At 22, Egan Bernal All but Secures Tour de France Win
Barring a crash or something else unexpected, Bernal on Sunday will become the first Colombian to win cycling’s biggest race.
Bernal kept the yellow jersey Saturday after the final Alpine stage, and barring a crash or a last-minute health issue, he will become the first Colombian to win the Tour when it ends on Paris’s Champs-Élysées with a largely processional stage on Sunday. Bernal will also become the youngest post-World War II winner of the Tour.
“Colombia always had great climbers,” Bernal said. “We won the Giro, the Vuelta, but it never happened before on the Tour. For many years, we had great cyclists. We never managed to win. It did not work out on the Tour de France. Now we have it.”
Long before Bernal was born, Colombian riders like Luis Herrera and Fabio Parra conquered the hearts of cycling fans with long and spectacular raids in the Tour mountains. But for all their brilliance, they never came close to winning the race. More recently, Nairo Quintana ended up runner-up twice behind Chris Froome of Britain, a four-time champion, but lacked the time trialing abilities to overcome him.
This year’s route, the highest in race history with five summit finishes, including three above 2,000 meters and only 54 kilometers, or about 33 miles, of time trialing — gave Bernal a golden opportunity.
Unlike Bradley Wiggins, Froome and Geraint Thomas — the three other riders who won the Tour for the British outfit Ineos — Bernal is not a race-against-the-clock specialist. He has built his success on consistent performances in the Pyrenees and a tremendous attack in the Alps after losing ground in the individual time trial.
“The talent is there to see, he was born to go uphill fast,” said Thomas, Bernal’s teammate and now deposed champion. “He has got many, many great years in front of him. A very bright future.”
Thomas, lagging 1 minute 11 seconds behind over all, should finish as runner-up and give the Ineos team a 1-2 finish in Paris.
Weighing 130 pounds, the superlight Bernal thrived in rarefied air, and it was fitting that he delivered his fatal blow in the Col de l’Iseran, the Tour’s highest point this year at 2,770 meters, over 9,000 feet.
A cycling star in the making, Bernal took the race lead Friday when Stage 19 was dramatically cut short by a landslide across the route to the Alpine ski station of Tignes and by a violent hailstorm that made road conditions too icy for riders racing on two wheels barely wider than their thumbs.
He had moved away from Julian Alaphilippe, the punchy rider from France who did more than anyone to make this Tour the most exciting in decades and held the race lead for 14 days, on a difficult climb to the Iseran. When the race was then stopped with Bernal racing away on the downhill, organizers decided the riders’ timings to the top of the Iseran climb would be used to determine the overall standings.
And that put Bernal in yellow.
He wrapped up his victory during Saturday’s Stage 20 to Val Thorens, won by the 2014 champion, Vincenzo Nibali. Shortened to 36 miles because of a landslide on the route, it featured a 33-kilometer climb up to the ski station that was too difficult for Alaphilippe, who cracked after starting the day in second place and allowed Steven Kruijswijk to secure a third-place finish over all.
The ascent to Val Thorens was certainly not as terrifying as the Pacho, a Colombian mountain Bernal uses as his training ground.
“It’s my favorite climb, a 23-kilometer-long ascent at 3,000 meters,” he said. “Every time before I travel to Europe, I go there and test myself. And to me, every time we face a long climb at the Tour, it’s like climbing Pacho. That climb really helped me. I’m gaining confidence when I climb it.”
On the road to Val Thorens, Bernal shook hands with Alaphilippe, who left his mark on the race with his unpredictable attacks and strategies. Throughout the race, Alaphilippe forced the teams of favorites to rethink their strategies as they tried to topple the unconventional Frenchman.
“He fought until the very end,” Thomas said. “Fair play to him and his team. That was the reason the race was raced so differently.”
Ineos was not as dominant as in previous years and, in addition to Alaphilippe’s bold moves, had to deal with challenges mounted by Thibaut Pinot’s FDJ and Kruijswijk’s Jumbo-Visma. With new dynamics, the race was filled with suspense until Pinot withdrew with a leg injury and Bernal stamped his authority for good in the Iseran.
If he wins, Bernal will achieve a feat unmatched by the Tour’s greatest champions — the five-time winners Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain — who were all older when they first won.
Although he went through a bad day in the Pau time trial, Bernal has really improved his technique over the past two years to morph into an all-rounder, making many observers believe his reign could be a very long one.
“If you’re just a climber and can’t ride a time trial, you can’t win the Tour de France,” Bernal said. “I work on time trials a lot. I could have lost the Tour on this one.”
This season, Bernal was set to get a maiden leader experience at the Giro d’Italia. But he fractured his collarbone in a training crash, forcing him to miss the race and 76 days over all. He returned to competition in June to win the Tour de Suisse, another prestigious title to add to his success at Paris-Nice in March.
“All I know is if I had not crashed before the Giro I would not be in that position,” Bernal said. “After riding the Giro at 22, it would have been impossible to recover and to be in this position at the Tour. Things happen for a reason.”
