Heir To The Throne

After a spectacular Tour de France debut, latest Colombian sensation Egan Bernal is marked for greatness, but, as Vern Pitt discovers, he’s not letting that faze him

- Vern Pitt

It’s entirely possible that when the 2018 Tour de France is entered into the history books it won’t be Geraint Thomas who is considered the most significant figure in the race but rather a wide-eyed 21-year-old Colombian climber making his debut. Egan Bernal had already been heralded as a future Grand Tour winner prior to lining up at the Grand Départ in the Vendée but his performance in the mountains, where he was often the last man in front of his two team leaders, in his first season in the WorldTour, has gone a long way to cementing his status as the hottest young rider in decades.

“He reminds me of young a Chris Froome,” says Bernal’s Sky team principal Dave Brailsford. “He’s quite quiet and quite shy but you put him on a bike and woah, he’s a winner. That’s quite rare.”

Such a talent is Bernal that he wins races almost by accident. “In Colombia [Oro y Paz in February] I won but when we started the race the leader was Sergio Henao; he won last year and he’s a good rider,” Bernal says. “It was my first race in the team, I attacked on the last climb of the last stage to help Sergio and I arrived and I won — it was a big surprise for me.” The bookish young man would go on to place second in the Tour de Romandie and win the Tour of California, seeing off competition from Britain’s Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott). Those performances combined with his incredibly laid-back attitude — when Bernal says he likes books, CW asks what he’s reading right now; “Just whatever my girlfriend gives me,” he says — led to him getting a call up to the Tour, where he was the youngest rider in the race.