2023 Tour De France - Part 1
Last year, after some amazing riding by Wout Van Aert and a great battle for the yellow jersey between Jonas and Tadej, I wrote
“This has been the best Tour de France in years!”
“Hold my Ketone”, says the Tour de France 2023.
With a little help from the parcours builder, this year Tour de France is not for the weak. There is no first week dilly dallying by the GC contenders. Gone is the crazy cobble stone stage, which only causes spectacular, yet unfortunate, crashes. Week one hasn’t been merely an appetizer, soup, and some sprinter amuse bouche. Week one has been one raw piece of El Capricho from the area of San Sebastián. The Yates brothers, Jonas Vingegaard, and Tadej Pogacar, were the first to sit down at the table. “Let’s eat!”, they all shouted in unison.
We’ve seen some gutsy riding. Jonas Vingegaard skyrocketed on the Marie Blanque pushing Tadej against the ropes early, dropping him one minute. We all let go a big sigh of relief when we saw the counter attack from Tadej the next day. This is far from over. The battle just got started.
Then there is the fight for the polka dot jersey, the green jersey, and the stage wins. Every day, it has been a spectacle. Wout has been unfortunate and yet oh so close. The Vlam van Ham, Jasper Philipsen, with the help from Mathieu van der Poet, picked up a lot of green jersey points, when the grabbed three sprint stages. The polka dot jersey is a battle between Powless and Gall.
There has also been some drama with the crash and subsequent departures of Mark Cavendish, Enric Mas, Richard Carapaz, Luis León Sánchez, US champion Quinn Simmons or Belgian’s Steff Cras.
If all this were a summary of the entire Tour de France, we would be happy. This is only a quick summary of the first week of racing.
There is plenty of raw meat to be served in the coming days. Some will argue the long mountain stages favor Jonas. Still, I am rooting for Tadej, and Wout.
