Tadej Pogacar threw down the gauntlet to defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard, attacking in the hills ringing Bologna, to take the yellow jersey on stage two of the 2024 race.
“It was more important to test myself [than Vingegaard],” Pogacar said after taking the maillot jaune. “It’s good to be in yellow. You don’t say no to yellow.”
Only Vingegaard could follow the Giro d’Italia winner Pogacar’s violent acceleration, 11km from the finish, on the second of two ascents of the galleried climb to San Luca’s basilica, overlooking the Italian city.
As Pogacar continued where he had left off during the Giro, any lingering doubts over Vingegaard’s race fitness were dispelled when the Visma-Lease a Bike rider responded, with aplomb, to chase the Slovenian to the finish.
The pair were caught in the final few metres of the stage by fellow podium contenders Remco Evenepoel, of Soudal Quick-Step, and Richard Carapaz, of EF Education-EasyPost. All four are on the same overall time, but Pogacar claimed yellow by virtue of his higher stage placings.
In front of the pair, Kévin Vauquelin, riding for the Arkéa-B&B Hotels team, took the second French success of the weekend, winning the stage after moving ahead of the day’s breakaway in the closing kilometres.
“It was hard for me, but I’m really happy. I had a perfect day out in the breakaway,” Vauquelin said, adding he had not contemplated winning the stage until the last moment. “I wanted to take part in the Tour, that was the original dream. To now win a stage in it – that’s amazing and for the team as well. It just makes me incredibly happy.”
If the French were swooning after a weekend of back-to-back wins, with the veteran Romain Bardet claiming the stage and overall race lead on Saturday, there was disappointment too, as the dsm-firmenich PostNL rider let the yellow jersey slip through his fingers to the flying Pogacar.
Asked if he could have tried to win the stage, Pogacar said: “In this heat, it would be unnecessary to kill my teammates. Sure, we could go for the stage, but it could backfire at some point. We just let there be a natural selection.”
Among others distanced by Pogacar and Vingegaard was Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers. Any thoughts that the Welshman might be the British team’s Trojan horse, went out the window on the second climb to the basilica, as he dropped back.
The stage is now set for a heavyweight battle between Pogacar and Vingegaard, with Evenepoel and Carapaz cast in the role of understudies, in Tuesday’s fourth day of racing to Valloire, over the 2,642‑metre Col du Galibier.
Despite his spell in hospital after crashing on a high-speed descent in April, Vingegaard’s descending skills appeared fully intact as he sped into Bologna in Pogacar’s wake. He will need them on Tuesday in the descent from the Galibier to the finish line.
Vingegaard’s resistance to Pogacar, less than three months after being hospitalised for 12 days, has been a welcome balm to his Visma-Lease team, who continue to endure setbacks elsewhere.
The team’s plan to have a fully liveried “data van” passing information to their managers and riders, with what they called “a central collection point of real-time data during the Tour,” was blocked by a pincer movement from the world governing body, the UCI, and Tour organisers, ASO.
Behind the main contenders, the cavalry continued, with Mark Cavendish again struggling, although the scenes on Sunday were less torrid than on the opening stage on Saturday, when he vomited while riding.
It is testament to the difficulty of the brutal start to this Tour, that the first stage, in which Cavendish described “seeing stars,” as he finished almost 40 minutes behind winner Bardet, had historians thumbing the record books for the biggest gaps on the Tour’s opening day.
On Sunday, Cavendish was shepherded through the rolling hills of Emilia Romagna, again by four of his Astana Qazaqstan teammates. But it was a better day for him, and despite finishing 25 minutes behind Vauquelin, he was comfortably inside the day’s time limit.
Sandwiched between Bologna and the Galibier, the climb which provided the springboard for Marco Pantani’s Giro-Tour double in 1998, are the flat roads to the finish of stage three in Turin. It is here, in the shadow of the Stadio Olimpico, that Cavendish will seek to break the stage win record he shares with Eddy Merckx.
With the cumulative fatigue of the Alpine climbs looming and the sprints more competitive than ever, Cavendish will realise there will not be many better chances. If he has recovered from the aftermath of Saturday’s distress, he will know that it is time to seize the day.
