Colombian Egan Bernal: First

Latin American Tour de France

Winner
This is how Egan Bernal became the first Latin American champion of the Tour
de France on July 28, 2019. 

It’s the last day of the race. He pedals his last 79 of the whopping 2,150 miles
(3,460 kilometers) he’s pedaled over the last month. He isn’t pedaling alone; a
large group of cyclists is nearby. 

The hot summer sun beats down as he finds his way inside the fleet of cyclists.
The 81 hours he’d pedaled in the last month have taken a toll on his legs, but
he keeps pushing for that one last bit.

His heart is pumping as the finish line gets closer and closer. The hopes and
dreams of his country—and continent—are with him as he crosses the finish
line and wins first place! 

As Egan Bernal stands in ecstasy before the Arc de Triomphe and a huge crowd
cheering his name, the Colombian national anthem sounds through the streets
of Paris. At 22, he has given glory to all of Latin America. 

Floyd Mayweather leaves us dazzled and confused, as ever. It is what he had done
to most of his 47 opponents over nearly 19 years, and now he has added Manny
Pacquiao to the list of the damned, the torment inflicted on a stricken opponent
over 12 rounds here on Saturday night in a ring the Las Vegas resident probably
knows better than the people who built it.

“I am the American dream,” the five-weight champion said after his 25th world title
fight, his 11th in a row at the MGM Garden Arena. At 38, the story of the finest
welterweight since Sugar Ray Leonard lives on but, after his post-fight threat to
give up his WBC, WBA belts, as well as his newly acquired WBO strap – perhaps as
soon as Monday, maybe in a couple of weeks, but certainly some time – it is a story
invested with as much intrigue and doubt as it had beforehand. We are in limbo
still
There is no guarantee of a rematch. There is no encouragement either for Amir
Khan, who has waited patiently in the wings for Mayweather, like an understudy
forever practising his single line from the final act of a very long play.
The fight was supposed to settle the biggest argument in modern boxing. It did not
quite deliver. Given their ages (Pacquiao is 36), it was not a total surprise that
neither of them could sustain the quality of the exchanges or the vigour of their
past over the course of 12 rounds, although there were slivers of magic from both.
Some of Mayweather’s slipping and sliding was sublime, his flat-footedness under
pressure less so, and Pacquiao never quite nailed an opponent obviously too big for
him to hurt to the point of stoppage.

But there was no knockout, there were no knockdowns, no major cuts or bruises
and no consensus, beyond the scorecards of the judges, that Mayweather had
schooled an opponent who later revealed he went into the fight with the vestiges of
a chronic injury to his right shoulder. Pacquiao revealed he aggravated it in training
two-and-a-half weeks ago, and he can have done it no good during some frenzied
shadow-boxing in the tunnel just before his ring-walk. From the third round
onwards, he said, he found it painful to use his feared right hook.

Having been persuaded after nearly six years of often pointless wrangling to put his
precious “0” on the line, Mayweather proved he was the better fighter on the night,
although the thousands of fans among a house of 16,507 customers who booed the
verdict and his victory speech clearly were pulling for the Filipino. Some times
Mayweather can’t win, even when he does. Some times Pacquiao loses – four times
in 12 visits to the MGM – when he might be considered hard done by.

Boxing, always desperate for champions to define an era, is left with a proud but
weary champion who wants to do no more than go home and watch some
television. He is unbeaten yet unfulfilled.