Stage victories are hard to come by in this era of Tour de France racing. A certain world champion has already scooped up 21 of them — a whole Tour's worth — and four in the 2025 edition alone. It’s not Tadej Pogačar’s fault exactly, but the speed in which he races up mountains is making it harder and harder for breakaways to win. Time gaps which once would have seemed like enough to hold off the general classification group with certainty are now insufficient. Two minutes needs to be five minutes, because when Pogačar and Vingegaard go, they go fast.
In order to pull off a breakaway victory this year, especially in the mountains, a rider needs simply exceptional legs. This, stage 14 winner Thymen Arensman believes, is what made it possible for him to achieve the biggest result of his career atop the misty, mythical Superbagnères climb on Saturday afternoon.
“Ten minutes before we left the bus I told my teammates that if Carlos [Rodríguez] or I had four minutes at the start of the last climb it would be enough for the stage victory and I think in the end I had three minutes,” the Ineos Grenadiers rider said in his post-race press conference, regaling his magical day in the Pyrenees. “In the end I wasn't thinking about it, I just tried to do as much as possible and suffer as much as possible. It’s just about the legs and luckily, I had the legs.”
It hasn’t been a simple road for the 25-year-old to get to this point. There was the bout of Covid-19 at the end of last year, then the crash at the Giro d’Italia a few months ago which caused him significant knee pain. He may believe it was just his strong legs that won him stage 14 of the Tour de France, but as his team know better than anyone, Arensman’s drive and mentality played its part too.
“If you think back to the start of the year we saw him suffering away and going through all that sh*t that these guys have to go through, so to come out on top and do a good result, or at least just be good in himself, I think that's what's important,” Zak Dempster, Ineos Grenadiers’ sports director commented after the race.
“The guy's been through it and he takes so much on himself. Half the time you just want to shake him and say ‘it's okay, if it works, it works.’ Even if he had come second and those two freaks came up behind him that also would have been fine. Obviously we're here to win, and he wants to win, but the most important thing was he's been bold today. He's been brave and we can be really proud no matter what the result. But of course, it's pretty nice to win.”
The Ineos Grenadiers have been promising aggressive racing in this Tour de France for some time now. In many ways, this approach is their only option now they don’t have a competitive general classification rider in the Pogačar era, and the cycling world has moved on from their halcyon days of the dominant Team Sky train. Arensman’s win marks the first time they have truly delivered on this promise with success. Dempster believes that taking the pressure off the young Dutch rider to go for a general classification result has been crucial to improving his performance.
“Obviously, as a GC guy, it's one of the most high pressure situations you can be in as a cyclist. Coming into this Tour, it was a matter of just trying some new things. We took GC off the table straight away. I think there was an advantage in that. Arensman having been able to come through that first block of the race smoothly, it paid dividends as we planned,” Dempster continued.
“We’re pretty quick in this sport to hang guys out to dry. At the end of the day, he's just a kid, he's trying his best. He should be really proud, and I know that the whole team and everyone around him is. These kids, they sit on top of the mountains, they go to work, they force themselves, and they take so much on themselves. It’s the business of the sport but to watch him go through that and have success is beautiful for me.”
When you are competing in an era of bike racing that is dominated by, as Dempster delicately puts it, ‘those two freaks’, it might be easy to become disillusioned. Pogačar and Vingegaard do seem an entire level above the rest of the peloton, but Arensman’s victory is proof that there is still room for the underdogs if you have the legs to do it, but also the courage, passion and drive.
“If you commit, you're bold and brave and and it works out, it works out. If it doesn't, it's also fine,” Dempster smiled as the music from Arensman’s podium ceremony chimed out behind him and into the foggy mountain landscape.
“We’re all so proud of how the guys race. In some moments, it doesn’t go well. But we’ll stand by them in the tough times and also the good times. We’re so proud.”
