Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) came to the Critérium du Dauphiné searching for answers, on both his own shape and how much his rivals Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) had closed the gap since his dominant Tour de France triumph last year.
In the trio's first meeting since that race, the stage 4 time trial only brought more questions about the World Champion, with his time loss to both the Dane and Belgian prompting commentators to speculate. Was he out of shape? Unhappy with his equipment? Sandbagging? Perhaps he just got his pacing wrong, as he claimed post-stage.
