[img-r]https://i.imgur.com/NkmosC8.png[/img-r]The Mont Ventoux was one of the most iconic climbs in the history of the Tour. Pierre had already conquered another one of those: L'Alpe d'Huez, five years ago.
He had been in similarly good shape over the past days. But he also felt like the competition this year had been a lot tougher. And for the first time, they started the battle very early.
Ten kilometers from the summit, Nairo Quintana launched the first attack. The Colombian had a lot of time to make up, and he surely wanted to claim leadership in his team as well. There had been rumors on the rest day about a loud dispute between him and Valverde.
But all that didn't matter to Pierre. He had to prepare for a long, long climb, and an intense fight to get up there with his rivals.
After a few hundred meters of attacks and counter attacks, a group of five had emerged up front. Rodriguez was there, of course, looking strong as ever. Quintana, too, with Valverde trailing a few seconds behind. Contador and Froome had been the last two to join, alongside Pierre. He was glad to have made it, but he was hurting a lot already. He just had to hope he hadn't overdone it already.
[img-r]https://i.imgur.com/UFIcaqd.png[/img-r]Joaquim had had doubts himself. Would he keep up on a pure climbing stage like this? Would the rest day hinder him? Had it just been an early peak, and would his rivals catch up to him soon enough? No, no and no!
It was incredible. He had never felt like this, not even in his prime on the steep ascents of the Vuelta. He didn't even have to accelerate much, he just kept riding. Pierre Rolland was the first to drop.
And the others followed, one by one. Quintana, who was only looking back now to see if he was at least in front of his team mate. Then Froome, and finally Alberto Contador.
As he rode towards the finish on his own, for the first time Joaquim actively thought about what this meant. His yellow dream could actually become true. He might be strong enough, stronger than the rest. He hadn't been able to turn off the skeptic inside him that had been questioning this whole endeavor. Now he didn't hear him anymore.
It was a beautiful thing. And a slightly scary thing, too.
I'm going to Sweden for a bit over a week tomorrow and I still have a lot to do, so no stage today, nor anything for the next ~10 days. I was hoping to have the rest of the stages pre-written by now but the past few days were too stressful.
Hope you enjoyed it so far and you'll continue following once I'm back
You will at some point But there's been too much else on my plate in the past weeks, and to be honest I didn't have the motivation for it either, and if I do it, I want to do it right, and not just write something for the sake of ending the story, if you know what I mean. So yeah, we'll have to see when I'll come back to this, but eventually I will for sure
Joaquim Rodriguez
Christopher Froome
Nairo Quintana
Pierre Rolland
Tejay Van Garderen
Fabio Aru
Daniel Martin
Alexander Kristoff
Peter Sagan
John Degenkolb
Merhawi Kudus
