Tour de France winner Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard, wearing the overall leader's yellow jersey, lifts his bicycle after the twenty-first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 115 kilometers (71.5 miles) with start in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and finish on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris, France, Sunday, July 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard won the Tour de France for a second straight year as cycling’s most storied race finished Sunday on the famed Champs-Élysées in Paris.
With a huge lead built up over main rival Tadej Pogačar, the 2020 and 2021 winner, Vingegaard knew the victory was effectively his again before the largely ceremonial stage at the end of the 110th edition of the Tour.
The 26-year-old Vingegaard drank champagne with his Jumbo-Visma teammates as they lined up together and posed for photos on the way to Paris.
“It’s been a long journey, yet it went by so fast,” Vingegaard said. “Day after day, it was a super hard race with a super nice fight between me and Tadej. I’ve enjoyed every day. I hope to come back next year and see if I can take a third win.”
It had been a three-week slog over 3,405 kilometers (2,116 miles) with eight mountain stages across five mountain ranges. Vingegaard seized control of the race over two stages in the Alps.
Little had separated the two rivals until Vingegaard finished a time trial 1 minute, 38 seconds ahead of Pogačar on Tuesday, then followed up the next day by finishing the toughest mountain stage of the race almost 6 minutes ahead of his exhausted rival.
“I’m dead,” Pogačar said.
The Slovenian rider responded by winning the penultimate stage on Saturday, but Vingegaard still had an insurmountable lead of 7 minutes, 29 seconds going into the final stage – a mostly ceremonial stage which is contested at the end by the sprinters.
“We have to be careful not to do anything stupid,” Vingegaard warned Saturday, “but yeah, it’s amazing to take my second victory in the Tour de France.”
Vingegaard kept that lead and was able to celebrate early Sunday as organizers decided to take the times one lap before the finish when it started raining on the cobblestones of the Champs-Élysées. The decision invited the sprinters to fight for the stage victory – the only remaining uncertainty.
Belgian cyclist Jordi Meeus prevailed in a photo finish between four riders on the line, just ahead of Jasper Philipsen, Dylan Groenewegen and Mads Pedersen.
“It was my first Tour. It was a super nice experience already so far, and to take the win today is an indescribable feeling,” said Meeus, who clocked a top speed of 68.8 kph (42.8 mph) on the last kilometer.
Pogačar, who attacked after just one lap of eight altogether on the Champs-Élysées, was wearing the white jersey as the best young rider for the 75th day – extending a career Tour record. The 24-year-old Slovenian rider has won the best young rider classification every year since 2020.
But Pogačar had to be content with second place in the general classification again.
British rider Adam Yates, Pogačar's teammate, finished third overall, ahead of his twin brother Simon.
Colombian rider Egan Bernal, the 2019 Tour winner, completed the race as he made his impressive comeback from a life-threatening crash. The 26-year-old Bernal said he narrowly avoided becoming paralyzed after an accident with a bus while training in Colombia in January 2022.
“It’s difficult to compare with the year I won but it’s almost the same feeling because for me it’s a great victory,” Bernal said. “Yesterday, in the last climb, I was so lucky I was alone and could enjoy the last kilometers. I was so emotional.”
After two incredibly close games, the Super Bowl matchup is set. On February 13th, at the SoFi stadium in Inglewood, California, the Los Angeles Rams will face off in their home stadium against the Cincinnati Bengals. After 54 Super Bowls where a home team never hosted the game on its field, it will now happen for the second year in a row, after Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Bucs last year. Speaking of Brady, ESPN dropped a bombshell of a headline Saturday that Tom Brady was set to retire after 22 seasons and seven rings. To discuss all the latest NFL news, Anthony Tall, President of Miracle Sports Group, joins Cheddar News.
In January alone, the gaming sector has seen three major acquisitions. Yesterday, Sony added to the flurry of M&A activity in the gaming space, snatching up game developer 'Bungie' for $3.6 billion dollars. Renee Gittins, executive director at the International Gaming Developers Association, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
NFL legend Tom Brady says he is done playing football after 22 seasons. Cheddar News speaks with Trey Wingo, Chief NFL Analyst at Pro Football Network, about Brady announcing his retirement.
Greg Bishop, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says Tom Brady's legacy is all about 'progress' and expects the future Hall of Famer to bolster his entrepreneurial ventures following his retirement.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has been a driving force for youth mentorship since 1904. The nonprofit organization is launching its annual Big Draft campaign this month in partnership with the NFL, and Artis Stevens, the first Black CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, joined Cheddar to discuss the push for adding more "Bigs" as mentors on his one-year anniversary leading the non-profit organization. "While the NFL is recruiting and drafting more players, they're also helping us to draft more mentors and, particularly, men all the way from across February to all the way to April of this year," Stevens explained.
On this episode of Cheddar Reveals, Jim Riordan, Director of the MBA Sport Management program at Florida Atlantic University, breaks down the successes, failures, and chaos of the first seven months of the Name, Image, Likeness policy in college athletics; Adi Kunalic, President of Opendorse, discusses the first-ever association-wide deal in college athletics between Opendorse and the NAIA, and how Opendorse is marketing and educating student-athletes to make the most of their NIL deal potential; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Predicting a Pro'.
Jim Riordan, Director of the MBA Sport Management program at Florida Atlantic University, joins Cheddar Reveals to break down the successes, failures, and chaos of the first seven months of the Name, Image, Likeness policy in college athletics.
Adi Kunalic, President of Opendorse, joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss the first-ever association-wide deal in college athletics between Opendorse and the NAIA, and how Opendorse is marketing and educating student-athletes to make the most of their NIL deal potential.
With the Beijing Winter Olympics set to get underway on Friday, Dan Wolken, a national columnist for USA Today, joined Cheddar News to break down the big storylines as the pandemic and international conflicts threaten to cast a cloud over the event that is aspirationally seen as a beacon of international cooperation. Wolken noted specific issues over cybersecurity for visiting athletes and disputes over human rights leading to a diplomatic boycott have been making waves even before the opening ceremony. "So you've got sort of these barbs going back and forth already between the Americans and the Chinese, and things haven't even started yet," he said. "We don't even know what's going to happen once the games start and people actually start winning medals."
