No prizes for guessing our choice of late-night fix for the past week. Whatever about being dubbed Cycling for Dummies by certain sections of the Belgian sporting press, everything about the Tour de France Unchained series on Netflix looks and feels beautifully timed.
The series looks back at the 2022 Tour, and so plays out as a perfect teasing preview to this year’s race, given defending champion Jonas Vingegaard and previous two-time winner Tadej Pogacar will again be the chief contenders for the maillot jaune after Saturday’s Grand Départ in Bilbao. The strength of their domestiques will probably prove decisive again too.
Of all the takes, and there are many, something about episode six, titled “Plan B” after Mathieu van der Poel abandons during Stage 11, reminded me of a cycle shared once upon a time with Greg LeMond, and his lesson in readiness for any three-week bike race.
It’s a few years back when LeMond was a regular visitor here before basing himself in France during the Tour. He was staying at the Doonbeg Golf Resort in Clare, sometime before Donald Trump bought into it, LeMond lending his name to a children’s cancer charity, which opened the door for the interview.
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He arrived in the late afternoon, his transatlantic flight badly delayed, and told me he hadn’t slept in two days. Then straight away he started unpacking his bike, spreading the different parts in the main courtyard: frame, wheels, handlebars, saddle. “Best way to deal with the jet lag,” he said. “Go for a bike ride.”
Then he stopped himself: “Have you got a pump? I forgot my pump.”
The other memorably amusing part happened somewhere out the road around Doughmore Bay, LeMond disarmingly open and utterly unpretentious about his three Tour victories – in 1986, 1989 and 1990 – and his other near misses: so when did he know he was ready and primed and coming into peak physical shape for a three-week bike race?
“When I’m horny,” he said, cracking that great Kennedy-like smile which only Americans can appear to do.
This may be not everyone’s barometer of readiness before tackling any great physical challenge, but it clearly worked well for LeMond. His 1989 Tour victory, coming two years after he was out turkey shooting and was accidentally shot in the back by his brother-in-law (his life was saved by a mobile phone, a police helicopter and a nearby hospital where the surgeon specialised in gunshot wounds), is rightly lauded as the last true miracle of professional cycling.
Horny or not, there is always some uncertainty about the readiness of riders starting the Tour, and the 110th edition is no different: 21 stages, covering 3,404km, before finishing on the Champs-Élysées on July 23rd.
Van der Poel, who started last year’s Tour after also riding the Giro d’Italia, is this time more likely to be undercooked, the Dutch rider taking two months off from racing after early spring wins in Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo, plus a fifth Cyclocross world Championship.
His Alpecin-Deceuninck team were one of the eight providing all-area access to the Netflix camera crews during last year’s race, resulting in some memorable Unchained scenes (such as when team-mate Jasper Philipsen introduces himself as “Jasper-Disaster” for reasons that soon become clear).
After Van der Poel abandoned, he’s filmed arriving back to his hotel room, which he can’t open; he sits on the floor hoovering up what looks like some sort of rabbit food. “From the beginning of the Tour [I knew that I didn’t] really feel well in myself,” he tells us, “it makes no sense to continue if you can’t even follow the last guy ...
So far this season, Van der Poel has had less than 20 race days on his bike, compared to more than 30 before last year’s Tour, and his readiness is questionable. Saturday’s opening 182km medium-mountain stage will soon tell.
Many have been unimpressed by Unchained, including Team Jumbo-Visma, who also had the Netflix cameras in their faces on and off the bikes in last year’s race. Wout Van Aert, the popular Belgian who wore the maillot jaune for four early stages, reckoned Netflix falsely created a rift between him and Vingegaard, his team leader, who went out to win outright.
“It is quite disturbing that stories were placed in the documentary that weren’t there. For me, the series is focused on commotion,” Van Aert told Belgian media outlet Sporza.
“Jonas and I are best mates. It focuses on moments where it’s hard to make the right choice, but there are also so many moments where we supported each other and worked together. It’s a shame that was taken out.”
There are some moments when it does appear their goals, stage wins or otherwise, might be at odds. In reality, Van Aert kept Vingegaard in the general classification battle, effectively rescuing his Danish team-mate on Stage 5, after he was sent crashing on the fabled pavé.
Then, on stage 18 to Hautacam, Van Aert was part of a breakaway, before falling back: when Vingegaard and Pogacar caught up, he rode at the front again – to a standstill, as it turned out – to ensure Vingegaard saved some legs. Which he did, putting more than a minute on Pogacar before the end, and that was Tour over.
Dan Martin had a quote about the Tour, and what can ultimately decide the podium places: “Everybody has a bad day at the Tour. It just depends on whose bad day is the least bad.”
So to Vingegaard versus Pogacar over the next three weeks. When Pogacar first won on his Tour debut in 2020, the first outright winner from Slovenia, he was at age 21 years and 364 days the youngest winner in postwar history.
The assumption was that he’d win everything in front of him, which he more or less has, only to be undone in part last year by the greater strength of Jumbo-Visma versus his team, UAE Team Emirates.
What is certain is that Pogacar is coming in undercooked this time. After a dazzling start to his season, winning Paris-Nice and the Tour of Flanders, he crashed and broke his wrist two months ago, and got back for the Slovenian championships last weekend, which he won, naturally.
He has also Adam Yates and Felix Grossschartner on board this year, two close allies for the mountain stages. Vingegaard, we’re told, has been unwavering in his preparations, primed it would appear to defend his title. In terms of readiness though, it might be the rider who finds themselves on the right side of horny.
