Geraint and Egan go up a mountain

APROPOS the eye-catching Tour de France picture capturing the camaraderie and brotherhood between Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas as they crossed the finishing line together, I was a teeny bit dismayed that Sir Dave Brailsford, the boss of Ineos, and the man who brought the universe’s most famous quotation back down to earth – “One marginal gain for an individual, one giant leap for the team” – and a Welsh speaker himself, hadn’t taught Egan some Welsh.

On the podium, the 22-yearold Colombian said “Thank you, Gee” – but how much more joyful it would have sounded with a “Diolch, Geraint”.

Indeed, when Egan spoke on the podium we learnt that, apart from being both a top rider and bloke, he is also a bit of a top linguist briefly addressing the crowd in four languages, so I guess a whole sentence in Welsh would have been a doddle.

Imagine though him saying this, particularly as he took over the yellow jersey on that now infamous stage 19 where global warming and an act of God intervened: “Gee ceffyl bach yn cario ni’n dau, dros y mynydd I hela cnau; eira ar yr heol a’r cerrig yn slic – stopion nw’r rhas, wel dyna chi dric!”

But ponder how fortuitous good and bad luck can be: Chris Froome suffers a serious error-of-judgment crash while on a reconnaissance of the fourth stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné; Egan, due to lead the Giro back in May, suffers an infuriating error-of-judgment crash on a training run a few days before the race and is out with a broken collarbone – thus offering an unexpected opening into the Tour.

Whilst Froome’s misfortune was a ghastly mistake, Bernal’s was a perfect mistake.

Confucius would doubtless cite the Colombian as a textbook example of how fate, with effort and application, can be converted into destiny. Huw Beynon Llandeilo