Tour de France 2021 - Nils Politt restores order to peloton and keeps Mark Cavendish celebrations on ice

When Norway’s Alexander Kristoff won in Nîmes in 2014 he did so when the New Zealander Jack Bauer was agonisingly caught with just 50 metres to spare. There was no such drama when the Tour returned to the former important outpost of the Roman Empire on Thursday – with Nils Politt soloing to glory after ensuring that none of the sprinters would pick his pocket at the line.

Politt’s maiden Grand Tour stage win – and only the second success of the 27-year-old’s career to date – was a hugely impressive display from a rider who has been knocking on more doors than Guns N’ Roses over the course of a hefty tour schedule.

But it was perhaps the first workmanlike and the least aesthetic and emotionally charged win so far on this year’s Tour. Although try telling that to Politt as he raised his bike above his head and roared in celebration, revealing his navel as his jersey rode up his long torso that cuts him such a unique profile on a bike.

From in the rainbow stripes to Mathieu van der Poel’s yellow jersey heroics and Mark Cavendish’s glorious comeback, this is a Tour that has seemingly had a team of energetic script-writers beavering away behind the scenes to deliver scripts of increasingly unfathomable emotional heft – right up to Wout van Aert conquering the double ascent of Mont Ventoux in the Belgian colours, one day after missing out to the green jersey of Cavendish in a bunch sprint.

Even the apparently humdrum Bahrain-Victorious interlude – those back-to-back victories from Matej Mohoric and Dylan Teuns – were in fact stories of great wonder when you consider how Mohoric, so soon after his ghastly Giro crash, eclipsed his more illustrious Slovenians Tadej Pogacar and Primoz Roglic to complete his Grand Tour clean sweep, and that Teuns had arrived at the Tour just days after the funeral of his grandfather.

As epic followed epic on a scale unseen since Homer bashed out his Iliad and his Odyssey, it reached a point where fans were wondering just how sustainable this level of legendary narrative could continue. The 108th edition of the Tour had become cycling’s equivalent to the opening scenes of a Bond film that lasted not the usual five minutes, but the entire first half of the movie.

In short, we needed a break. We needed something dull and routine and obvious. Something commendable, for sure, but something that wouldn’t have us scratching our heads and wondering just where this could all go from here? A brief passage of play where the dominant team passes the ball around and retains possession – instead of putting in a sixth goal shortly after half time.

And it was that man Politt – the rider with the longest seat post and shiniest teeth in the peloton – who stepped forward and succeeded in doing the ordinary, extraordinarily well. He avoided the crosswind splits and got himself into the breakaway – the only Bora-Hansgrohe rider on the day that their talismanic Slovakian Peter Sagan waved goodbye to the Tour after a rotten race derailed by a nasty knee injury picked up in that tangle with Caleb Ewan in Stage 3.

But Politt still had it all to do. For he wasn’t just in a 13-man breakaway that – once the lead went north of 10 minutes – was going to go the distance, but in a breakaway that features three former Tour stage winners in Alaphilippe, Andre Greipel and Edvald Boasson Hagen, as well as fast finishers Edward Theuns and Luka Mezgec, the latter twice a runner-up on the Tour.

The only scenario for a Politt win was for the break breaking up before the finish – and it was the rangy rouleur himself who proved to be the hammer. From 50km out, Politt was a regular fixture on the front – and he eventually went clear with three riders of his ilk with 40km remaining: Stefan Kung, Imanol Erviti and Harry Sweeny.

Just one of them would have been a solid engine to keep the rest at bay – but as a quartet, these powerhouse units proved too much for the chase group. Politt has succeeded in taking the sprinters out of the equation. And there was nothing that was going to stop him now – even a big acceleration from the confident debutant Sweeny with 14km to go.

This attack did for Kung but the Spanish veteran Erviti was able to lift himself off the canvas. It was shortly after the three leaders reconvened that Politt, making his move from deep and with all the subtlety of zippy England wingers winning penalties in extra time of major tournament semi-finals, put in his final, decisive surge.

And that was how the 2018 Paris-Roubaix runner-up secured the biggest win of his career. It won’t make the same headlines as some of the other triumphs we have seen since Alaphilippe swashbuckled into yellow in Brest – nor will it be remembered by anyone as a focal point of the race, or even a particularly remarkable moment.

But it changed the life of the man who executed it with such aplomb and put a smile back on Bora-Hansgrohe’s face after Sagan’s farewell. And let’s be honest, we didn’t need a big battle for yellow or green again – just like, after a succession of Michelin starred meals, we often crave the simple pleasures of a burger. Politt gave us just that: a no-frills burger with fries and coleslaw. And it was bloody delicious.

And now it’s out of the system, we’ll be calling for caviar from Cavendish in Carcassonne on Friday, washed down with a Petrus from Pogacar in the Pyrenees...

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