Another day, another score draw. Just as he has done in the Col de Joux Plane on Saturday, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) tested Tour de France leader Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) as best he could on the stage 15 summit finish, but after Vingegaard remained in contact all the way up the climb, Pogačar is now looking towards Tuesday’s uphill time trial to make a difference.
Still in second overall and crossing the line in 16th place behind stage 15 winner Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious), Pogačar is now over five minutes clear of overall third-placed Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers), who suffered slightly on the final part of the climb.
But while his UAE teammate Adam Yates moved into fourth on GC after he attacked late on, Pogačar’s and his squad’s main aim remains very much on dislodging Vingegaard’s narrow but stubborn grip on the yellow jersey.
“Of course, I would like to have a gap, but in this kind of situation when I'm up against a rider as strong as Jonas, I’m happy to be only 10 seconds down,” Pogačar said after the stage.
“We tried to make the final climb hard. But I felt that Jonas was super good and I knew that I couldn’t really drop him, the climb was too easy.”
After the race reached a point where the yellow jersey group only consisted of Adam Yates, Pogačar and Vingegaard, UAE adopted an unexpected tactic of putting Yates on the attack. Pogačar then stuck to Vingegaard’s back wheel, only to try to blast away in the final kilometre - without success.
“We tried to improvise in the end, Adam took some seconds, so he’s coming closer on GC and near the podium so that’s also super nice,” Pogačar observed.
“I think we can feel very confident, we have good legs, everybody went well. It was a good team performance today.”
The Tour’s second rest day precedes the race’s lone time trial, a technical, hilly 22-kilometre challenge that could, finally, put some distance between the two top favourites, something that the six mountainous stages to date have, remarkably, all but failed to do.
“I think there will be gaps in the time trial and also the stage after the time trial [stage 17] has one of the hardest climbs of the world,” Pogačar predicted. “I think they’ll be decisive.
"I did a recon of the time trial, I really liked the course, it suits me well and I imagine we’ll go back and look it again tomorrow. It’s not far away.
“Tomorrow [Monday] is a rest day, then it’s full gas for me on Tuesday in the TT. I know it pretty well, I hope it suits me pretty well. I can’t wait to start it.”
