Pogacar takes stage while Vingegaard seals win
Stage 20 report: Tadej Pogacar won the final mountain stage of the 2023 Tour de France to Le Markstein, as Jonas Vingegaard sealed back-to-back wins in the French race, barring accident or illness between now and the end of tomorrow’s stage in Paris.
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More from Tadej Pogacar: “Asked what his worst memory of this year’s Tour will be, he laughs. “Probably when [his teammate] Marc Soler kept looking back at me on the Col de la Loze with his scary eyes.”
Tadej Pogacar speaks: “Today I finally feel like myself again and it was just really good from the start to the finish to feel good again after many days suffering,” he says. “To pull if off in the finish line, I am super, super happy.”
Upon being asked if he might like another week added to the Tour he laughs and says “No, let’s go home.” He goes on to thank Adam Yates for his lead-out for the final sprint.
The top five on General Classification
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) 79hr 16min 38sec
Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) +7min 29sec
Adam Yates (UAE Emirates) +10min 56sec
Simon Yates (Jayco-Ulula) +12min 23sec
Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers) +12min 57sec
The top five on stage 20
Tadaj Pogacar (UAE EMirates) 3hr 27min 18sec
Felix Gall (AG2R-Citreon)
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma)
Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla))
Adam Yates (UAE Emirates)
Tadej Pogacar wins stage 20!
Vingegaard launchers an attack with 300m to go but Pogacar pulls clear of the man in the yellow jersey and wins by several bike-lengths. Behind him in the yellow jersey, Vingegaard rolls over the line and will be be confirmed a worthy winner of the Tour de France in Paris tomorrow barring serious illness or an accident.
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1km to go: You’d fancy Pogacar to win the stage from here but it’s no certainty ...
2km to go: Adam Yates is riding for Pogacar at the front of the lead quintet.
3km to go: Simon and Adam Yates catch up with our lead trio. Four of the top five on GC are also in the top five of this stage. Simon Yates takes over at the front. Barguil and Pinot are 35 seconds back. Rafal Majka, Carlos Rodriguez, Jai Hindley and a few others are 48 seconds back.
6km to go: Gall and Vingegaard are deep in conversation with Pogacar right behind them. Vingegaard keeps peeking over his shoulder to see what the Slovenian is up to. “Do you think he does that when he goes to bed at night?” asks Robbie McEwen on Eurosport. “Behind the door, under the bed … where’s Tadej?”
7km to go: Gall leads the front three over the top of the final climb of this year’s Tour. Vingegaard and Pogacar are keeping tabs on each other while the Yates brothers are just 14 seconds behind. Could one of them nick the stage? Cofidis rider Victor Lafay has abandoned.
9km to go: Our lead trio, Pogacar, Gall and Pogacar, peddle onwards and upwards, with the AG2R-Citreon rider leading the way. Behind them, a gendarme on a motorbike is doing his utmost to control the exuberant crowd with blasts of his siren and an occasional shove.
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10km to go: Gall is leading our front trio up the climb, when you could be forgiven for thinking he’d tuck in behind Vingegaard and Pogacar and let them do the donkey work at the front. Adam and Simon Yates are about to pass Pinot, Barguil and Pidcock. Simon Yates has moved up to fourth from fifth on the virtual GC leaderboard. Tom Pidcock is now trying to keep Carlos Rodriguez, fourth overall on GC, in touch with the Yates brothers.
Thibaut Pinot is dropped ...
11km to go: The dream is dead but let the record show that Thibaut Pinot went down swinging haymakers. He’s been dropped along with Pidcock and Barguil. Felix Gall, Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar lead the stage.
12km to go: With four kilometres to the top of the climb, we have a lead group of six: Pinot, Gall, Pidcock, Pogacar, Vingegaard and Barguil. The Yates brothers are 20 seconds behind them.
13km to go: Pidcock and Barguil catch Pinot, with Vingegaard, Pogacar and Gall looming in the rear-view mirror.
