"Every Tour has a day like this," Wout van Aert said after he had finished cooling down outside the Jumbo-Visma team bus in Issoire after stage 10. Maybe, but it's hard to shake off the impression that they happen on the Tour de France with rather more regularity in the supersonic era of Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar.
There was a time when the Tour's forays through the Massif Central almost inevitably played out dutifully as transition stages. ONCE's all-out offensive against Miguel Indurain on the road to Mende in 1995 was so dramatic because of its rarity. For most of his five-year reign as Tour champion, Indurain could navigate days such as these in relative tranquillity. Men like Tony Rominger were never so crass as to try to get in the early break.
