With the Tour de France's ninth stage and its third mountain test to the Puy de Dôme on Sunday came another blow from Tadej Pogačar in the battle for the yellow jersey. The Slovenian grabbed back eight seconds from race leader Jonas Vingegaard having already taken back 28 on Cauterets earlier in the week.
Despite the time loss, and the narrowing of Vingegaard's advantage to 17 seconds heading into Monday's rest day, the line from his Jumbo-Visma team after the stage was that "We're still on track".
Vingegaard and the team are still in the maillot jaune, after all, and as we all remember – he was 39 seconds down on Pogačar after nine days of racing last July.
"I think we can be happy with the day," Sepp Kuss said after the stage. "Eight seconds is a loss but the break was up the road, there weren't any time bonuses left. We just tried to make it a good pace on the climb, so it wasn't as explosive maybe.
"He's chipping away but we're still in the lead," the US super-domestique added, before referring back to their position at last year's Tour.
"If we look back to last year then we were 45 seconds down or something like that already at this point. In the big picture, we're really happy with where we're at. Jonas feels really good, and he looks really strong. We always knew it was going to be a really big fight."
Jumbo-Visma directeur sportif Arthur van Dongen had similar lines for the crowd of journalists waiting out the Dutch team's bus midway down the Auvergne climb.
Vingegaard was the only man from the elite GC group who could respond to Pogačar's biting acceleration at 1.5km from the top of the steep climb. As was the case at Cauterets on stage 6, though, he couldn't fully keep the pace, letting the wheel go and eventually crossing the line eight seconds down.
Van Dongen reminded journalists that his rider still has the upper hand in the yellow jersey battle and with it the yellow jersey itself.
"We are still in yellow. We're still on track. The team is strong and good. We know a lot can happen but there are no worries about it," he said. "There are still two weeks to Paris, the time trial is coming up, a lot of stages with a lot of mountains.
"We still see a lot of opportunities but it's no surprise that Pogačar is one of the biggest favourites."
With Pogačar in the ascendancy, the question was posed to Van Dongen whether the advantage now lies with the two-time Tour winner and whether he is now the form man in the mountains, having seemingly fully recovered from stage 6, which saw Vingegaard blast off to take 1:04 over the Col de Marie Blanque.
"When I look to the last two stages uphill then for the moment maybe he's a bit more of a favourite than Jonas," he said. "But it's not only about the last two days. It's important that you're in Paris in the yellow.
"We still have yellow and that's also nice and really important. But for sure when you gain some time in the last two mountain finishes then it's maybe a small advantage. But Jonas can be confident with a really strong team, and we are still on track."
With the first rest day in Clermont-Ferrand lying ahead of three transitional stages before the next mountain test – a summit finish at Grand Colombier on Friday – the fight for the 2023 Tour de France remains almost as delicately poised as it was all the way back at the Grand Départ in the Basque Country.