Tadej Pogacar attacks!
The Slovenian attacks off the front of the yellow jersey group and Jonas Vingegaard latches on to his wheel. They’re joined by Felix Gall.
13km to go: Onwards and upwards goes Pinot, with Tom Pidcock and Warguil just 12 seconds behind him. More worryingly, the yellow jersey group is on the hunt and the gap is down to a minute.
15km to go: Should he make it to the top first, Pinot’s work won’t be finished. There are another 8.2km of knobbly up-and-down to negotiate before the finish line.
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17km to go: Pinot puts another 10 seconds into the yellow jersey group on the descent with the final climb of this year’s Tour looming. It’s the brutish category one Col du Platzerwasel: 1,193m high, 7.1km in length and with an average gradient of 8.4%.
“It’s a series of really steep step-ups with gradients in the red zone and gradients in the black zone,” says Robbie McEwen on Eurosport. Pinot hits the climb with an advantage of 1min 10sec over the yellow jersey group.
20km to go: Wearing the same Groupama-FDJ colours as Pinot, David Gaudu crashes on the descent but remounts and continues. Sepp Kuss has lost eight minutes and looks a certainty to exit the top 10 on GC.
21km to go: “It could be his last time around here and it’s Thibaut’s Turbo Time!” writes Bill Preston. “He’s getting a proper stomp on and making a real show of thrilling heroics. A win would make his year, and maybe he won’t retire. I hope he doesn’t.”
24km to go: Jumbo Visma are at the front of the yellow jersey group, with Wilco Kelderman leading the way and Jonas Vingegaard tucked in behind him.
27km to go: Allez Thibaut! Riding on his home roads and fuelled by fan fervour, Pinot maintains his 90-second lead as he crests the top of the Petit Ballon. There are thousands of fans cheering him on as he begins the treacherous descent. How must he be feeling?
28km to go: Pinot has a 20 second lead over Tom Pidcock and Warren Barguil, and a lead of 1min 20sec over the yellow jersey group, who are about to swallow up Giulio Ciccone. Pinot is two kilometres from the top of the climb and a massive, rapturous crowd are showering him with encouragement and … well, love. It’s quite an emotional sight.
29km to go: The yellow jersey group has been obliterated on this climb, while Pinot has a 14-second gap over Tom Pidcock. The French crowd are absolutely loving the sight of their homeboy Pinot in first place on this stage and the rider is approaching the corner named in his honour that is wedged with his fans. The fans are 20 people deep in places on the roadside but everyone is behaving impeccably.
30km to go: Thibaut Pinot strikes out on his own, leaving his fellow escapee in his wake as he continues toi make his way up the mountain. He may not get the fairytale win he hopes for but if it doesn’t happen for him, this warrior will certainly make sure he is carried out on his shield. “I don’t think there’ll be any cadeaux on this stage,” says Sean Kelly on Eurosport. ‘Cadeaux’ being the French word for ‘gifts’.
32km to go: With more than six kilometres of the final climb to go, Jonas Vingegaard is getting isolated in the yellow jersey group as, one by one, his Jumbo-Visma teammates buckle under the pressure being applied by Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Emirates team. They seem desperate to win today’s stage. The gap to the Thibaut quintet is now under a minute.
32km to go: Back in the yellow jersey group, UAE Emirates rider Marc Soler takes up position at the front and is joined by his teammate Rafal Majka. The gap is 1min 27sec.
33km to go: With 8.7km to go up the latest climb, the front group has splintered as Thibaut piles on the pressure. Tom Pidcock, Warren Barguil, Giulio Ciccone and Valentin Madouas are still with him. Madouas is a teammate of Pinot’s.
35km to go: The next climb is the Petit Ballon, which doesn’t look particularly petit from where I’m sitting. It’s 9.3km in length, plateaus at 1,163m and has an average gradient of 8%.
