclist who was defeated by Contador on his ascent of the Plateau de Beille in 2007. “When Merckx was riding, the peloton was much weaker. In the breakaway that ended up being annihilated there were Giro winners, Tour podium holders, Vuelta podium holders… And in just five kilometres he left Vingegaard and Evenepoel, two Tours and one Vuelta, in nothing…”
While Vingegaard repeats that he never gives up mentally, that someone who has won the Tour twice cannot settle for being second, that if he does something that takes him so long away from his family, and measuring his haemoglobin regularly to see how he recovers and assimilates training at altitude, he needs to be “hungry”, ambitious to obtain the best prize, his team lets slip, amazed, that not only will they not be able to beat the Slovenian this year, but not in the next five years either, and that no one will be able to beat him.
Remco Evenepoel, the happiest guy in the world with his white jersey, his third place on the podium and the feeling that the Tour loves him and welcomes him, and for having lost only 2m 51s on the Plateau, starts his press conference strongly. “Honestly, I think Tadej has finished the Tour in some way,” he says, and laughs. “No, no, I’m joking. A stage of 200 kilometres and 5,000 metres of climbing… Tadej’s climb is the best we will ever see in cycling. Someone who beats Pantani’s time by almost four minutes is simply someone from another planet. But I am proud to have been faster than Pantani too.”
Pogacar doesn’t want to talk about Pantani, who started winning the Tour in 1998 the same year as the Giro, which is exactly what Pogacar is aiming for this year, beating Jan Ullrich on the Plateau de Beille. “I was born two months after that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the experience of seeing Pantani or meeting him,” he says. “He is a god of cycling in Italy, but personally, I don’t like these comparisons, I don’t want to be compared to someone from 30 years ago.”
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
