Wout van Aert Sprints for Hat Trick and Tadej Pogačar Repeats!

Wout van Aert won his third stage of this year's Tour de France.  After winning a mountain stage and a time trial, he showed what an all-around talented cyclist he is by winning a sprint stage.  He held off Mark Cavendish's attempt to set the record for stage wins.

Racing was very slow at the start, making me worry that our prediction would be too fast.  Serious racing did not begin until the last three or four laps of the seven famous laps in Paris.  Had the race ended with six laps, we would have been nearly perfect.  But the extra lap gave us a fast prediction.

• Stage 21:  2h 39' 37" (actual), 2h 33' 04" (prediction), 06' 33" fast (-4.10% error)

I do not like seeing another stage prediction off by more than 3%, but I am bothered less on the final stage because I never know how much ceremony will play a role in the first half of the stage.  We have usually hit the last stage quite well, but this year's prediction was a bit fast.  The beauty of being wrong is learning something!  We will have a lot to dissect with this year's Tour de France.  Check out van Aert's average speed.

• Stage 21:  11.32 m/s (40.75 kph or 25.32 mph)

That is definitely a slow average speed for the final stage.

Cycling a safe and sound Stage 21 meant that Tadej Pogačar would secure his second straight Tour de France win, and that is just what he did today.  Pogačar not only won the yellow jersey, he won the polka dot and white jerseys, just as he did last year.  Who can beat this guy over the next few years?

Pogačar will face a serious challenge from this year's runner-up, Jonas Vingegaard, shown on the left above.  Vingegaard gave Pogačar his most worrisome moment this year.  Coming in third is Richard Carapaz, the first Ecuadoran to earn a podium finish.  It was wonderful seeing the cyclists' kids on the stage, too!

I have noted in this space before that the science is what motivates me to model the Tour de France.  Learning how elite cyclists do what they do fascinates me.  Posting stage-winning time predictions on my blog interjects some additional fun into my research.  My students always get a kick out of seeing how close we get.  Noah Baumgartner worked with me again this year.  We will have a lot to do with post-race analysis.  We hit 13 stages to less than 3% error.  For the other eight stages, some were close to 3% error, some were not.  Weather and team strategies played role, as did a lone cyclist going ballistic on a couple of stages.  All 21 stages will provide fertile ground for learning.