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This evening, Neilson Powless, Magnus Cort, Alberto Bettiol, Rigoberto Urán, and Andrey Amador rode into the City of Light and finished the 2023 Tour de France on the cobbles of the Champs-Élysées.
They will miss their teammates James Shaw, Esteban Chaves, and Richard Carapaz tonight in Paris.
Those three had to leave this Tour de France early after crashes. Still, we raced this Tour de France with heart and grit, even if we weren’t rewarded on the final results sheet.
Neilson Powless spent close to two weeks in the lead of the King of the Mountains competition and won countless fans with his exploits off the front of the race in the polka-dot jersey. Neilson rode more kilometers in the break than any other rider in the Tour de France. By the end, he was exhausted, but attacked and attacked until the last meter.
So did his teammates. Battered and bruised and down to five men, we never lost the spirit with which we started this Tour.
From the first to the last day, we were inspired by the ambition and dedication Richie showed to get ready for the Tour de France. We were inspired by the way James rode, attacking over the Tourmalet and up the Grand-Colombier in his debut Tour. Esteban’s smile and iron-will to go for wins inspired us. We’re glad that they are all on the mend.
Stage in and stage out, we tried and tried again in this race. Neilson tried. Magnus tried. Alberto tried. Andrey tried. And Rigo tried. We raced with determination and imagination to try to win a stage all the way to Paris. We stayed focused and made the best of every situation we faced. Luck was not on our side.
Still, making it to Paris remains a momentous achievement. The Tour de France is a race; it is also an expedition and finishing it is an athletic feat on par with climbing Everest. All of the smiling fans who have cheered us on for the past three weeks know that. Their yells kept us going during our hardest moments.
Tonight we’ll toast all of you on the Champs. Thank you. Merci. And Vive le Tour de France!
And now it’s time to watch the Tour de France Femmes.
Neilson Powless
It is nice to finally be in Paris. It was a long, hard Tour with lots of ups and downs. We lost our leader day one. That was really tough. I bounced back for about a week and a half in the polka dot jersey, but just kind of fell apart in the last week. I gave everything to be in the breaks and fight for a result every day, but in the end I was just trying to make it to Paris. And here we are.
I think I definitely made quite a few more fans after spending so long in the polka-dot jersey. It was a bittersweet experience, because it was so amazing to wear that jersey, which made it even harder to lose it, so hopefully I will be back fighting for it again in future years.
Rigoberto Urán
I'm happy to be here in Paris and to have raced the last day. It’s always very nice to get to Paris, in front or in the back doesn’t matter. It's just nice to arrive to Paris, to cross the Champs Élysées and race on this special circuit and cross the finish line.
Magnus Cort
It is always nice to be here. No matter how your Tour has been, also if it was hard, it is still nice to finish with one last day to get out there and show the jersey.
Andrey Amador
Here we are in Paris. I’m very happy. It is a mix of feelings, happiness but also sadness, because normally we would be here with three other teammates, but we had some accidents. We are also sad, because we wanted to go for a stage, and we tried, but we never got lucky. Still, we should be very proud of how we raced. All of us gave 100%.
Alberto Bettiol
When you arrive in Paris, you are always happy, because the Tour is really long and you go through a lot of things, but in the end we made it and we are all really happy. We always look forward to arriving in Paris, to finishing in Paris, to racing in Paris, because it only happens once a year.
There were a lot of ups and downs in this Tour, but we always want to remember the good memories. Personally, my best memory was a few days ago when I was up in the breakaway fighting for the victory. The bad moment was the first day when Richard crashed, but we stood up again as a team and tried to race again and looked forward, so we have to be happy to be in Paris. It is my fifth time, so I am proud of myself.
DS Juanma Garate
Obviously it was not an easy Tour for us. We started the first stage with a highlight and a really low moment five minutes apart in the Bilbao stage, when we got the points for the KOM jersey with Neilson and five minutes later lost our leader. But from that day, everybody was really motivated to do something in this race. The riders fought every day to be in the right move. We didn’t have the luck to win, but I am happy with the attitude that our riders showed every day. Even after stage 14, when we lost two riders, the next day we had four out of five in the breakaway. We tried every day to be competitive and fight for the chances we had to win a stage. The guys never gave up. Same from the staff. They never stopped believing that it could be possible. The attitude and the way we raced each stage till the last day is something I am proud about.
