In 1910, seven years after the first edition of the Tour de France and 25 before the Vuelta a España was born, Henri Desgrange, patron of the Grande Boucle, sent one of his closest collaborators, Alphonse Steinés, to the Pyrenees to recognize the Tourmalet. With four kilometers to go before the summit, his driver had to stop the car and Steinés disappeared into the snow. A day and a half later he returned, almost frozen, and the first thing he did was send his boss a message: “Crossed Tourmalet. Very good route. Perfectly practicable.” That message, the history of cycling, is the one remembered by all those who since then have reached the summit in first place in one of the multiple ascents. Although the feat was rarely as enormous as that offered by the Jumbo team, immense on the bicycle to achieve a triplet in the most famous summit in the world and incidentally climb with those three men: Kuss, Roglic and Vingegaard, on the podium of La Back to Spain.
The queen stage of this edition of the Spanish round will go down in history for being the first time that the legendary Tourmalet is the end of a stage, but also for a new example of the abysmal superiority of a team with serious options to win the big three this year. 2023 with three different cyclists, something never seen before.
The first to reach the bust of Henri Desgrange, located at the summit of Tourmalet, was Jonas Vingegaard, who attacked with 8 kilometers to go and left alone. The current patron of three-week races, a double winner of the Tour de France, arrived without adequate preparation for this Vuelta, but is already third after Primoz Roglic and Sepp Kuss. The latter, the gregarious turned leader, attacked on the descent of the Aubisque and dedicated himself to controlling the race from there. With one kilometer left before the finish line he attacked and managed to enter second place. The plenary session was achieved by Roglic, more out of tune on the day, but effective as almost always.
Jumbo's fantastic trio now forms a seamless elite team against which Juan Ayuso, Enric Mas, Marc Soler and Mikel Landa will have to battle in the coming days to prevent them from taking all the glory. They were the only opposition in the Tourmalet, although at no time did they seem to intimidate their rivals.
The first time the Tourmalet was climbed, in 1910, the winner was Octave Lapize, who set foot on the ground because the slope was too steep. The same thing would happen to him days later on the col d'Aubisque, where he went up on foot shouting at the organizers a cry of hatred: “You are murderers.” That's what Remco Evenepoel must have thought when his legs said enough during the ascent to the other mythical climb of the day. The Belgian, the great favorite for the final victory after the time trial, fails again in a horrible 2023 for him. He was left at the finish line for 20 minutes and, like in the Giro, where the covid left him out, or in the Volta a Catalunya, in which he was second, he had to see how a Jumbo will take the glory.
