{"id":23568,"date":"2025-07-25T17:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T17:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23568\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T17:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T17:42:08","slug":"this-is-cycling-at-its-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23568\/","title":{"rendered":"This is cycling at its best"},"content":{"rendered":"

For one spectator at La Plagne, the impressive victory<\/a> of Thymen Arensman<\/a> (INEOS Grenadiers) in the Tour de France<\/a> was even more special. Michael Boogerd<\/a> won on the mountain 23 years ago, and now, as a NOS analyst, he saw with his own eyes how a fellow countryman followed in his footsteps, which deeply affected him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s really bizarre. It just made me a little emotional. I had to take a deep breath and think: they’re not going to catch him, because he deserved it so much. I felt so much tension, it was a real thriller,\u201d said Boogerd.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re the only one who can keep up with those guys and then attack two or three more times…,\u201d the man from The Hague praised the INEOS rider. \u201cHe went from the group, which took real guts. You need courage to do that. Thymen went all out. This is cycling at its best, I have no words for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"boogerd-la-plagne\"\/Boogerd on Pogacar and Vingegaard<\/p>\n

Boogerd cannot understand why Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard let him win. \u201cPogacar went to catch him once, but he wasn’t completely dropped and was back pretty quickly. You could also see that he was really strong, because he was able to pedal that big gear and push again. You have to be really good to do that. He still had power left and was able to keep up. Hats off, this is magnificent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPogacar is taking responsibility because he’s racing to win. When Vingegaard sees the footage, he’ll be kicking himself a few times… he just started too late and misjudged it,\u201d analyzes the former rider.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Arensman won because of that, because Lipowitz and Onley \u2013 numbers three and four \u2013 were dropped anyway. Attacking at the right moment is also part of the tactics of cycling, and you can’t say he was handed the victory on a plate.”<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"vingegaard-pogacar-lipowitz-tour-de-france\"\/Boogerd: “We have a new Dutch mountain”<\/p>\n

\u201cLipowitz was still in front, and then Thymen just pulled away,\u201d he continued. \u201cI wanted to drag that German off his bike, haha. I really couldn’t hold on any longer. At that point, it didn’t matter to me anymore. Pogacar saw him riding away, but Thymen didn’t look back. If he had, he would have lost. But he gave it one more burst of speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We have a new Dutch mountain,” concluded a proud Boogerd. “Five finishes and two Dutch riders. Alpe d’Huez has reason to fear… Winning a stage is always special, but a mountain stage is even more special. Winning two mountain stages \u2013 in the Pyrenees and the Alps \u2013 is pure enjoyment. Thymen is a thinker, but now it’s paying off big time. It will be more difficult to race like this in the future, but it will make him ride more freely,” the analyst predicts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For one spectator at La Plagne, the impressive victory of Thymen Arensman (INEOS Grenadiers) in the Tour de…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-23568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}