Egan stays dignified after Tour Bern-out

With three race days to go, Roglic has been riding a race worthy of the yellow jersey

IS THERE anything more 2020 than the sight of the defending Tour de France champion, the No.1 on his back and a smile on his face, dropping back to the team car to collect his own food bag?

In this topsy-turvy year, nothing makes sense, so everything does. There are few surprises that can still truly carry the weight of the word. Egan Bernal’s slide down the Grand Colombier and all the way out the bottom of the race three days later was the biggest mark the defending champion had made on the Tour in the whole two weeks of racing prior.

If that sounds disrespectful, it’s not meant to be, because the way in which Bernal dealt with his very public, muchscrutinised fall from the top step showed more of the signs of a champion than even his winning last year.

It takes a certain kind of physiology, a freakish athletic talent, to win a Tour de France. That, and a confluence of circumstances, throughout a lifetime, and a lack of bad luck for three solid weeks. It takes a dedication, a concerted team effort and a not insignificant amount of financial investment.

To become a champion is something else entirely. That requires a grace, a much lauded, indefinable ‘class’ that is arguably much harder to come by.

Bernal is the young hotshot who catapulted himself through the corporate ranks, only to find himself back working the coffee station overnight. Instead of petulant protests, or half-believable excuses served in a caffeine-slopped saucer, we got a smile, a self-deprecating honesty and a poised notepad and pen. ‘I wasn’t good enough, and the others were stronger. Now, how do you take your bidons? Milk, two sugars? Coming right up.’

And so, in the first season branded as the Ineos Grenadiers, we have the team who have won seven of the past eight Tours de France facing the final week without a team leader, without a stage win and with a huge drawing board looming where the podium in Paris used to stand.

Bernal, meanwhile, has not only been dropped from the race, but will not represent his country at the upcoming world championships. The speed with which he has plummeted from King of Colombia to below cycling sea level would have even a descending Marc Hirschi clenching his buttocks.

Elite sport is a brutal business, and we must hope Bernal has the emotional and psychological support he will need after the kind of rollercoaster year-and-a-half with which someone with twice the living under their belt would struggle.

On the race goes, and as the Rog and Pog show continues its open-air theatre tour of France, thank goodness for the unpredictable magnificence of Team Sunweb. Not since the devil-may-care glee of 2017, when Warren Barguil and Michael Matthews were delighting us with their daring assaults on polkadot and green respectively, have we seen the team bring, and have, so much fun.

It is not the wins that have mattered most but the way in which they have been shaken loose, as though stage victories were a pinata to be beaten furiously, the stick passed back and forth until the jelly-sweeted shower finally comes.

The praise for co-ordinating who gets to step up to the papier-mache champagne bottle, and when, has largely gone to Team Sunweb’s British DS Matt Winston. But a considerable amount of party-planning praise must surely go to the man who has played this game more than most, Nico Roche.

The Irishman, the oldest on the team by seven years, has been calling the shots on the road, deciding when to stick to the morning’s briefing and when to draw up an entirely new plan.

The fact both Hirschi, and Soren Kragh Anderson’s wins have come from late attacks, rather than a pre-planned breakaway, and that each has featured another two Sunweb riders in the top ten, would suggest some masterful inrace tactical calls. Expect another Sunweb coin or two in the jukebox today. There are more than two ways to skin a pinata.

The man dominating the dancefloor, though, is Primoz Roglic. With three more GC racing days to come, he has been riding a race more than worthy of the yellow jersey, and yesterday showed he has earned the right to be supported by the strongest team. They say the best squad at the Tour de France can only win the race if it also contains the best rider. Jumbo Visma and Primoz Roglic have been exactly that so far.

With last year’s winner not making it to the start of this year’s Queen stage, we know at least the King is dead. Long live the King?