EGA N 23 BERNAL
This year’s Tour looks made for defending champ Bernal – will he be the toast of Colombia again?
In 2019 the Col de l’iseran was the scene of a double regicide. Egan Bernal’s audacious, and ultimately successful, bid for Tour glory nearly 40km from the finish would be the catalyst for him taking two thrones.
The first was Nairo Quintana’s – the new Tour champion Bernal was received in Colombia with a fervour that has only been matched by the former Movistar man. While it’s fair to say Quintana still holds a special place in the hearts of Colombian sports fans, it is Bernal that is today’s golden child.
The second, it would turn out, was his team-mate Chris Froome’s. Bernal fulfilling his potential as a Grand Tour winner was doubtless a factor in Ineos team principal Dave Brailsford feeling he could afford to let Froome walk away to another team and still have enough riders on his payroll to win the Tour for years to come.
Now, however, Bernal finds himself at the top of the tree for the first time and all the pressure that brings.
His qualities as a rider are not in doubt. Although he spent much of his early days as a mountain biker, ever since his switch to riding on tarmac he’s been a force to contend with in the mountains. In his first year as a professional with Androni Giocattoli, aged 19, he won four young rider classifications in minor stage races, all off the back of his performance in the hills.
He quickly progressed and the following year he won the GC at the under-23 race the Tour de l’avenir – a classic stepping stone on the way to GC greatness in the senior ranks. That was enough to put him on many people’s radars across the sport and Ineos boss Brailsford was quick to sign Bernal to a five-year contract.
Tactical maturity
The Colombian’s rapid rise continued the following year, first with overall victory at the .1-ranked Oro y Paz. He went on to narrowly miss out on the win at the Tour de Romandie, where Primož Roglič (seven years his elder) beat him by eight seconds, before claiming the win at the Tour of California with a peerless performance on the brutal, decisive and almost entirely uphill 196km stage to South Lake Tahoe.
He’d go on to be one of the standout performers at that year’s Tour de France, where he was the youngest rider in the race and rode countryman Nairo Quintana off his wheels on the slopes of Alp d’huez.
Those qualities are magnified above 2,000m in altitude. Bernal’s hometown of Zipaquira is 2,650m above sea-level and it means he can keep pushing hard on even the highest of Alpine slopes – the l’iseran where he won the Tour last year is, at 2,770m, the loftiest paved pass in the Alps.
If he does have a weakness it’s against the clock, he only got a time trial bike in 2018 and while he was the Colombian time trial champion that same year, in the last two Tours he has been over a minute off the race leader’s time. However, there have also been races such as Paris-nice in 2019 where he’s done considerably better (usually when the course contains at least some climbing), suggesting improvements are being made.
That won’t matter too much at this year’s Tour, though, as there’s only one time trial and it’s up the formidable slope of Planche des Belles Filles.
The biggest question mark hanging over him is surely how he will handle the pressure of being the defending champion, watched by all 175 riders of the Tour peloton? From the way he conducts himself in interviews and the impression
you get when speaking to him, you can’t help thinking he’ll cope just fine. He seems utterly unfazed by the attention.
When CW spoke to him during his breakout performance and subsequent additional attention at the 2018 Tour, he said: “The press and people are saying I can win a Grand Tour and it’s like they want to give me pressure but I don’t feel any pressure.” Team staff also attest to a level of maturity that seems beyond his years. You can see it on the bike, too, where he is invariably in the best position for him in a group. As Thomas attacked on the Iseran last year, Bernal drifted backwards to mark yellow jersey Alaphilippe, seemingly safe in the knowledge that he could close the four or five bike lengths ahead of him. That takes confidence but also maturity to read the riders and know when to follow and when to make the jump.
Still not convinced? Well, Brailsford certainly is, because despite having two other former winners of the race itching to join Bernal in France, he’s left them at home, at a stroke simplifying any possible leadership conundrums – that is if you assume Tour debutant and Giro champion Richard Carapaz, who looked in formidable form before he crashed out of the Tour of Poland, is happy to stick to his allotted role as plan B.
Bernal is the king of the Tour now and, ominously for those that would seek to topple him, his reign could well last for a decade or more.