Sawt Falasteen - Tour de France breakout talent Lipowitz shooting for the stars

The 24-year-old from the Red Bull Bora team is not only the new face of cycling in his homeland, but also the new face standing alongside the likes of reigning Tour champion Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard on the big-race podiums.

Lipowitz climbed to third in the rankings on Saturday, the day when double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel pulled out during the gruelling Tourmalet stage.

Having made the podium at both Paris-Nice and the Criterium du Dauphine this year, he was described by Pogacar, who met him in a lift at a team hotel, as "a nice guy, very cool, and really strong on a bike."

The shy rider from southern German had an unusual route into cycling, coming to the sport from biathlon, a sport in which his brother Philipp was junior world champion.

After nagging knee injuries he took up cycling, crossing the Pyrenees and Alps with his parents as a teenager.

"I realised after a ride from Geneva to Nice that I had no ill effects whatsoever in my body," Lipowitz said this week.

The year he gave up biathlon, he took it upon himself to seek out Red Bull team manager Ralph Denk, who was deeply impressed that the plucky youngster had cycled 100km each way to knock on his door.

"I asked him if his mum was coming to pick him up, it was freezing. I was impressed when he told me he lived so far away," Denk said.

- 'Not a single weakness' -

His team's sports director Rolf Aldag also heaps praise on Lipowitz, describing him as unbreakable.

"He's a very calm, down-to-earth person, and very reserved. It comes from his upbringing. He's not a loudmouth, but a hard worker, a true German," Aldag told AFP.

"He has a big motor, and is incredibly powerful. The longer it is, the better for him.

"I haven't found a single weakness in him yet. He's very agile on a bike which is rare for someone who came to cycling so late."

On the Tour so far Lipowitz has placed in the top five in the three Pyrenean stages, and sixth in the major time trial.

He also has the highly experienced Primoz Roglic as team leader, which would help given the Slovenian is also shy and softly spoken and started life in winter sports before winning five Grand Tours.

"I'm happy, I'm really happy, and I hope that he keeps the level, and that he keeps it up until the finish," Roglic said this week.

Roglic has never won the Tour de France, but perhaps his protege, given time, can go on to land cycling's ultimate prize.

Y.Zaher--SF-PST