Egan Bernal became the youngest rider in 110 years to win the Tour de France when he crossed the finish line on stage 21 in Paris.
A Tour de France for the ages crowned a champion of an unusually young age on Sunday: 22-year-old Egan Bernal, South America’s first winner of cycling’s greatest race.
With the race leader not challenged on the final stage
Bernal became the first Colombian winner of the Le Tour de France.
He crossed the line in the peloton, hand-in-hand with his Ineos team-mate and last year’s winner Geraint Thomas, who finished second this time at the Champs-Elysees fittingly bathed in the yellow of a golden dusk.
Caleb Ewan won the traditional sprint finish on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday evening.
“I cannot believe it. It’s just incredible. I am sorry. I have no words,” Bernal said through a translator. “I still can’t understand what is happening to me.”
The youngest champion of the post-World War II era, the slightly built Colombian with a killer instinct on the road, proved to be the strongest of the 176 strong men who roared off from the start in Brussels, Belgium, on July 6 on their 3,366-kilometer (2,092-mile) of cycling’s greatest race of the world, odyssey that delivered the most absorbing, drama-packed Tour in decades and a new cycling superstar in the making: Bernal.
The partying fans' shirts were yellow, Colombians making themselves at home on the Champs-Elysees.
But the yellow that counted most was the iconic jersey that fit so snugly on the slim shoulders of Egan Bernal.
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