The lead group have a lead of 1min 19sec over the yellow jersey group, while the stragglers in today’s green jersey grupetto are 9min 50sec off the pace. At the roadside, the crowds are out in force to support their local hero Thibaut Pinot, who is among the 10 leaders. There are thousands out to cheer him on at a certain section of the course.
50km to go: “I’ve been thinking about the scepticism surrounding Vingegaard’s dominance and I do wonder whether he’s just head and shoulders above a relatively (and I do mean ‘relatively’) weak group of GC contenders this year,” writes Paul Weir.
“There’s no Froome any more, nor Nibali, Thomas, Quintana, Valverde, Dumoulin or Roglic. Pogacar’s build up was hindered by injury, and Bernal is still a long way short of where he was in 2019.
“Among the rest of the peloton only three other previous podium finishers started the tour: Carapaz and Bardet have abandoned and Uran is over three and a half hours down. Rodriguez and Hindley are racing their first Tour de France and the Yates brothers’ best results here came in 2016 (Adam) and 2017 (Simon): neither were expected to seriously challenge the top two.
“No-one really knew how badly affected Pogacar would be by his injury and it took until the third week for him to fall away. How much of a surprise are the time gaps from Vingegaard to everyone else, really? None of that takes away from what, as you say, has been a brilliantly entertaining race.”
I wouldn’t really disagree with any of that and am more than happy to give Vingegaard the benefit of the doubt for now, but I believe that in terms of average speeds, this has been the fifth fastest Tour de France in the race’s history.
51km to go: Following his crash earlier today, Sepp Kuss has lost four minutes on the yellow jersey group and already dropped a place in the “virtual” GC. Through no fault of his own, his chances of staying in the top 10 are not looking good with back-to-back category one climbs ahoy. Let’s hope he at least gets to finish the race as the American has had a wonderful Tour working on behalf of Jonas Vingegaard.
Giulio Ciccone is King of the Mountains
Resplendent in his polka-dot helmet, shirt, shorts, gloves and socks, the Italian crests the fourth climb of the day and guarantees that he’ll be presented with the King of the Mountains award in Paris tomorrow evening as long as he finishes the race.
He punches the air in delight as he becomes the first Italian to win that particular shirt since Claudio “El Diablo” Chiapucci in 1992. Chapeau!
56km to go: Krists Neilands is passed by a Tour moto and draws an imaginary cross in the air as he glances into the camera. He’s done.
57km to go: The riders are tackling the category three Col de la Schlucht, which is 1,139m high, 4.3km of length and has an average gradient of 5.4%.
60km to go: With their eye on a stage win, wannabe Pinot party-poopers UAE Emirates are doing the donkey work at the front of the yellow jersey group. The gap is only 1min 04sec, far less than Pinot would like.
63km to go: We have a group of 10 riders at the front of the race, Thibaut Pinot among them. He couldn’t? Could he? Fingers and toes crossed for what would be a real fairytale ending to his career.
68km to go: Giulio Ciccone is first over the top again, taking another five KOM points. If he can repeat the feat at the next climb, he is guaranteed to keep the King of the Mountains jersey. He owes his teammates Mads Pedersen and Mattias Skjelmose a big drink for the fine job they did today, helping him keep the jersey with a minimum of amount of fuss or stress.
69km to go: With the gradient at 18% on this short, sharp climb, the Ciccone group is joined by the great Thibaut Pinot, who would be an incredibly popular winner of today’s stage. The yellow jersey group is a minute back.
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70km to go: Evidently suffering from the injuries he suffered in his crash, Sepp Kuss is in trouble and has been dropped. His place in the top 10 is at risk but he has over six minutes on Guillaume Martin, who is 11th on GC. “On Peacock, they are saying that Kuss went down and Rodriguez went over him,” writes Joe Pearson.
71km to go: Next up is the category two Col de Grosse Pierre and Giulio Ciccone can all but guarantee himself the polka-dot jersey if he is first over the top. He will absolutely assure himself of the iconic shirt at close of play tomorrow in Paris if he is first over the top of both it and the category three climb that follows.
