It could have been a great Tour de France for the German cycling pros: mountain jersey, stage win and even in yellow from time to time. But they miss everything by a hair's breadth and sometimes dramatically. Above all, Simon Geschke still won.
Simon Geschke fulfilled every wish for autographs or selfies. The almost mountain king found his smile again after the tears in the Pyrenees, and compatriot Nils Politt unceremoniously named him the "winner of hearts". The man with the full beard lost the battle for the mountain jersey at the Tour de France, but gained a lot of sympathy. "I think I put on a nice show. It seems that I've gained a lot of fans. Apparently I haven't done anything wrong in the last few weeks," said Geschke in his typical Berlin way.
In fact, he did a lot of things right. For nine days in a row, Geschke had picked up the mountain jersey on the big podium and thus provided the highlight from a German point of view at the Tour of France. The fact that in the end a single mountain classification was the deciding factor in favor of patron Jonas Vingegaard somehow matched the performance of the smallest German tour fraction for 20 years with nine riders.
It was the tour of missed opportunities. Lennard Kämna was only eleven seconds short of the yellow jersey in Megeve, and the North German missed the stage win in La Planche des Belles Filles by less than 100 meters. Nevertheless, Kämna, who dropped out after the second rest day because of a cold, was among the winners among the German drivers.
In the future, the 25-year-old will even be expected to be the captain of the Bora-hansgrohe team. "We will discuss with him whether we dare to compete in a Grand Tour overall. But there is no pressure from the team. Lennie is always an asset for us, no matter what role," said team boss Ralph Denk.
The Germans were last without a day win in 2019. Gone are the days when sprint stars like André Greipel or Marcel Kittel spoiled German cycling fans with victories. Accordingly, Geschke is a little worried about the future. "It's not a nice development. After the big scandals, the junior races in Germany all disappeared. As a young German driver, it's super difficult to make the leap into the professional business. It won't get any better in the next few years," said the 36-year-old to dpa .
It's a good thing that Geschke still feels like it after ten tour participations. "I think when I've processed everything, I'll get in touch in winter and ask if I can ride the Tour," said the 2015 Tour stage winner, joking: "I'm still a young driver, maybe the next ones will come years more."
The two-time German champion Maximilian Schachmann, who has not yet found his luck on the tour, is also hoping for this. In 2019 a metacarpal fracture, in 2020 he started the race injured with a broken collarbone and this year it was a corona infection shortly before and a fall shortly after the start. Team colleague Politt was not able to repeat his feeling of happiness from the previous year, also because he had to help Alexander Vlasow, who was fifth overall, on the cobblestones. Classics specialist John Degenkolb also had similar tasks with the DSM team. So it stayed with the winner of hearts. "There is no trophy for that in Paris," said Geschke, but his autographs now have a completely different value.
