Tour de France offers gripping third act in Vingegaard v Pogacar battle

I t was quite the wait, but Netflix finally brought out its Tour de France 2022 series Unchained in early June to a mixed reception. From my sofa, it was a fun if lightweight view, long on histrionics in the team car and short on hard analysis, which led to some glaring gaps that will grate with aficionados.

There is one lacuna, however, which is no fault of the producers: Tadej Pogacar barely appears, because his team did not participate in the series. In Shakespearean terms this is not so much staging Hamlet without the ghost as putting on Hamlet without the prince of Denmark.

On its behalf, and on that of expectant viewers, let us hope Netflix already has the Slovene’s signature on the dotted line, as the 2023 Tour, which starts in Bilbao on Saturday, is likely to see “Pog” loom as large as he has in the past two editions.

On paper the 2023 race could be unique in recent Tour history, promising as it does a best-of-three battle between the 2021 winner, Pogacar, and his nemesis of 2022, the wraith-like Dane Jonas Vingegaard, who was runner-up to the UAE Team Emirates leader two years ago.

On close inspection, none of the Tour’s greatest rivalries has offered anything resembling the confrontation between Pogacar and Vingegaard. The French swear by the 1960s encounters between Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor – stage nine is the race’s tribute to them with its finish up the Puy de Dôme – but “Poupou” only looked like beating “Master Jacques” the once and never actually did.

Bernard Hinault was run close by Joop Zoetemelk in 1978 and 1979, but the Dutchman won the 1980 race only after “the Badger” departed with a knee injury. Claudio Chiappucci talked a good race in the early 90s, but never got near Miguel