He still has to ride to Paris.
Tadej Pogačar starts the Tour de France's final stage tonight six and a half minutes ahead, one evening from a fifth title. Between him and the record: 55 miles, and an old rule about tomorrow.
The news first, plainly. Sometime this evening, barring mishap or a crash — the wire services' careful phrase — Tadej Pogačar wins his fifth Tour de France (AP via ABC News). He begins the final stage, an 88.7-kilometer loop around Paris with three climbs through Montmartre and a finish on the Champs-Élysées, leading Remco Evenepoel by 6 minutes and 26 seconds. Nobody comes back from that on a flat Sunday. At 27, the Slovenian joins Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain — the only men who have won this race five times. He has taken five stage wins along the way, defending his yellow jersey on Alpe d'Huez just yesterday (Cyclingnews).
One name is missing from the party. Jonas Vingegaard — the two-time champion, the one rival who has made these Tours close — crashed out on stage 15 a week ago. The mountains where he'd have made his stand came and went without him. So tonight's celebration rides in with a question nobody in Paris can answer: what would this July have looked like with him upright? By the time you read this it may already be done, the jersey won, the anthem played. Let's see what wisdom says.
The man who isn't there
Solomon wrote a warning that sounds like it was made for sport and turns out to be about the heart:
"Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him."— Proverbs 24:17–18 · read it with plain notes in the Solomon collection
In plain English: don't feed on a rival's bad day. Pogačar was already leading, by minutes, when Vingegaard went down; the crash pedaled nothing for him. But there's an itch that comes with a win like this — for fans, and maybe for champions — to count the other man's misfortune as part of the victory. Solomon says leave it uncounted. His bad luck belongs to him; your race is the one in front of you. Three thousand years before anyone drew a finish line on the Champs-Élysées, the advice was already this practical: win clean, and keep your heart out of the wreckage behind you.
Fifty-five miles of tomorrow
And still — he has to ride to Paris. The Tour's last day is traditionally a parade, photographs and champagne at the back of the bunch, right up until the racing starts: the sprint is real, the crowds press close, and this year the route climbs through Montmartre three times before the finish. Every rider in the race knows the rule the wire services were honoring with "barring mishap." Solomon put it in nine words:
"Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth."— Proverbs 27:1 · read it with plain notes in the Solomon collection
The champion's version of that verse is plain discipline: the interviews can say "five" tomorrow; today the legs still have a job. Most of us don't ride bicycles for a living, but nearly everyone is carrying something that's six minutes from won — the deal nearly signed, the degree nearly finished, the loan nearly paid. The same rule holds. It isn't yours until you've ridden it in.
What the elders would tell him at 27
Karl Pillemer's Cornell project asked more than a thousand Americans over 65 for their most important lessons, and one of their findings about happiness fits a man who may run out of things to win this evening: think small. The elders moved happiness off the big milestones and onto the small, repeatable pleasures — the morning coffee, the walk, the phone call — because they'd stood on a few summits and learned you don't get to live on one. At 27, Pogačar has caught every name there was to catch. The elders would tell him, and the rest of us who will never wear yellow, that the day after the anthem is an ordinary Tuesday — and the people who do ordinary Tuesdays well are the ones who look back happiest.
The honest weighing
Was wisdom applied this July? The charitable reading: Pogačar spent three weeks racing for stage wins he didn't need — five of them — like a man who simply loves riding a bicycle fast, and his sport mostly reads it that way. The unsentimental reading is that dominance this complete can look like an appetite with no off switch, and that a Tour without its one real contest settles nothing except the result. I can see it both ways, and I'd rather tell you that than pretend to a verdict. What I can say is that both verses above are about the same thing — how to hold a win cleanly: no feasting on the man who fell, no speeches before the line. Whether tonight's champion manages both, the cameras will show soon enough.
The kitchen-table version needs no bicycle. Whatever in your life is six minutes from done — ride it in before you talk like it's finished. And when someone you compete with stumbles this week, notice the small glad feeling when it shows up, and decline to feed it. That one's harder. It's also the whole verse.
Wisdom Watch takes the day's loudest story and asks what the wise would say — no politics, no predictions, no advice about your money. Just the long view. Everything quoted here is real and sourced; the full texts live in the library.