Thymen Arensman achieved a heroic Dutch victory in La Plagne on Friday in the Tour de France, 23 years after Michael Boogerd’s triumph. “The Alpe d’Huez can pack up. This is now the Dutch mountain.”
It’s a brief encounter in the cold and rain of La Plagne. Half an hour after the finish of the nineteenth stage, Arensman receives congratulations from his predecessor Boogerd.
Of course, Arensman knows the stories about Boogerd’s victory on July 24, 2002. About how the Rabobank rider held out after a solo of 93 kilometers on the long climb to La Plagne, creating a famous moment in Dutch cycling history. “But I’m a little too young to have consciously experienced it,” says the 25-year-old Arensman.
The climber from INEOS Grenadiers created his own fairy tale on Friday in the Alpine village at 2,052 meters altitude. The solo was a bit shorter – 13 kilometers – but the victory just as impressive. Arensman rode away from the two best riders in the world on the last tough climb of this Tour: Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. “Thymen was stronger today,” says Pogacar afterwards.
Boogerd saw it up close, as he is an analyst for the NOS in France. “I almost jumped over the table we were standing at at the end,” says Boogerd. “It is very special what Thymen is doing here, I am getting emotional. You can now rightly say that La Plagne has become the Dutch mountain. The Alpe d’Huez can pack up.”
Dutch fans helped Arensman in tough kilometers
Despite the bad weather in the Alps, there were many Dutch fans along the roadside on Friday. Arensman was very happy about that.
“In the third week of the Tour, it’s a mental game,” he says. “My whole body was screaming: go slower, you can’t keep this up. But I had to keep pushing. I think the encouragement from the Dutch fans made the difference.”
Arensman keeps the lead over Pogacar and Vingegaard around thirty seconds for a long time. In the final kilometer, the Slovenian and Dane come very close, but Arensman has two seconds to spare at the finish line.
“I regret looking back a few times in the final,” says the Dutchman. “That only caused distraction. I knew I had to trust my instinct and had no influence on what the pursuers would do. Yet I looked. But luckily, I got away with it.”
Thus, debutant Arensman achieved his second stage victory of this Tour. Last week, he was already the best in a tough mountain stage in the Pyrenees. “I have won in the Alps and the Pyrenees. I have won from a breakaway and in a man-to-man battle with the general classification riders. There are not many people in the world who can say that. So I am very proud.”
For Boogerd, his victory in La Plagne was the highlight of his cycling career. Not for nothing did the Hagenaar appear in many media in recent days to tell his story from 2002 again.
For Arensman, the victory in La Plagne could just be a stepping stone to even better results. The rider from Deil in Gelderland is a very talented general classification rider. That has been known since he finished second in the Tour de l’Avenir in 2018, behind Pogacar. In the pro ranks, he finished sixth twice in the Giro d’Italia and once fifth in the Vuelta a España.
But Arensman regularly doubted himself in recent years. He put a lot of pressure on himself to perform well and as a result, he lost the joy in his sport. Things changed for this season. He got a new coach and wanted to enjoy himself in his training and races.
In this Tour, the whole world sees the result of that change of course. Although the uncertainty will never completely disappear for Arensman. “I think I can now have a little more confidence in my own abilities,” he says cautiously after his impressive performance in La Plagne.
“The most important lesson from this Tour is that I have the level to ride here and to beat the best. I now know what it takes to reach that top level and what good preparation is. It’s great that I’ve been given confirmation of that.”