Pogacar wins 2nd straight Tour title
Van Aert claims 21st stage
PARIS, July 18, (AP): Tadej Pogacar won the Tour de France for a second straight year after a mostly ceremonial final stage to the Champs-Elysees on Sunday in cycling’s biggest race.
The Slovenian rider with UAE Team Emirates successfully defended his huge lead of 5 minutes, 20 seconds over second-place Jonas Vingegaard.
The 22-year-old Pogacar won his first title last September when he became the Tour’s youngest champion in 116 years. He is now the youngest double winner of the race.
CYCLING
Wout van Aert won the 21st stage in a mass sprint. That prevented Mark Cavendish from beating Belgian great Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 stage wins which the British sprinter equaled earlier in the race.
The mostly flat 108-kilometer (67-mile) leg began in Chatou just outside Paris and concluded with eight laps up and down the famed avenue.
Richard Carapaz finished third overall, 7:03 off the pace.
Pogacar and his teammates rode at the front of the pack together as they reached the Champs-Elysees, and the Slovenia champion raised his fist in the air in celebration.
Pogacar’s gesture acted as a sig
nal for those fighting for a prestigious stage win as the first accelerations took place. But the attackers’ efforts did not pay off and the stage ended in a mass sprint.
Cavendish, who consoled himself with the best sprinter’s green jersey, banged his handlebar in frustration after van Aert edged Jasper Philipsen to the line. Cavendish was third.
First ‘positive’ COVID-19 tests for athletes in Olympic Village
TOKYO, July 18, (AP): Two South African soccer players have become the first athletes inside the Olympic Village to test positive for COVID-19, with the Tokyo Games opening on Friday.
An official with the South African soccer team also tested positive, as did a fourth member of South Africa’s contingent, the head coach of the rugby sevens team. The rugby team were in a pre-Games training camp in another Japanese city.
Organizers confirmed the positive tests for the two athletes in the Olympic Village in Tokyo on Sunday but didn’t identify them other than to say they were non-Japanese.
The South African Olympic committee later confirmed the three COVID-19 cases in their soccer delegation at the village - two players and a video analyst. All three were now in isolation at the Tokyo 2020 isolation facility, the South African Olympic committee said. The players were defender Thabiso Monyane and midfielder Kamohelo Mahlatsi.
The rest of the South Africa soccer squad had tested negative for the virus twice and was “following closely all the recommendations of the local health authorities,” the South African Olympic committee said.
OLYMPICS
South Africa are due to play Japan in their first game of the men’s soccer competition on Thursday at Tokyo Stadium.
South African rugby sevens coach Neil Powell tested positive on Saturday and is in an isolation facility in the southern city of Kagoshima, where the team are preparing for the Olympics. Powell will have to stay in isolation for 14 days and will miss the rugby sevens competition, South Africa’s national rugby body said.
Powell had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine in South Africa on May 24, team spokesman JJ Harmse told The Associated Press.
South African Olympic and soccer officials didn’t immediately confirm whether the two soccer players and official who tested positive had been vaccinated.
However, South Africa’s Olympic committee said in May it would offer all its Olympic athletes going to Tokyo the J&J vaccine.