In the 1964 Tour when Jacques Anquetil was dropped by Raymond Poulidor on the Puy de Dôme, when the future winner was told he’d held onto the leader’s jersey by 14 seconds, his famously succinct answer was ‘That’s 13 more than I needed.”
Fast forward more than half a century and on the same climb, race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) had a remarkably similar attitude to his having lost eight seconds to his arch-rival Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) on the Puy de Dôme, but retaining the overall lead by 17 seconds.
Speaking in the leader’s press conference, Vingegaard rolled out a very similar argument to the one he’d made earlier in the week after losing time at Cauterets: that these early mountains stages aren’t the ones that play to his strengths, and while not losing time is never ideal, the maillot jaune remains on his shoulders for now.
“It would have been nice to stay with him and not lose any more time,” Vingegaard agreed, “but the first week isn’t one that suits me, the stages that suit me the best are coming later on. So to be in yellow after one week - that’s something I’m happy with.”
Vingegaard’s insistence on seeing his holding Pogačar to an eight-second time loss as a tactical retreat rather than a major defeat also fit neatly with his team’s strategy for the stage. Rather than scrap for bonus seconds on the stage with UAE by fighting for the day’s win, Jumbo-Visma proved to be more than happy to let the break get away, suggesting that both they and UAE are now playing the long game.
As for why Jumbo did not let UAE take control of the race rather than risk Pogačar benefiting from their work - as happened at Cauterets and up to a point happened on the Puy de Dôme, too - Vingegaard said that UAE might have not wanted to keep such a tight grip on affairs and “then we’d have ended up pulling anyway.” As such, it was up to the leader’s team to take responsibility.
Vingegaard repeated his argument that the second and third weeks will be where he will have an advantage, saying “Those stages suit me a lot better than these ones, so I’m really looking forward to coming into the Alps.”
“I felt quite OK, but as I said, these stages suit him better than they suit me. So I had to try to follow him and he was a bit better than me.”
No matter the result, Vingegaard did seemingly appreciate the chance to race up a mythical climb like the Puy de Dôme was an exceptional experience: “It was very steep, a very warm day today, and it was nice to try to go this in a race. It’s a really nice climb,” he said.
The part he most enjoyed, in any case, was the chance to see his family waiting for him at the top of the ascent: “That meant a lot to me, as soon as I saw them, I forgot everything about the race today,” he concluded, “It means everything to me.”
With third-placed Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) losing just over a minute and dropping to 2:40 behind the Dane, the race for yellow in Paris is looking almost completely like a two-horse affair. But Vingegaard remained his usual non-committal self when asked if he thought much about Pogačar during the long build-up to July and during the race itself.
“When I prepare myself, I don’t really think about him, I think about myself and how I can get in the best possible shape for the Tour,” he said. “Of course, when you make plans maybe he’s the one you have to think about.”
He was even less forthcoming about whether he thought Pogačar was improving as the race continued, answering simply “You’d have to ask him that.” But if the next two weeks of the Tour will, in any case, make that clear, for now, Vingegaard remains in yellow - and as Anquetil would surely have argued, too, that’s what matters the most.
