There’s always one, every year. Some combination of speed and confidence, in a discipline that requires excessive doses of both, always sets one sprinter apart from the rest. They win one, and then another, and then another. The sprinter du Tour, if you will. The fast man who can do no wrong.
It’s a designation that doesn’t stay put for long. Only very rarely, for the absolute best, does a rider hold onto the title in successive years. Even the likes of Mark Cavendish had off years (plenty of them), though he does hold an incredible streak from 2008 to 2011 with at least four stage wins each of those years. But he’s the exception that proves the rule; last year’s clear holder of the sprinter du Tour title, Jasper Philipsen, has been more to the norm in his inability to replicate a year later. Biniam Girmay has taken his place. Calm, confident, making the right decisions in the right moments, faster than all the rest. On Thursday, he made it three, and he doesn’t look like stopping.
“I think I’m here now in the best shape of my life,” he said after Thursday’s stage. “I wake up every day and I say in the mirror, ‘Let’s do it again.’”
It almost didn’t happen. Girmay was out of position under the flamme rouge, floating and catching wheels alone, when a teammate found him. Mike Teunissen gave him a tap and said ‘I’m here,’ and the two weaved their way forward, through roundabouts and elbows and chaos. “He dropped me at 200 to go,” Girmay said. Perfect. “Today they did super amazing.”
There is an added heft to these stage wins. The green jersey sits on Girmay’s shoulders and his lead has remained relatively steady for the better part of a week. As of Thursday evening, he has a 107-point gap over Philipsen, with two real sprint stages left. Maybe three if the sprinter’s teams get lucky. There’s the stage to Pau Friday, the stage to Nîmes next Tuesday, and maybe (maybe!) the stage to Barcelonnette next Thursday. That one is full of category 3 climbs and Philipsen certainly won’t be a concern.
That green jersey matters. It’s another marker for Girmay, his team, and his country. To take it to Nice would set a record and a standard for all three.
Girmay has always been classified as more of a Mads Pedersen or Wout van Aert or, a last-decade Peter Sagan, versus a Mark Cavendish or Marcel Kittel. He is capable of being the last sprinter standing, or of arriving to almost any finish line less fatigued than the purest of sprinters. If he won the green jersey, it was assumed, it would be off the back of consistency in finals, lots of top 5s, and scooping up as many intermediate sprints as possible, in particular, those that Philipsen’s inferior climbing couldn’t reach. Girmay is instead doing both; he’s winning and he’s scooping, and his lead in that competition is now nearing insurmountable.
That would be an exceptional result. Girmay was asked directly on Thursday, by Jeremy Whittle of the Guardian, about being one of very few Black African riders in the peloton. Girmay said yes, actually, he’s the only Black man in the Tour peloton this year. “It’s not nice, to be honest,” he said. He hopes his wins inspire a generation and, equally important, inspire European teams and development pathways to turn their attention toward his country and his continent. “I wish I could have more Black riders in the peloton,” he said. Three stage wins, maybe more, and a green jersey in Nice can only help make that wish become reality.
A stage win is one thing, a string of them is another. Many riders win one stage, few win two. Of active riders, only 21 have three or more, all the way from Cavendish’s 35 to Matej Mohorič, who grabbed his third last year. It’s rarified air.
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