The moments that matter
"Respect to the bunch, respect to everybody!"
Tadej Pogačar
Five kilometres from glory. The finish line is calling. Your legs are screaming. Every second counts.
Then your biggest rival crashes.
What do you do?
Most people think the Tour de France is about speed, strength and sheer grit.
3 weeks. 2 rest days. 3,500 km over 21 stages.
The best cyclists in the world going pedal to pedal.
But this year’s race has shown us something else…
La Chute
In Stage 11 of the Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar—defending champion, and the man everyone came to beat—hits the deck hard just outside Toulouse, unintentionally taken out by Norwegian rider Tobias Halland Johannessen.
Pogačar's bike chain dislodges as he skids across the road. His skin scrapes across asphalt, and a Tour mechanic rushes to help.
In that moment, his rivals had a choice.
They could hammer down. Take advantage of bad luck and good positioning. Put some time on Pogi, who was second overall, pre-crash.
Instead, they decide to wait, as team radios broadcast the update across the peloton.
"We do not pull," Soudal Quick-Step repeated. "I repeat: we do not pull. After the crash of somebody, we do not pull."
Jonas Vingegaard slows his pace to allow Pogi to catch back up to the group.
"We waited for him, like we should do," he said later of the collective decision. "When it's like that, it's pure bad luck."
Here's what makes this moment even more remarkable: Pogi wasn't wearing the yellow jersey. Tour tradition says you wait for the race leader in the event of an unfortunate or unavoidable crash…
But it's an unwritten rule, and doesn't always prevail.
As Pogi took a tumble, he was second overall. It was Irish rider Ben Healy sporting the yellow jersey, having taken the overall lead earlier in the week.
No rule book demanded this wait.
Just riders leaning into cycling etiquette, and choosing who they wanted to be when it mattered most.
"It was respect among the riders," Ben Healy reflects. "Whenever someone makes a silly mistake in the final, when there's not going to be a crazy difference from that point forward, I think anyone would appreciate the same."
Four days later, we're in Stage 15 of the Tour de France. And now, the script flips.
This time it's Vingegaard and others hitting the ground. And there was Pogačar, flying in yellow, out in front when he hears the radio crackle:
"Crash behind."
Like his competitors in the days prior, he could have kept going and seized the moment.
Instead, he slows the entire peloton.
He leans into appreciation and agency, and extends that sense of respect and compassion right back to his competitors.
The Real ‘Win’
In a sport obsessed with milliseconds and marginal gains, these riders chose something bigger than a stage victory. The chose to be a human-being in the middle of a high-stakes human-doing performance.
And here's what they’ve reminded us all:
There are so many ways to ‘win’ when we merge courage with compassion, and competition with community.
Et voilà...
From small moments to big milestones, this is how we start to redefine success.
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