One for the sprinters on Bordeaux.
Le Gave de Po-gačar: Mads Pedersen went on the rampage with Victor Campenaerts to collect max points at the first intermediate sprint. He’s now on 168 points with Max Kanter and Biniam Girmay still on double-digits so likely to keep it here. No other move could stick until Ben O’Connor ended up solo off the front to start the col d’Aspin. He quickly got swept up like a stalk of wheat going into a combine harvester.
UAE continued the threshing on the Tourmalet setting a pace that cracked rider after rider and the old phrase of “riders get popped before La Mongie, riders attack after La Mongie” came to mind.
Isaac del Toro led out Tadej Pogačar in the streets of the eyesore resort but the Mexican’s easil readable facial expressions weren’t a response to the architecture, it was a tell and he couldn’t stay.
Jonas Vingegaard didn’t respond and tried to pace himself across. He got the gap down to 8-9 seconds but was pulling all sorts of faces and sure enough he would crack and lose 30 seconds by the top. A chase group of Paul Seixas, Florian Lipowitz and Del Toro made it over next and the trio were caught by Remco Evenepoel, Juan Ayuso, Matias Skjelmose, Sep Kuss and Lenny Martinez.
The eight rider chase group struggled to work together, Evenepoel and Lipowitz might have been wearing different jerseys, although this can speak to fatigue more than intrigue (update: Evenpoel has blasted his team mate for Lipo-suction, “I had asked for a lead-out, and I didn’t get one. Yes, I was angry, and rightly so. In the Tour of Catalonia, I rode at the front for him for 30 kilometres. I asked to do 1 kilometre of work at the front, and that wasn’t possible“… good luck to team management and its PR staff). The longest turns were taken by Evenepoel with help from Seixas as they chomped into Vingegaard’s lead, the former got over the Tourmalet without a disaster while the latter cleared it for the first time in a race and impressed. Meanwhile Pogačar was away and clear.
Pogačar finished with a bigger gap than he took at Hautacam last summer. While Vingegaard had a tough time he can console himself that he can almost climb as fast as Pogačar which might help for the mountain stages to come. Plus Pogačar is going to be in yellow for days to come. In his post-stage TV interview on FranceTV there was event a hint of concern about this, but a stone in his shoe rather than disaster.
Worse happened to yellow jersey Torsten Træen. Flame-grilled by the pace up the Tourmalet was understandable, even if he was probably among the top-20 before imploding. Then he crashed on the descent after touching wheels with a team mate and he broke a rib and is out of the race. The jersey had been plucked off his shoulders by then but this wasn’t the adieu he wanted.
Out come phrases like “le Tour est encore long” and “anything could happen“, journalese for result in Paris looks like a foregone conclusion but please don’t tune out. But if Pogačar looks likely to win in Paris today, he did before the race started too. Each to their own for tastes, you’re free to go for a ride or read haiku instead but there’s plenty to see behind Pogačar’s wake from sprints to breakaways, the podium and the green and polka-dot jerseys are all in play.
The Route: 175km and 850m of vertical gain, the flattest stage this year. The start in Hagetmau is because if the race has been camping in Pau it was too far to start from there to reach Pau and this small town was picked instead.
There’s the monotonous passage through the Landes forest. The intermediate sprint is gently downhill.
The passage through Cadillac – which gave its name to car brand via the founder of Detroit – has some pinch-points, as does the the climb of Béguey is 1.2km at 4%, a big ring kind of climb but some teams will want to get into position before all of this.
From here it’s flat again through the Côtes de Bordeaux terroir where the monoculture means exposed roads and little shade.
The Finish: flat and the same finish line as 2024. But the approach is differentwhen the race crossed the Garonne river with 2.5km to go after spiralling through an underpass to reach a bridge. This time the sprint zone begins with 5km to go and then it’s straight over a different bridge and then onto the quays with 3.8km to go.
The Contenders: Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-PremierTech) won here in 2023 but has talked about fatigue and not having the legs so far and so a harder pick. The flat day is ideal for Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) who lost contact with his train in Pau, but also lost his lead-out Bert Van Lerberghe on the Aspin, DNF. Biniam Girmay (NSN) is looking reliably quick. Olav Kooij (Decathlon-CMA CGM) made it look easy but his team has a bug doing the rounds, Dan Hoole was ill during Stage 6.
It’s hard to look beyond these four, only informed by Wednesday’s stage the ratings change. As with the preview for the Pau stage others have a chance and will ride on this hope but for the sake of argument send the peloton down the quays in Bordeaux and eight times out of ten one of the four wins. Still Max Kanter (XDS-Astana) did look good, both form and the formation are there.
