The best day of Luxembourger Bob Jungels’ life

There was a time when Bob Jungels believed that he could be the best rider in the world. He wasn’t kidding.

Luxembourg’s Bob Jungels celebrates victory in stage nine of the Tour de France

The temperature went up at the Tour de France, so too the roads as the ninth stage took the riders into the Alps for the first time. From the moment the race left Aigle in Switzerland the pace was infernal, and by the time they reached Chatel everybody just cried for the rest day the riders now have. Well, except for one. This 192km leg of the Tour was perhaps the best day of Bob Jungels’s life.

Jungels, 29, is from Luxembourg and there was a time in his younger life when he believed that he could be the best rider in the world. He wasn’t kidding. A junior world champion in 2010, he won the under-23 Paris-Roubaix and was twice the best young rider at the Giro d’Italia. In 2018 he was 11th in the Tour de France.

But by then, Jungels knew something was wrong. The power he once had was no longer there. It got worse in 2019, and then much worse over the following two years. He stopped sleeping and felt all joy drain from his life. One part of the problem was that he knew what it was like to be good — the other part was that for two years no one could tell him the problem.

Then, a year or so ago, Nicolas Guille, a coach at his team, AG2R, wondered if it might be arterial endofibrosis, a disease caused by a build-up of tissue in the arteries that restricts the flow of blood to muscles. Elite cyclists are vulnerable to it. Tests were done. Jungels had it in his hip area, both sides. Two surgeries changed everything.

He had lost almost three years of his career but after his return last summer he felt like a new man, one that recalled his earlier self. Then he came to this Tour, and if any rider in the peloton deserved a break, it was Jungels.

That came two days before the Tour began. Jungels tested positive for Covid-19 in Copenhagen, but for a very low level of the virus. There were no symptoms, Jungels felt fine, but it was nevertheless a difficult decision for three doctors from the UCI, cycling’s governing body, and the AG2R team doctor. They allowed him to start.

Through the first week, Jungels felt he was getting stronger and soon after leaving Aigle he threw himself into the attacks and counter-attacks that precede the formation of the day’s breakaway group.

On the short and not so steep Cote de Bellevue, 30km into the stage, 21 riders coalesced into the breakaway group. Jungels was there, so too the EF Education leader Rigoberto Uran, whose advantage at one point made him the virtual race leader, but that soon changed.

As the breakaway began to fragment, Jungels thought it time to move. There were two first-category climbs and still 60km to go. No sensible rider attacks from this far and maybe Jungels would not have tried if he wasn’t so desperate. He was joined by Simon Geschke, the German looking for the climbing points that would get him the polka-dot jersey.

“I told Simon I didn’t want the points,” Jungels said. “I said, ‘Let’s ride together’.”

They went over the Col de la Croix side by side and accelerated down the other side. But Geschke couldn’t descend as fast and by the time he got to the valley Jungels had a lead of almost a minute. He increased that to two as he began the ascent of Pas de Morgins.

Jungels is a good climber but not a specialist and behind him, the pursuit was on. Thibaut Pinot, Jonathan Castroviejo and Carlos Verona had formed a small posse on the Morgins pass and about halfway up, Pinot got to within 17 seconds of Jungels. That was so far and no further. Pinot’s legs couldn’t take any more, Jungels’s lead grew again.

At the finish in Chatel-Pre la Joux, he had 22 seconds to spare over Castroviejo and 26 over Verona. They had overtaken Pinot, who gambled all and lost.

The Times