The defining image of this Tour de France may not be a rainbow-clad Tadej Pogacar celebrating his 100th career victory; nor Pogacar letting fly with 12km to go on Hautacam and storming up the mountain in yellow; nor Pogacar grinning as he essentially broke his rivals in the Pyrenean time trial.
Instead, the defining moment of this year’s Tour may be the waiting game he played on the road up Mont Ventoux. Climbing the legendary lunar landscape, pedalling smoothly, but hanging back. Up ahead, it was local boy Valentin Paret-Peintre who took a career-defining victory, raising his arms aloft, Ben Healy shaking his head in defeat in the background. (For the French, that is probably the defining moment.)