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Merlier, Kooij |
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Philipsen, Girmay |
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Kanter, Pedersen |
Weather: 37°C and sunny. Normally it won’t be windy but there’s the outside chance of thunderstorms later on and if the clouds build so will the gusts of wind.
TV: KM0 is at 1.25pm and the finish is forecast for 5.25pm CEST. Tune in for the finish as this could be a real siesta stage if nobody attacks, but Baptiste Veistroffer may try again and if others accompany him we could see some sport later on.
Did I miss something or was the helicopter grounded by thunderstorms today? No overhead shots of the cirques or the valley to Gavernie-Gedre.
Madame But de Cloche was suggesting that the mayor would be asking for his money back.
Could be the storms, or perhaps a condition of going into the park, no low flying aircraft?
It’s possible but I think we’ve had overhead shots from cirque du litor and other national park areas.
Impossible question but why would you bid for a stage in an area of natural beauty if you couldn’t show it off from above?
Maybe just bad luck for Gavernie-Gedre.
The tour should not have gone to gavarnie. The ecological impact on the edge of a national park. A world famous site that doesn’t need any more publicity. There are other climbs in the area that could have been used.
Helicopters are not safe to fly in really hot temperatures, perhaps that’s why…
I was half expecting a “how the Tour was won” article today….
Ditto to that. He’ll want a bigger cushion, if for no other reason than to get this over with asap.
What suspense left is in the race for second place – can Jonas V. hold off the hungry hordes behind him, with Giro-legs possibly catching up to him?…
I’d be surprised if JV finishes now.
Looked very dejected (unsurprisingly) but he might believe he will improve.
Perversely this might be the best thing for the race as 2nc place becomes a bunfight.
Have you been listening to Wiggo? He said the same.
I would be dumbfounded if Jonas’ dropped out.
Jonas isn’t Remco, he’s a proper iron-willed competitor? (not that Remco isn’t great, but he does feel susceptible to confidence bashes)
I can’t remember a single time Jonas has dropped out of a race he’s not been winning if not for a proper crash? Think we’re doing his fighting spirit a bit of a disservice to say he’ll drop out! Jonas is the real deal.
But then again, if he dropped out now he could still do the Vuelta. Which he would win.
He’s not going to though. He has that kind of pride which means he will complete the task even if its for nothing.
For nothing….
@MJJ
You think he came here for anything but first?
Just because you don’t get first doesn’t then mean you’re stupid enough to throw away a second at the Tour if things go against you? There’s a thousand reasons why that would be madness – Poulidor spun and entire post racing persona out of the eternal second and was beloved for his entire life, Jonas is an icon in Denmark many of his fans would think no less of him for coming second but would if he dropped out without a clear injury/reason.
It may be as simple as his daughter is now five, these are likely to be her first real memories of her Dad riding the Tour, so not matter what his position why would he give that up to focus on lesser race where the crowds are painfully thin compared to this and he’s just counting the days across dusty plains till the sudden spike of vertiginous inclines to tears his already tired body to pieces… plus Pog is likely riding the Vuelta anyway this year!
Don’t get it twisted, JV is still much better than the rest. He got himself in the worst position possible, never catching Pogi but having a looooooong solo ride to stay ahead of a pack of very good riders. I’m super impressed that he didn’t sit up and wait. Take a look at the parcours, there are few opportunities to take time from Jonas aside from the TT, then on the final two days he’ll likely put multiple minutes into everyone except Pog. Of course there could be issues with illness or whatever, but I would bet the farm that this is yet another battle for the third step and not much else. I guess the white jersey could be a great battle too, but hardly a fair one with Del Toro now having the full backing of the Death Star.
He can’t withdraw, no? That would be dire for their pursuit of a new sponsor I would think.
Not to take away from his effort, but no one would actually work with him in that group. It would still be down to him to do the chase.
The only reason that group went that fast was because Remco and Paul wanted to catch him.
Apropos paragraph 6, could Pogacar try to lend out the yellow jersey again on stage 9 or are the gaps to any non-threatening riders now so big that it would be difficult to give a break that much leeway?
This question made me stop and mull, then have an answer then realise I was totally wrong… as in the obvious answer is no, no team would ever lend the jersey to any of the riders now in the top 20, even if there were the slightest chance others teams would allow riders that high to get away.
But when you really think about it, Pogacar could maybe lend the jersey to Jonas by about five minutes tomorrow and still win this Tour. It can’t happen obviously and I doubt even if it could any rider would ever be that disrespectful, but if Pog is really at the level we’re seeing you could give him a ten minute handicap on day one and be 90% sure he’d over turn it.
