THE KIDS A REAL RIGHT
John Whitney is slowly getting used to the idea of Tour de France winners being nearly half his age
“The race was thought to suit the sorts of physiologies developed through the hard grind of experience”
As a sports nerd, the age of the athletes I watched has been a marker for my own passage through time. As a teenager, every sports star was my elder: they were people to idolise, to aspire to be like, to even dream of emulating. Now, pushing 40, and at an age that most competitors in physical sports are lucky to make it beyond, they really do make you feel bloody ancient.
The retirement from test match cricket of Andrew Flintoff in 2009 was a bit of a milestone – his was the first sports career I felt like I’d closely followed from start to finish, from rambunctious youth to embattled, injury-plagued veteran.
I now find myself at the point where sports stars who I’d started watching as an adult are calling it quits at an age younger than me. And as someone who was weened on sport and would have given almost anything to make it in one of the sports I played, it’s strange to be getting to an age where all people involved in professional sport are now younger than me. I’m grateful, then, for Roger Federer, who’s still at the top of the tennis world and showing none of the usual signs of ageing. I caught a re-run this summer of his breakthrough match at
Wimbledon in 2001, when he beat Pete Sampras, and came to the conclusion that rather than ever seeming youthful, he’s looked about 31 for the past 20 years. But I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who watched agog as a 21-year-old, Tadej Poga ar, won the Tour de France, on debut, in September. I thought I had a few more years on the clock yet before I was old enough to have fathered the yellow jersey winner.
Granted, the history of sport is peppered with performances of breathtaking brilliance from kids. Boris Becker winning Wimbledon at 17. Tiger Woods winning golf’s Masters at 21 by a record-breaking 12 shots. Winning the Tour de France, however, has rarely been for the young, particularly recently. The heavy hitters of the past three decades have all captured their first victories in their late twenties: Chris Froome was 28, Lance Armstrong and Miguel Indurain were both 27. And many of the one-time winners have been thirtysomethings: Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas were both 32, Cadel Evans 34. Two-time winner Alberto Contador was a youthful 24 on his first win in 2007, but he could, arguably, be clubbed together with other once-in-ageneration talent like five-time winners Bernard Hinault (23) and Eddy Merckx (24).
Much was made of 22-year-old Egan Bernal’s win in 2019, which made him the third youngest Tour de France winner in history, but few would have banked on an even younger winner coming along a mere 12, or even a Covid-induced 14, months later, not least an extremely boyish kid in his second year as a professional such as Poga ar.
History, science and logic has tended to suggest that the Tour de France is designed for more mature athletes. Often talked up as the toughest endurance race on the planet, the race was thought to suit the sorts of unshakeable physiologies developed through the hard grind of experience. On top, the complexities of navigating a three-week race, with all that can go wrong, might favour those who’ve been around the block. Nothing has changed in human physiology, and little has changed about the race’s structure, so how can the emergence of Poga ar and Bernal be explained? Freakish physiology aside, simply showing it can be done must be rocket fuel to every young rider in the world. Remco Evenepoel, 20 years old and widely tipped to shortly dominate the sport, said it was “motivating” to see Poga ar romp to the yellow jersey.
So, they’ll soon all be young ’uns for me from here on out. Slowly, I’m coming round to the idea, as I move into this new phase of my life as a sports fan. It must be time to upgrade that armchair...