“For a rider like me, there is nothing more than a victory at the Tour de France,” the twenty-nine-year-old fighter from Bornholm exclaimed with happiness. He already raised his hands to the heavens once on the Old Lady as a sign of a partial victory. In 2018, he dominated the fifteenth stage to Carcassonne. How else? than from an escape. Even then it was decided in a two-man sprint. Still in the Astana jersey. The loser was Ion Izagirre from the Bahrain Merida formation.
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In the meantime, he rode the Tour twice, but his best finish was third. This year, however, the team bosses understood very quickly that Magnus Cort Nielsen brought extraordinary fitness to the Tour de France. And since the team is fighting to remain among the elite, which of course guarantees the interest of sponsors, they mainly need partial successes in the form of stage firsts in order to collect maximum points.
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“We had to convince him a lot to stop fooling around, not to make crazy escapes and focus on the possibility of winning the stage. We just picked the tenth for him,” said the happy sports directors, when the photo finish in Megéve confirmed Corto’s triumph.
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On Tuesday, however, all plans were almost thrown away before the start. The bus with the Education First competitors got stuck in a bend on the way to the paddock in Morzine. So the riders jumped on their bikes and with their backpacks on their backs set off at the last moment to the starting area. The same happened to the competitors of other teams whose buses remained blocked.
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Everything went according to plan on the route. Two riders of the Education First formation were on the breakaway among twenty-five cyclists. The attacking Bettiol was swallowed up by a group of pursuers, but in the final nineteen kilometer long climb to the Megéve airport he took off repeatedly, exhausting his rivals.
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And he ideally prepared the position for Cort. But he had problems with himself for a long time. “The last hill I rode at the limit. And that was helped by my teammate Bettiol, who drove alone in the lead in the breakaway, so I could save a little energy. During the last kilometers I fell out of the group several times,” he admitted that he had huge difficulties.
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In the final, however, he mobilized his strength, showed a great spurt, and even after a rough climb, he was able to throw the bike on the tape, thereby grabbing the victory. “All the guys on the team did a great job for me. They executed the tactics to the letter. I saw all the signs indicating the number of meters to the finish line and thought to myself that this is simply my day, my victory,” the Danish competitor enthusiastically recounted.
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