It’s so wild what he’s doing that it feels like any comprehension of the achievements will only be possible decades from now. I think it’s pretty fair to feel sorry for all his competitors as they’re being forced into major decisions about their careers years before they would’ve had to start thinking about their ‘last big contract’ in almost any other era.
Plus one old DAVE. It’s an odd circumstance. #2 always deserves respect as the others, but 3-10 are going for scraps, sadly.
Maybe not so odd as there has often been someone who’s above the rest.
Let’s see how they fight out the rest of the race!
The gaps are so big for this. But it is a big invitation to the breakaway, there’s a lot of space to move now.
Demolition job today!
Aside from the possibility of an accident or illness Le Tour is over.
Hail Tadej Pogacar.
Struggling a little to enjoy this Tour. I fully acknowledge it may be my fault, a too narrow perspective or something. But this is the first Tour in a long time that I don’t really care if I see any more stages. I cannot imagine how dejected many riders are. And not just GC riders but also other riders who would normally have a chance to win a certain stage but don’t if Tadej decides he wants it. Just like with monuments. I know he’s the best, but for some reason I feel melancholy when watching him pull away race after race. I have watched other greats (Chamberlain, Ali, Jordan, Tiger, Djokovic). But I enjoyed watching them. It still felt competitive. The last few years watching Tadej have been different for me. And as far as I know he’s a great guy, very respectful and well behaved. So it’s not that I dislike him at all. I have just lost a bit of passion for the sport. Help me!
It’s interesting that you don’t list any other cycling greats in those names?
All those other sports are skill based rather than endurance.
I think what we’re seeing is pretty par for the course when endurance sportsman/women dominant – partly because we’re in the ‘domination era’ after the ‘initial success era’ where these sportsmen/women realise that they do not need to perform heroics to win, they’re actually better served by eeking out advantages by slowly suffocating opponents.
If you compare Pogacar’s recent attacks to those at the start of his career, almost gone are the violent accelerations, as he now knows if he attacks at a certain distance from the end of a hilly day and sits a few watts higher than anyone else his gaps will just grow and grow. Today the gap held at 10seconds for quite a while, but Jonas was just going further and further into the red till he blew.
This kind attack lacks the box office of Pog’s first TT surprise in 2020 or attacks we saw in that era of Pog and even till a few years ago – because now he knows exactly what he has to do, so the suspense has gone for him and us. It was similar during Froome’s era, when by ’16, ’17 at the Tour he knew exactly what he needed to do and just ticked the boxes despite not have Pogacar’s wild levels of talent.
This is really the issue with most endurance sports, it is essentially an equation with fewer variables than skill based sports, so once a great riders figures their advantage over everyone, especially at stage races, then you will always lose the drama a last minute goal by a comeback superstar can give unless there’s a crash or mechanical.
He needs a true foil who breaks his formila, and Seixas making quick leaps is the best hope of that – but we need to remember than often in endurance sports greats of different generations take over from each other rather than face off at different ends of the primes. If we get a single good year of Pog vs Seixas we should count ourselves lucky.
Pogacar was incredible at that first Vuelta he did when he won 3 stages. If he had stayed that good and added nothing to his repertoire other than experience and bunch savvy, he still would have been the dominant GC rider of his era. But all he has done since then is get better and better, at pretty much everything. And he still seems to be getting better. I feel a bit sorry for Vingegaard as he is clearly a lot better than everyone else, but Pogacar has an even bigger gap over him. He’ll just have to plod along to a lonely second. All that is left for Pogacar is to win stage, after stage, after stage.
“A lonely second…” Beautifully and evocatively put
In retrospect, the most ominous aspect of his first performance in a GT at that Vuelta was that he got much stronger, relative to his opposition, as the race went on.
Hi DAVE – agree to a certain point re: endurance domination, but where else have we seen this level, where it was so easy and obvious who the patron is? Maybe Dave Scott / Mark Allen in the early days of Ironman? Even Kipchoge and Killian Jornet lost contests from time to time during their prime eras. And that fellow who won, then lost, 7 TdF’s at least kept it close most years!
There are still reasons to keep tabs on things, not the least a toasty scenic France and inring’s postcards!
I agree with this.
I was genuinely asking myself if this is the most impressive sportsman I’ve ever seen on any level, in any sport, in my entire life.
A stupid question but these feats and this domination it’s crazy.
Kipchoge in marathons must be close? His 8th place in London 2020 was the first time he didn’t win a marathon he entered since 2013! 7 years without losing a race! Imagine we were sat here and the last time Pog lost a stage race was 2019.
Kipchoge followed that up with 5 wins in his next 6.
