So is it too early to comment on the fact that Jonas and Tadej both win an iconic race they have tried to conquer multiple times and always failed at. For one reason or another. All within a week of each other.
And now neither of them plan to ever come back to that race. Except maybe for food.
holy sht, you're right, anon. I never thought about this until you brought it up, and then I saw what Tadej said about not going back to Sanremo unless it's for focaccia.
I sat with the thought for maybe half an hour in bed, thinking about what this means. And past the initial shock of it all, I'm surprisingly... At peace with it? Kinda strange, when I used to dread the day they'd retire.
Tadej and Jonas have done so much to be where they are today. We may never know the extent of it. And now that they've conquered one more race they'd tried so hard to, where does that take them? Does it mean it's one step closer to goodbye? Maybe. But this is also the reason I'm kinda ok with it. Mostly because I watched them grow.
I love the narrative tadejonas weaved in their cycling conquest precisely because of how they began. And sure, there are a lot of great riders who became their rivals too, but there's something else in the way Jonas and Tadej are intertwined.
Tadej was this starry-eyed kid who loved cycling more than anything else in the world; a kind of rare evidence that showed that love can be enough, that it counted for anything at all, even though not many things in this world can say the same. He won the Tour de France. He was on his way to being the greatest.
And then Jonas showed himself to the world, a quiet, resilient rider who once worked at a fish factory. He climbed up the ranks and suddenly he was the only one capable of challenging the rising generational talent that was Tadej. And he did. He destroyed him completely and snatched the crown from him.
If only that stopped there. It didn't.
They showed up each time in that battlefield of their own making. Like the sun and moon meeting in an eclipse everyone had no other choice but to stare.
For five, six long years, it was them pushing each other to the limits. And while they diverted their paths too, with Tadej focusing on the classics and Jonas on the Grand Tours, they always came back for their yearly waltz up the French mountains. Like a ritual of some sorts. A promise.
And the fact that makes everything else so heavy and yet so beautiful, is, they would have never known how far they could go, if it wasn't for the other.
Jonas was crucial in building Tadej Pogacar, and Tadej was necessary in transforming Jonas Vingegaard.
The happiest part of it all? They're aware of it too. They destroy each other with a smile on their faces, yet they reach out for one another after that. A rivalry so all encompassing, it transcends everything else.
To be aware of the thing that destroys you, and allowing it to, because you know he'll build you right back up, is in and of itself a kind of love too.
And they bring it in the races they want to conquer. They hold it in their heart when they stare at the barrel of another miserable race. Because hell, "if I can show up at the cruelest tour to try and thwart my precious rival, then who's to say I can't conquer this too?"
So, yeah, it's a bit, what do you say in English, nostalgic? To remember that they're probably not going to return to these races. But, they'll always have that. And we'll always have this to remember,
That once upon a time, two celestial bodies collided in a mountain in France, and we stared in awe.
And since then? History.
