2023: The Viking Again Conquers the Tour

The Story of the Tour de France

By: Bill McGann, Carol McGann

Narrated by: David L. Stanley

This telling of the 2023 Tour de France is an addition to our two-volume The Story of the Tour de France: How a Newspaper Promotion Became the Greatest Sporting Event in the World, and four supplements:

• 2019: A Year of New Faces
• 2020: The Tour During Covid-19: Better Late than Never
• 2021: The Little Cannibal Dominates
• 2022: The Viking Again Conquers the Tour

(All available on Kindle and ACX audiobooks).

Volume one told the story of the Tour’s origins and of each edition of the race from 1903 through 1975—the year Bernard Thévenet was able to conquer the Belgian Lion, Eddy Merckx, and hold the great racer to five Tour wins.

Volume two picked up the race in 1976 with super-climber Lucien van Impe’s victory, and took it through 2018 and Welshman Geraint Thomas’ 111-second win over Tom Dumoulin.

The year 2019 had a stunning surprise winner in 22-year-old Egan Bernal, the youngest rider to wear the race-leader’s Yellow Jersey in Paris since that jersey was first awarded in 1919, and the third-youngest rider ever to have won the Tour de France.

The year 2020 was no less surprising. Slovenian racer Tadej Pogačar was sitting in second place after stage 19, just 57 seconds behind fellow Slovenian and race leader Primož Roglič. Then, in the 2020 Tour’s penultimate stage, a 36.2-kilometer individual time trial, Pogačar delivered a stunning ride, winning the stage and beating Roglič by one minute, 56 seconds. That superb effort made Pogačar the winner of the 2020 Tour de France. He became the first rider since Laurent Fignon in 1983 to win the Tour on his first attempt.

The year 2021 was Pogačar’s private property. Winning the Tour by more than five minutes, the talented rider again took those three categories: GC, Mountains, and Young Rider. The big surprise was Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard. Riding for Primož Roglič’s Jumbo Visma team, he rode a superb Tour. After Roglič crashed and was forced to abandon, Vingegaard took over leadership of the team and finished second, five minutes and 20 seconds down. Along the way, he showed that he was not to be underestimated. In stage 11, with a double ascent of Mont Ventoux, he was able to drop Pogačar. The Slav caught him and the two finished the difficult stage together, but Vingegaard had shown he could draw blood.

The 2022 Tour looked to be a shootout between Vingegaard and Pogačar. But Pogačar ran out of gas before he ran out of Tour. In stage 11, a monster climbing stage, Vingegaard attacked on the final ascent, the Col du Granon, and finished alone, a minute ahead of his nearest chaser Nairo Quintana, and almost three minutes ahead of Pogačar. The Dane now led Pogačar by two minutes, 16 seconds. In stage 18, with its hilltop finish at Hautacam, Vingegaard cemented his GC lead by finishing a minute ahead of Pogačar. That gave him a three minute, 26 second lead, which he grew by another eight seconds in the final time trial.

Vingegaard rode the final stage in Paris conservatively, wanting to stay safe in the Tour’s final kilometers, letting Pogačar grab 50 seconds, but the Tour was the Dane’s. He had ridden a near-perfect Tour guarded by a powerful and capable Jumbo-Visma team.

Except for the two world wars, the Tour has been run annually since that 1903 race, and yearly addendums seem the best way to keep telling the story. So please join us for 2023 as we go on the 110th trip around La Belle France. Let’s see how Vingegaard, Pogačar, and the other brilliant racers fight for cycle racing’s greatest prize.

©2023 Bill McGann (P)2023 Bill McGann