Anyone here heard of a guy called Armand Duplantis??
@James
As an old athletics guy I do follow Duplantis. But I never bother to watch his competitions. I just wait for his new 1-cm-higher record to be published on youtube.
Pogi hasn’t lost a one week stage race for five years. He might be 4 years from losing another stage race.
Michael Jordan 400 Metres?
I think you mean Michael Johnson.
And yes, he was awesome.
Faith Kipyegon in the 1500m. She has 3 successive Olympic golds, and in 5 successive Worlds she finished first 4 times and second in the year she had a caesarean. Not sure Pog can emulate that!
I agree with this (he does them slowly these days) … but he also picked up 30s on the descent which requires both skill and daring
and hitting *only* 107kph…
Merckx was dominant but he was popped three times, of course Lance Armstrong was dominant, and then Contador, Pantani put up unbeatable performances, Indurain had asthma apparently according to his failed test… in-between all that was the 80s and, well… Coppi and Anquitil were pre-testing but acknowledge their supplementary support. If the history of endurance sports has taught us one thing and one thing only, it’s that in the end all superhuman performances are proven to be exactly that – enhanced humans. See also cross-country skiing, the history of Kenyan running…
I don’t know if Pogaçar is, but I do know that his dominance is a huge statistical outlier and, more important than all the above, it’s boring.
The two d’Huez stages could be legendary and I’m really looking forward to them. Maybe I will find a book of haikus instead.
The thing with Indurain and Armstrong was that you didn’t see them often outside of the Tour. Especially Indurain. Armstrong would sometimes ride a classic, were he would be strong, but not unbeatable. Pogačar is active during most of the calendar and when he starts, he wins ~90% of the time. And it is often with long solos too, with does not make for the best television.
With Merckx there is always the big “if” of his near fatal high speed crash on the track in Blois, after which he suffered from chronic back aches and according to experts was nowhere near as good as before. He still won 4 Tours after that…
Still, it could be worse. It looked up the most dominant athlete in any sport ever and Australian squash player Heather McKay only lost 2 matches in her entire career and was unbeaten for sixteen years in a row.
Some other cycling examples but more specialist are Harry Lavresen in the track sprint; Lorena Wiebes in a bunch sprint.
Indurain did go to the Giro in the early years. And some 1week races, and worlds.
Here’s one haiku to get you started:
On the Tourmalet
A man dressed in rainbow bands
Put the Tour to bed
+1
Excellent, the Summer kigo being “Tour”…!
@David Q You summed up my feelings the last few years. Part of me cannot just let go of the past and trust the present.
Luckily we’ve got tennis, football (whatever you call football) and basketball where humans aren’t enhanced!
Or did you mean 100m in track & field as it’s not endudrance?
The most funny things is that the best part of “popped up” cyclists in recent times looked everything but enhanced.
When people try to “make sense” of whatever partial correlation between doping and pro sport they tend to get limericks rather than haikus.
@oldDave Vinny didn’t “blow” on the climb – he lost 30 seconds. It’s a fair chunk but he didn’t crack in the traditional sense of the word. He lost a whole lot more on the descent and didn’t seem to be giving it full beans as he was freewheeling a whole lot more than Pog, feeding and generally not taking the same risks. Perhaps his serious crash plays into that now?
That’s a fair point although it’s a bit apples and oranges really?
I was making the point that Pog generally now defeats riders through long sustained attacks where you see a rider hold for a while but the truth is he’s suffocating them with every pedal stroke.
Yesterday I guess it’s unfair to say Vin blew, but he did hold 10secs for a long time, then lost time in the descent but the real knockout blow actually came where the gap started to balloon on the final climb, those 40seconds in the last five kms, where the chasing group also closed to 20seconds on Vin, did feel like the life went out of his legs. Maybe not a traditional ‘he blew’ in the Simon Yates Giro sense, but this wasn’t Jonas riding his sustained power to the end, he faded for sure, so I think it’s okay to say he was showing signs of ‘blowing by the close’.
JV lost more time than I would have expected, but if you think about the relative strengths of JV and Pog that last climb was terrible for Jonas. He loves a solo steep climb, but spending all that time in the wind is not his forte at all. And when it comes to descents, he is a father of two who almost died on a previous descent. He would have to be a sociopath to take the risks that others are willing to take.
Yes, that’s fair but it’s not what you said, which was “today the gap held at 10 seconds for quite a while, but Jonas was just going further and further into the red till he blew”.
I would say you’re wrong about Neville Chamberlain.
: )
Yeah I’ve been thinking the same — it feels like going through the motions watching it all predictably unfold. Maybe this is what makes good years so exciting as they are quite rare in retrospect.