76km to go: According to Eurosport, Felix Gall said this morning that his priority is to protect his place in the top 10 on General Classification rather than trying to beat Ciccone to the polka-dot jersey, a comment which must have been music to the Italian’s ears. Mind you, Gall was there or thereabouts on the first climb so he could have been bluffing, only to run out of energy since.
77km to go: Ciccone takes the points with an uncontested ride over the top of the Col de la Croix des Moinats.
78km to go: The road is narrow, somewhere between one and two cars wide, and the gap from the leaders to the yellow jersey group is 33 seconds. There are several riders on the road between the two groups. Ciccone looks set fair to take the points at the top of this climb too, to increase his advantage over Felix Gall in the KOM classification to 16 points.
79km to go: The word from the Ineos Grenadiers team car is that Carlos Roriguez is suffering no serious ill-effects following his crash. His many wounds are superficial, it seems, which is good news for him.
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80km to go: Giulio Ciccone, Mathieu Skjelmose, Tom Pidcock, Warren Barguil, Kristin Neilands and Maxim Van Gils have opened a small gap on the rest with three kilometres of the climb to go.
81km to go: The riders are on the second climb of the day, the category two Col de la Croix des Moinats, which is 891m high and five kilometres in length. Four Bora-Hansgrohe riders, including Jai Hindley, have broken away from the yellow jersey group and are trying to bridge the gap.
86km to go: Vingegaard takes the sledgehammer subtle hint from Barguil and cools his jets. A group of 15 riders get to escape from the yellow jersey group. Tom Pidcock, Mikel Landa, Barguil, Julian Alaphilippe, Mads Pedersen, Stefan Kung, Krists Neilands, Ion Izaguirre and Mathieu Burgaudeau are among them. They gap is 14 seconds and Bora-Hansgrohe, who don’t have a rider in the breakaway, are leading the chase.
90km to go: A group of five riders including Giulio Ciccone and Julian Alaphilippe have attempted to escape and are being hunted down by the yellow jersey group. Arkea-Samsic rider Warren Barguil has words with Jonas Vingegaard, appearing to tell the race leader his presence is not welcome as it is preventing other riders from taking their chance to get in a breakaway.
The riders of Ineos Grenadiers shepherd Carlos Rodriguez back to the back of the peloton, where he rolls alongside the medical car getting his face cleaned and tended to by the doc.
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92km to go: UAE are putting the hammer down at the front of the race, while Jonas Vingegaard’s lieutenant Sepp Kuss has also been through the wars. He’s clearly fallen and is currently rolling along side a medical car getting bandages applied to his face and elbow. His shorts and jersey are torn and he looks badly beaten-up.
97km to go: From the team car, Ineos Grenadiers order their riders to slow down and wait for their their fallen comrade, while the yellow jersey group press on in a bid to take advantage of his misfortune. Rodriguez lost his front wheel on a turn and went into the asphalt face-first. He has a cut over his left eye, blood all over his face and is frantically trying to rejoin the bunch but has yet to be attended to by the medics.
Carlos Rodriguez crashes!
100km to go: In fourth place on General Classification, Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers) misjudges his line and comes off his bike. He remounts and continues but has blood pouring down his face. He’s quite clearly hit his head and will surely need to undergo a concussion protocol at the medical car. His left elbow, left hand and left knee are also cut and/or grazed.
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106km to go: The riders begin their first descent of the day, scorching down the mountainside with Julian Alaphilippe leading the charge. He’s travelling at over 70kmph but still feels composed enough to have a long look over his shoulder and then take one hand off his bars so he can take a drink from his bidon. I believe today’s stage passes through his home town, where there’s bound to be a huge turn-out.
110km to go: Due in no small part to the efforts of his teammates Pedersen and Skjelmose, Ciccone adds another five points to his King of the Mountains tally, stretching his lead to 11 points. Neither Felix Gall nor Jonas Vingegaard, his closest rivals, get any of the leftovers, with Skjelmose and Pedersen making sure to hoover them up. It’s excellent work from Lidl-Trek.
