Speaking Sports with TJ

tj sanders

The 111th edition of the Tour de France just came to an end with some records being broken and a rider dominating the tour. The Tour de France never fails to disappoint between sprints, the alps, the Pyrenees, and the individual time trials. Mark Cavendish who was set to retire after the 110th edition of the Tour de France came back for one more year and broke the all-time win record for the Tour. Cavendish has now won 35 Tour de France stages which had seemed almost impossible. Tadej Pogacar won 6 different stages and now has 17 total stage wins at the Tour in his career; he isn’t even 30 years old yet, Cavendish’s new record might be in trouble. 

Jonas Vingegaard and Pogacar gave us another great battle between the 2 even though Pogacar had a huge time gap on Vingegaard. These 2 riders battled on every mountain stage and seemed locked into each other’s wheels until Pogacar would have a huge burst of acceleration and gap Vingegaard. These 2 riders have never finished in a position below 2nd in the Tour de France careers. Remco Evenepoel in his first Tour de France stuck with those 2 for the most part and got 3rd place. 

Most people forget about the green, polka dot, and white jersey while watching the tr and only focus on the yellow jersey. The green jersey is for the best sprinter, the polka dot is the king of the mountains, and the white jersey is for the best young rider, which is riders under the age of 26 at the start of that year. Biniam Girmay won the green jersey at this year’s Tour despite having a huge crash towards the end of the tour. Richard Carapaz started the Tour with the yellow jersey and grabbed a stage win before claiming the KOM points in the last week of the Tour. Evenepoel won the white jersey which was expected considering he was a favorite to win the tour. 

This edition of the Tour can be considered the best solely due to the fact that Cavendish got the record of 35 stage wins in the Tour. You could also argue that it was the most dominated Tour considering Pogacar dominated Evenepoel and Vingegaard except for one stage in which Vingegaard beat Pogacar in a photo finish sprint. It was obvious that this tour was going to be a classic with dominance from the favorites to win the tour to underdogs stealing some stage wins.