ANALYSIS: ANNEMIEK VAN VLEUTEN
Egan Bernal timed his run at the Tour de France perfectly. Procycling looks back at how he hid in plain sight, then held his nerve to win Colombia's f irst yellow jersey
We look at the four biggest wins by the Dutch rider this year, and how she achieved them
Egan Bernal won the 2019 Tour de France thanks to his exploits on a stage that never ended. It will doubtless become a pub quiz question but it also acts as a metaphor for a race that so captivated its audience that many really did not want it to end.
The stage that never ended was thus, in a way, the perfect ending. But the events of stage 19 on Friday 26 July, lasting only two hours, 40 minutes and 31 seconds (another curiosity: everyone finished at the same time, though not every rider was given the same time), will be examined and discussed for years.
It was to be the decisive stage of the 2019 Tour, starting in SaintJean-de-Maurienne, climbing the monster Col de l’Iseran and then plunging down the other side before finishing with the relatively short, fast climb to Tignes, one of the ugliest ski resorts in the Alps. The riders never made it to Tignes, or at least not on their bikes.
But let’s rewind, and look especially at Bernal, championin-waiting. Despite his youth, the 22-year-old had been many people’s favourite when the Tour started in Brussels more than two weeks earlier. You could almost say that he was the favourite by omission, however. Chris Froome, Tom Dumoulin and Primož Roglic were among the top riders missing. Vincenzo Nibali was there in body, but not in mind – or perhaps the other way round.
There were questions against all of Bernal’s rivals, even the defending champion, and Bernal’s team-mate at Ineos, Geraint Thomas. Having shown little all season, Thomas crashed out of the Tour de Suisse, an important building block in his preparation. Bernal, returning from the crash and broken collarbone that kept him out of the Giro, duly won it.
Bernal also won Paris-Nice and finished third at the Volta a Catalunya, but victory in Switzerland posed as many questions as it answered. Second, only 19 seconds down, was Rohan Dennis. For all that so many big names were missing as the Tour started, Bernal would surely face tougher opposition than Dennis once the race heated up in France.
In the first two mountain ranges, Bernal was a peripheral figure. On the early summit finish, at La Planche des Belles Filles, he couldn’t hold Thomas, Thibaut Pinot, Julian Alaphilippe and even Nairo Quintana, finishing with some second-tier favourites, or fancied outsiders: Mikel Landa, Richie Porte and Jakob Fuglsang. The time trial in Pau looked a more serious setback. Bernal was 22nd, losing over a minute and a half to Alaphilippe and Thomas. Then it was into the Pyrenees, where Pinot was the big winner. On both summit finishes Bernal conceded ground. True, he lost only 26 seconds to the Frenchman, but the margins between the favourites were so miniscule that this seemed hugely significant.
At least it did, until stage 19. They lined up with Pinot nursing a mysterious injury that nobody even knew about and Bernal buoyed by the previous day,
2 Grand tours Bernal has ever contested