"This is the best cycling we have ever seen" - Stef Clement can't hide excitement following epic weekend in Pyrenees

Stef Clement is often quite critical of the riders and sports directors' tactics in his role as commentator or analyst. But after the epic two stages in the Pyrenees he ran out of superlatives. Not even the demotivating dominance of Tadej Pogacar could hamper his unusally cheerful mood.

In his analysis for NOS directly after the finish, he saw multiple winners. "Pogacar is the big winner, but we are all big winners! It has been a fantastic Pyrenees weekend. This is the best cycling we have ever seen. I stand by that. We have seen two days of fierce battle."

He also gave Visma | Lease a Bike a pat on the back. "Today the roles were reversed compared to yesterday: it was Visma | Lease a Bike's turn. They had no choice and they did it so well. Visma was demolition company today. They were able to make optimal use of almost everyone. That was also the plan."

Clement tries to rationalize that Pogacar flied up Plateau de Beille more than 3 minutes faster than previous record holder Marco Pantani. According to him, the level of riders now is incomparable to those decades ago. "You can see that they keep their energy levels up, and so on the final climb it's a kind of uphill time trial after 150 kilometers of cycling compared to a few years ago. These are really values, wattages, with which you could win a climbing time trial in the past."