Bernal Rewrites The Record Books

Ineos’s seventh Tour win with a fourth rider could signal a new era as Colombia celebrates

- Vern Pitt

First came the tears, then the bewilderment. “I can’t believe it,” Egan Bernal (Ineos) kept saying after becoming the first Colombian to win the Tour de France at the weekend.

Bernal had come through the chaos of the

Tour’s Alpine denouement to stand atop the general classification. The altitude native, who lives at 2,600m in his home country, had clawed back 32 seconds with his attack on the 2,622m Galibier last Thursday, before going clear alone again on the 2,751m Col de l’Iseran on Friday.

At this point the weather intervened and a landslide further down the route blocked the road forcing race organiser ASO to cancel the stage’s final climb and take the GC time from the top of the Iseran, where Bernal had a lead of 58 seconds on his yellow jersey rivals.

On the final mountain day’s truncated 59km stage, again due to landslides blocking the road, he held on with ease. In doing so he set a slew of records.

He is the first Colombian to win the Tour; the youngest rider to win it in the post World War Two era; and the youngest ever to win the yellow jersey. He also won the white jersey of the young rider classification — the last person to win that and the maillot jaune at the same time was Alberto Contador in 2007.

That is why it’s understandable that his win has been cast as the start of a new era of cycling, with Bernal as its dominant figurehead, much as Contador was.

Bernal era

When CW put this to Ineos sports director Nicolas Portal he said: “I’m sure Egan’s got his whole future ahead of him and we are going to help him to win as many Grand Tours as he can.”