There are riders who win through brute strength, who dance on the pedals and make it look easy. Ben Healy is not one of those. Ben Healy makes it look as hard as it is.
Thursday’s stage win, Healy's first at the Tour de France, was a move built in winter and launched in July. It was mapped, precisely and intelligently, knowing Healy’s strengths and his weaknesses and understanding the dynamics around him. But so were all his other attempts, the ones that didn't work. The two stages he could have won last year but didn’t, the Amstel Gold Race where he couldn’t keep the sport's stars at bay. The thing about this style of winning, in contrast to the brute force, superhuman type, is that part of the game is repetition. When Tadej Pogačar wants to win he can make it happen; when Healy wants to win, he has to put all the pieces in place and hope it happens to him. And if it doesn't, try and try again.
Does that sound harsh? It’s not meant to. Almost every rider in the Tour is like that, and Healy is among the best at making it work for him. The best are chaos merchants. Aero nerds. Breakaway specialists. They win, mostly, when others screw up, but they’re very good at choosing the moments when that is most likely to happen. They make their own luck. That was Healy today.
The outside of the EF Education-EasyPost bus was as jubilant as you’d expect, a sea of hugs and high-fives and random shouts of “Yes!” Directors Tom Southam and Charly Wegelius are normally too cool for such things, but they were absolutely getting in on the action. Wegelius did the two-arm fist pump thing popular with football managers after a goal as a soigneur and mechanic hung off each shoulder. Southam, more restrained, smiled at microphone after microphone and gave us all a detailed explanation of how they pulled one over on the whole Tour de France.
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