111km to go: There are two kilometres to go to the top of the first climb to the Ballon D’Alsace. the peloton is fairly tightly bunched with everyone you’d expect to be near the front present and correct. Mads Pederson, another Lidl-Trek teammate of Ciccone’s, is forcing a blistering pace.
112km to go: Mattias Skjelmose tries to lead his teammate Giulio Ciccone up the first climb, with Julian Alaphilippe in close order. The peloton aren’t far behind.
114km to go: Campenaerts is about to be reeled in by the bunch with a little five kilometres of the first climb remaining. Team UAE are on the front of the peloton and on race radio, the riders of Ineos Grenadiers have been told that Tadej Pogacar’s team are targetting the stage win. The problem? They don’t know how they’re going to go about it or which rider they hope to get over the line first. Rafal Majka is one mooted possibility.
118km to go: Giulio Ciccone is a bag of nerves, closely monitoring and trying to follow or close down every attempted move off the front of the bunch.
“He needs to sit back a little bit, take it a bit calmer and wait,” says Eurosport pundit Sean Kelly. “But that’s the style of Ciccone when he’s in a breakaway going for a stage win, he just gets very, very nervous; moving at every little move that goes.”
120km to go: At the head of the course, Jasper De Buyst is already struggling to stay in touch with his apparently tireless teammate Victor Campenaerts on the first climb. He drops back to the bunch.
Several riders, including Ciccone and Julian Alaphilippe, are trying to jump off the front of the bunch with over nine kilometres of the first ascent of the day to go.
122km to go: It behoves us to send birthday greetings to Soudal-Quick-Step’s Dries Devenyns, who is riding in his final Tour de France and turns 40 today. Life begins now, Dries!
123km to go: Guilio Ciccone’s Lidl-Trek team take up position at the front of the bunch as the gap goes out to almost 50 seconds.
🇧🇪Death, taxes, and @VCampenaerts in the breakaway.
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 22, 2023
🇧🇪Dans la vie, il n'y a qu'une seule chose d'inéluctable, c'est @VCampenaerts dans l'échappée #TDF2023 pic.twitter.com/234EdS77dD
128km to go: Campenaerts and De Buyst are left to their own devices for now, the peloton showing no inclination to reel them in this early. Tadej Pogacar’s UAE EMirates team are conspicuous at the front of the bunch today. In the wake of their midweek disappointments, they’ll be hopeful their leader can take the stage win today. Keeping Adam Yates on the third step of the podium will also be a priority. He leads Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers) by 1min 16sec.
129km to go: It’s a fairly gentle introuction ahead of today’s first climb, the category two, Ballon d’Alsace which rears its 1,173m-high head 109 kilometres from the finish. It’s a little over 11 kilometres in length with an average gradient of 5%.
They're off and racing on stage 20 ...
132km to go: At the drop of the flag, two Lotto-Dstny riders, Vincent Campenaerts and Jasper De Buyst, immediately make a break for it, quickly opening a gap of 22 seconds on the bunch.
The stage 20 roll-out is under way
The riders are assembled en masse behind Christian Prudhomme’s official red Tour Skoda and have another couple kilometres of the neutral zone through which to meander before getting the signal to begin racing.
It’s likely to be hell-for-leather from the start with this being the last chance for many riders to bag themselves a stage win. It’s been a brilliant race so far, one of the best I can remember, and today’s should be another cracker.
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"He spoke for the entire peloton." 🥰
— Eurosport (@eurosport) July 22, 2023
The Breakaway on why Matej Mohoric's post-race interview was so special 💫@SportsOrla | @darylimpey | @daniellloyd1 | @mcewenrobbie pic.twitter.com/Pl2v2Az9B2
Chrstian Prudhomme on today’s stage: “The penultimate stage features an Alsatian menu that is likely to cause indigestion, even over a distance this short, as the riders face a cumulative total of 3,600 metres of climbing,” writes the Tour director in the race handbook.
