One of the beauties of the Tour de France is the myriad ways in which it can be won. Sometimes a rider bullies from start to finish, like Bernard Hinault, who intimidated rivals with his presence and crushed them at every opportunity en route to Paris in 1981. Time-trial specialists mark rivals on the climbs and hurt them on the clock, as Miguel Indurain did so emphatically in 1992, and again in 1994. Chris Froome used Team Sky’s stranglehold on the peloton to suffocate his opponents, while Tadej Pogacar’s back-to-back wins in 2020 and 2021 displayed his individual, unpredictable brilliance.
Jonas Vingegaard is the latest man to win the Tour, and for all his unerring strength and resilience across these past three weeks, the race was won in a decisive hour in the Alps, when Jumbo-Visma’s team tactics isolated and outwitted Pogacar and stripped the yellow jersey from his back.
