Tadej Pogacar tightened his grip on the yellow jersey of Tour de France leadership, following up the victory on Saturday at Pla d’Adet, in the Pyrenees, with another summit success at Plateau de Beille in the Ariège.
Although the stage seemed set for another duel between the Slovenian, leader of the UAE Emirates team, and the defending champion, Jonas Vingegaard of Visma–Lease a Bike, Pogacar proved just too powerful for the Dane.
“I would never have imagined this kind of outcome after the second week,” Pogacar said. “It was super‑hot and a really hard day. Usually, I struggle with the heat, but today the team did a good job with cooling down and hydrating.”
A brutal stage with 4,831 metres of altitude gain was raced in 35 degrees, but this time there was no fightback from any of the Giro d’Italia winner’s rivals, with Remco Evenepoel, of Soudal Quick-Step, also losing more time to the rampant Pogacar.
“I’ve had a lot of stage wins in the Pyrenees,” he said of the chain of mountains in which he has now taken seven of his haul of 14 Tour stages. “I like them and they like me back, so let’s keep it that way.”
Vingegaard and Pogacar had moved ahead of a dwindling group of overall contenders 11km from the finish at Plateau de Beille. But with 5km left to race, Pogacar moved past his rival and again, just as he had 24 hours earlier at Pla d’Adet, distanced him.
Unlike on Saturday, however, this was not an explosion of power, rather a more subtle acceleration that Vingegaard simply could not match.
“I was never worried,” Pogacar said of Visma-Lease a Bike’s attempts to break his resolve. “I was at the limit a little bit when Jonas tried to drop me, but I could see that he was also starting to suffer. I saw he didn’t have the legs to go to the top, so I tried with my own.”
As the gap between them increased, Vingegaard looked increasingly laboured and ceded just over a minute, leaving him now more than three minutes adrift of the yellow jersey. A battling Evenepoel retained third overall, but the Belgian is now well over five minutes behind the relentless Slovenian.
“I think they’re struggling to understand that Tadej is unbeatable,” Evenepoel said of Vingegaard and his team. “He’s on another planet this year. He’s had a perfect year. For me, he’s the best in the world.”
With Pogacar in such imperious form, it would now require a collapse of epic proportions for him to lose the race. “Now it’s really looking good,” he said of his hopes of achieving a rare Giro-Tour double. “I said this already when the lead was 1min 14sec. Now we need to keep focused for the last six days.”
After the stage finished, it was reported Pogacar had climbed Plateau de Beille in 39min 41sec, compared with the late Marco Pantani’s winning time in 1998′s scandal-riddled “Festina Tour”, of 43min 20sec. “I don’t know how Pantani rode back in the day – that’s almost 30 years ago,” he said, before adding: “Visma set a super strong pace from the beginning. Then Jonas did most of the work, until the moment where I attacked him.
“I pushed my limits, for sure. I also suffer.”
But as the Tour wears on and Pogacar extends his overall lead, some are asking if the volume of mountain stages, albeit well suited to his strengths, are unfair on others in the peloton.
Yet the 25-year-old has wilted in the Alps in the past, losing 2min 51sec to Vingegaard in 2022 on the Col du Granon, and more than five minutes to the Danish rider on the Col de la Loze in 2023.
Pogacar and his team must also safeguard against illness as the spread of Covid-19 within the convoy has led to the return of strict measures to prevent further riders succumbing to the virus.
Mask-wearing, already adopted by some teams, is now compulsory in the start area, finish area and the team buses paddock. With several of the Tour peloton due to travel to Paris to compete in the Olympic Games, the reintroduction of Covid protocols for the Tour’s final week is a worrying development.
Meanwhile in Italy, Elisa Longo Borghini, of Lidl-Trek, won the women’s Giro d’Italia, by just 21sec overall from Lotte Kopecky, of Team SD Worx Protime. Both riders are scheduled to compete in the women’s road race at the Olympics on August 4th. - Guardian
