Tadej Pogacar, riding for the UAE Emirates team, further staked his claim for final victory in the 2024 Tour de France with a dominant but instinctive victory over Jonas Vingegaard in the first summit finish of the race at Pla d’Adet ski station in the Hautes Pyrenees.
Pogacar, winner of the Tour in 2020 and 2021, accelerated violently from the main favourites, just under five kilometres from the high-altitude finish, to extend his lead on the Danish defending champion, leader of the Visma Lease-a-bike team, to almost two minutes.
“The plan was to make the sprint hard and maybe take some seconds and the stage win, but in the end this is much better,” he said. “This is very good news. We have to try and maintain this position.”
It was the ninth time that the duellists had finished first and second in the same Tour stage since their rivalry began, a statistic that reflects how closely matched they have become. “It’s a game we play,” Pogacar, already winner of this year’s Giro d’Italia, said afterwards. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”
Pogacar admitted after the stage that he was indebted to his British teammate Adam Yates, whose lone attack, seven kilometres from the finish, paved the way for the Slovenian’s explosive effort.
“It was a little bit of improvisation,” Yates said after the stage. “I was ready to do the pace, as usual, and Tadej told me to attack. I was like, ‘What?!’”
Yates revealed that Pogacar’s tactics are sometimes even a mystery to his teammates. “With Tadej, I’ve got no idea sometimes. This morning, he said: ‘You can win if you go full gas.’ You never know.”
Pogacar admitted he had acted on instinct but was vague on the details of his mid-race conversation with Yates. “Man, it’s so hard to speak on the climb, with so many people cheering and you’re also on the limit,” Pogacar said. “I just screamed at him and he screamed back at me, just a few words.”
The British rider’s move failed to draw a response from Vingegaard or his team, but was merely a prelude to a violent acceleration from his Slovenian team leader, as he rode into the final five kilometres.
Pogacar, now inexorably edging closer to a Giro-Tour double, has already attacked on several occasions during this Tour, but this was the most significant and meaningful one since the race started. It was also enough to open clear daylight on his closest rival, Vingegaard, who is now almost two minutes in arrears.
Remco Evenepoel too, has now lost further ground, with the Belgian slipping behind Vingegaard and falling to third in the overall rankings. The 39 seconds gap that Pogacar opened to Vingegaard, in the final five kilometres, is the biggest margin the Slovenian has ever achieved against the Danish rider in the mountains.
Meanwhile, Ineos Grenadiers continued to endure rather than flourish, although team leader Carlos Rodriguez maintained his fifth place overall after finishing fourth.
Yet after losing Tom Pidcock to Covid symptoms, while an increasingly weary Geraint Thomas, winner of the Tour in 2018, battled on through the Pyrenees despite testing positive for the virus himself, the race is proving hard-going for the British team.
With more riders dropping out, either through illness, injury or Covid-19, the peloton is steadily reducing in number. After Pogacar was hit by the withdrawal of key UAE Emirates support rider Juan Ayuso on stage 13, Evenepoel lost Soudal Quick-Step teammate Louis Vervaeke to Covid, on the climb of the Col du Tourmalet .
Evenepoel is still in the fight for a top three finish, but appears to have accepted that he stands little hope of winning. “Pogacar is too strong,” the Belgian said. “I only lost 20 seconds today to Vingegaard, so I can fight for the podium. I’ll try to finish as high as possible.”