“If the contest for the Yellow Jersey is still alive, anything is possible: after the Ballon d’Alsace, there will be an opportunity to launch attacks on the Col de la Croix des Moinats, then a little bit further on when climbing the Col de Grosse Pierre, then on the Schlucht, before then tackling the Petit Ballon and the Platzerwasel. It’s a minefield!”
Now that's what I call humility ...
Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) won yesterday’s superb stage by a whisker and gave what, for my money, was one of the best “post-match” interviews by any sportsman or woman that I have ever seen.
Although he was close to exhaustian and speaking in his second or third language, the Slovenian’s thoughtfulness, generosity of spirit, humility and raw honesty were enough to bring a tear to a glass eye, while his account of the torture he and his fellow riders put themselves through on a daily basis also helped make him plenty of new friends, even among those on social media who have no interest in cycling. His words really seem to have struck a collective chord in and outside the Tour bubble.
There isn't one quote we could pick out of this interview to do it justice. If there is one interview you watch today, make it this one with @matmohoric.
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 21, 2023
On n'a pas su choisir une seule citation qui rendrait hommage à l'interview. Du coup si vous devez écoutez un seul interview… pic.twitter.com/sK0LUkCStD
King of the Mountains: Giulio Ciccone holds the polka-dot jersey but is only six points ahead of Felix Gall going into a penultimate stage that boasts three category two climbs, a category two and two category ones. The winner of this category will be decided today.
Ciccone will need to do everything he can to hoover up as many KOM points as possible on the early climbs, as race leader Jonas Vingegaard is third in this classification, just seven points behind him. The Dane is more likely to beat the Italian in today’s back-to-back category one climbs towards the end of the stage.
Currtently eighth on General Classification, it will be intriguing to see if Gall focusses on keeping his position inside the top 10 on GC or goes all-out to wrestle the polka-dot jersey from Ciccone.
One of the most iconic jerseys in this or any sport, it’s certainly worth winning, but should Gall try and fail to mug Ciccone, he’ll almost certainly lose his top 10 ranking in the process. The Austrian does, however, already have a stage win to his name in this Tour and if allowed to attack Ciccone by his directeur sportif, may decide it is worth the risk. Decisions, decisions …
⛰️Just because we haven't had enough mountains, we're back for more. Petit Ballon, Platzerwasel, Markstein!
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 22, 2023
⛰️On savait que la montagne vous manquait, donc en voila encore. Petit Ballon, Platzerwasel, Markstein !
💛#TDF2023 pic.twitter.com/1j2OQ4h5HP
Who's wearing what jersey?
Yellow: Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma)
Green: Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck)
Polka-dot: Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek)
White: Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates)
The top five on General Classification
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) 75hr 49min 24sec
Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) +7min 35sec
Adam Yates (UAE Emirates) +10min 45sec
Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers) +12min 01sec
Simon Yates (Jayco-Ulula) +12min 19sec
Pello Bilbao, Jai Hindley, Felix Gall, Sepp Kuss and David Gaudu make up the top 10.
Mohoric wins while Vingegaard faces more question
Stage 19 report: Matej Mohoric won a volatile 19th stage of the Tour de France after narrowly outsprinting Kasper Asgreen, a stage winner 24 hours earlier, in Poligny. Jeremy Whittle reports on another thrilling stage …
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Belfort to Le Markstein Fellering (133.5km)
William Fotheringham on stage 20: A final mountain stage where the organisers will hope for a conclusive showdown between, ideally, Pogacar and Vingegaard. [“This was written pre-Tour” – Ed.]
Given this isn’t a million miles from the home of the French chouchou Thibaut Pinot, the home fans and media will be dreaming up a perfect exit for the three-time stage winner in his final Tour over six of the best passes the Vosges can offer.
