Choose a picture that sums up this Tour de France and it might be this one: Tadej Pogacar on the right, Jonas Vingegaard on the left, barely a tyre’s width between their front wheels as they sprinted for the finish line on Wednesday, with the Dane scraping home the winner.
Each great rivalry on the Tour has created its key image, and it may be that in years to come this ranks alongside Raymond Poulidor and Jacques Anquetil rubbing elbows on the Puy de Dôme, Fausto Coppi handing Gino Bartali a bottle of water – or was it the other way round? – and Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond crossing the line hand in hand at l’Alpe d’Huez. Or, for the connoisseurs, Hinault and the Dutchman Joop Zoetemelk in a unique escape to contest the finish on the Champs-Élysées in 1979.
