Stage 18 TDF 2022: Big-Time Charlie vs Modest Dane
Froome, Erviti and Caruso, the Three Tenors, were out before Stage 18 started. Admittedly, Froome doesn’t sound much like an Italian opera singer, so perhaps it should be the two and a half tenors.
Wout van Aert was not out, and he was on the attack and in the break.
On the second of three climbs, the Col de Spandelles, van Aert led a breakway group which thinned out to just him, Pinot and Martinez.
Pogacar put in three attacks in quick succession on the Spandelles, but Jonas Vingegaard was not in difficulty. Geraint Thomas got fed up of the changes in pace, and he attacked and got a gap, but he was reeled in when Pogacar attacked for a fourth time.
On the descent of the Spandelles, JV made a little mistake when he tried to pedal coming out of a bend and his pedal touched the ground, and his back wheel jumped. TP tried to capitalise on the mistake, but could not drop JV.
Then TP made an error and drifted wide, and fell over in the gravel. JV waited up for him.
There you have the two different characters in a neat vignette.
On the climb of the Hautacam, Sepp Kuss led the GC group. When he brought the others up to WVA, he said something to his Belgian teammate – ‘that’s it mate, you’ll have to take it from here’, or similar. Luckily WVA could take it from there.
WVA put on a turn of speed. He is a remarkable bike rider. He and JV dropped TP, then soon after WVA was done.
JV was on his own from 3.6km to go, and put just over a minute into TP.
Yesterday, we had a flamboyant big-time Charlie celebration from the stage winner. Today, there was a modest wave. Another vignette.