To win the Tour, half a Pogacar was enough. After half the Tour, he already had it in the bank. This half was the usual Pogacar: strong, very strong, greedy, voracious, insatiable, a cannibal. Teddy, precisely. That's how we knew him a few years ago, how he continued to be (and improve) over time. Some loved him exactly like that, some never could stand him, but undoubtedly it was a Way of being and winning with a capital W, the kind that comes once every half-century, as everyone knows. Not even he was infallible and invincible, but certainly the closest to something similar.

Then, however. Then he resigned. He retired from the race and sent the other half onto the road. For me, enchanted by the first half, it was a shock. In the second half of the Tour, after the mountain time trial, let's say in the Alps, we found ourselves facing the sad spectacle of restoration. The Pogacar we knew - some loved - in these years mysteriously recycled himself into a gray normality, the normality that pleases the conformist and petit bourgeois sports fans, yes, those who believe a true champion never humiliates opponents, a true champion leaves something for others, a true champion knows how to make friends in the peloton because sooner or later everything comes back (sure, when you're no longer winning they'll all let you win), a true champion doesn't waste energy, a true champion must learn to manage himself, and so on and so forth. And so, through continuous persuasion, this mediocrity party has thoroughly won, bending and ruining even Teddy. They called him calm, lucid, reflective. Thinking they were paying him a compliment.

In the Alps he could have won them all, that's what I expected, that's what he had accustomed us to, instead we saw the gray head of the accounting office, just as the accountants of team cars and traditional liturgy love it. Half a Pogacar staying in the wheel, letting others do, gifting to those who deserve it, cultivating friendships, not humiliating, knowing how to manage himself, and on with the litany of the good champion so dear to the rhetoric of the little people. In my 35 years of following great races live, I've seen only one true, great master of this specific art, of this way of being a champion: Miguel Indurain. He knew when to win (the time trial, then very little), who to let win, who to keep on good terms, how many energies to save. But he was Indurain, an original specimen, great in his way of being, because above all he knew himself well and even more so knew his own limits, thus managing power in the most cunning way.

But Pogacar, oh Pogacar. Pogacar is Teddy, he's a different breed, he's something else. We know who he's naturally and temperamentally similar to, certainly not Indurain. Seeing him become Indurain, suddenly, perhaps to prove to his detractors that he can also be a good boy, gave me a terrible impression. I didn't like it at all. I've stopped being surprised, amazed, to endure the usual script, a predictable and obvious race leader counting drops of sweat, managing public relations, calculating, measuring, calculating, measuring.

I'm going to the public vote: dear Teddy, congratulations again, obviously for the result, but for me this time you don't go beyond 6-. Like this, you're no longer anything special. You no longer emerge from normality. You become an ordinary champion, one of many. Certainly from here to the end you'll numerically win a lot more, but the Way, your Way like Eddy's, is no longer noticeable. It doesn't stand out and doesn't stun. I hope that half Tour in Indurain's style remains an episode, perhaps a demonstration to those who know a lot that if you want, you can also "manage yourself". Honestly, after having seen Teddy, I don't know what to do with a Pogacar like this. I continue to prefer the primitive version, the one who would have won all the alpine stages of the Tour, the one who, with the pink jersey already tattooed on, continuously attacked just for the pleasure of attacking, of winning, of entertaining (who can forget that wonderful Livigno stage). In other words, it took half a Tour with the pharmacist's scale, half a normalized Tour, half a Tour of restoration of old and worn-out theorems, to make me miss what many have reproached you for as boring. Give us back that boredom, as long as you can.

from tuttoBICI August issue