A Monday afternoon at the IGESA Village Club, a one-star hotel high in the French Pyrenees above the fortified mountain town of Mont-Louis.Guillaume Villeneuve, the manager, was keeping half an eye on the nearby Vuelta a España. Hugo, his bartender, was tending to a quiet room. And then the heavens opened.Race leader Tadej Pogačar, wearing the red jersey, raised his arm to stop the peloton. Amid a barrage of hailstones the size of chestnuts, 180 soaking wet cyclists clacked through the double doors into the hotel’s reception, stretching their bikes outside like piles of firewood.
“We realized very quickly that the riders, Tadej Pogačar first and foremost, were going to enter the hotel,” Villeneuve tells The Athletic. “They quickly went inside; we simply opened the doors wide so that everyone could take cover.”Some, like Lidl-Trek’s Felix Gall had stopped further down the mountain, others, such as Paris-Roubaix winner Wout van Aert, sought shelter in a nearby van — but eventually, the entire field coalesced in the IGESA’s lobbies.The Basque climber Mikel Landa was one of dozens perched on the stairs. Lidl-Trek and Decathlon CMA CGM riders huddled under the same towel as a leg warmer. Pogacar stalked the corridors, chatting without everyone, while compatriot Primož Roglič, a grin plastered over his face, looked in raptures at the situation’s bizarre nature — or perhaps he was just warming up.“I was just working in the bar,” says Hugo. “I knew the Vuelta was just in front of the hotel, because we kind of made a picture to mark it — to be honest, I don’t know anything about cycling. I know Pogačar — that’s it.“Suddenly, my director just shouted at me to start warming some water, to give hot water to all of these riders. There were 10 people, then 10 more, then another 10, and they just kept coming. And then, time started to disappear.”