Two thoughts:
(1) I think the green jersey is shaping up to be one more of exciting jersey competitions in the tour over the past three years. I genuinely love the tension between the pure sprinters, the classics sprinters, and the versatile fast men. Most of the top sprinters have very compelling story lines this year.
(2) The less suspenseful the GC competition is, the more attention I pay to the scenery and the more eager I am to get out on my bike. There’s a big part of me that is grateful for not feeling glued to a screen as much.
@Pog. Well said.
Without Pogi, Jonas would be on his 6th tour victory, which would be Froome 2.0 but somehow even more boring.
But would he have gotten a chance without that Tour where Roglic crashed out and suddenly Jonas was Plan B?
Pogacar could probably win the TdF with a team of five or six. He’s so dominant that Wellens, Yates and Del Toro driving the pace are almost superfluous.
He’d win it by himself: just sit on the other trains and attack once there’s <80km to go 🤯
I know there are people who enjoy watching this kind of thing and it’s nothing against Pogacar who seems by all accounts to be (dodgy crypto partnerships aside) a good guy and classy competitor, but I personally am done paying attention to any race he’s involved unless maybe it’s a RVV, PR, etc situation where there’s at least a chance he doesn’t just crush the field. Greatest to ever do it but for me at least it simply is not interesting or compelling in any way to actually watch.
The race for the podium between Remco, Seixas, Lipowitz, Ayuso, and DT could be interesting, and maybe one or more of them could even catch JV. And some individual stages might make for compelling viewing. But Pogacar’s nickname should be Foregone Conclusion.
@DA
Imagine the race without Pog—it would be the battle of the ages. Five, six, maybe seven guys all with a solid chance of winning, including Vingo, as I believe the Giro will catch up with him sooner or later.
Watching yesterday I mused as to how many grand tours Vingegaard would have won IF POG DID NOT EXIST. The fact is that then it would be he who was arguably the greatest of all time. As it is, he is cast in the extremely large shadow of the man who will likely eclipse Merckx – certainly in monument wins if not in grand tours. So, yes, Jonas is cast in a very strange if not unique position of being better than everyone – except one. This slightly takes the shine of grand tours he wins (because Pog is not there) and leads to what we saw yesterday when he is.
I cannot agree with those who call this boring though. I have been following cycling since the 80s and at various points Hinault, Indurain, Armstrong, Contador and Froome were all apparently “making it boring”. They weren’t of course, they were just unbeatable for a time (not all legally of course). If and when Seixas is the next unbeatable guy he will become the next one to make it “boring”. Personally, as one who never saw Merckx race, I feel privileged that I might actually be watching the best of all time. What a privilege for us.
Disagree slightly that the shine is taken off Jonas’s other GT wins – you can only beat who is front of you.
For me it massively enhances his 2 Tour wins. Pog has been pretty much unbeatable aside from the flat cobbles of Paris Roubaix yet Jonas beat him twice in the TDF and not down to just luck or tactics but by being better.
I do also wonder if he ever got back to the same level following his horror crash. Obviously they say he’s better than ever but since then he’s not been so close to Pog and has lost time on descents.
The “getting back from crash” thing has been my suspicion all along. My guess is he lost a few percent of lung capacity. He started out with a huge cardiovascular advantage over everybody else, but a few % lost might just be that tiny edge that he misses to stand up fully to Pogi. I don’t think we’ll really ever know.
@betabug This and the mental effects of that crash are probably spot on for Vinny.
Your point is my point from another direction. You can only beat who is there. But you will also be judged by who was not.
In a parallel universe where Pogi never rode a bike, JV is likely on his way to winning his 6th TDF.
And in a parallel universe where Vingegaard does not exist Pogacar is on his way to a 7th consecutive TdF win at the age of 27yo!
And I think from the cycling fan perspective these 2 loses to JV in TdF made is so great to watch 2024 edition. Also 2025 had some suspense. For me there were a lot of unknowns that made these races exciting, and re-birth of “GC Tadej” was a pleasure to watch.
It looks like TP had a bit more in reserve, both physically, but also tacticaly and with proper mental focus he grew up from these lost battles with Dane.
Now it is a bit too much predictible to be really exciting, but this is long race and anything can happen. Just look at previous TdF where Pogacar crash could end his race, but also hampered it made him unable or not willing to go for more wins and better result in the 3rd week.
“Boring” is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. We watch cycling for different reasons and from different perspectives, which is one of the beauties of cycling—and of any competitive sport.
It’s understandable to enjoy following Pog, but for me, most of his races are incredibly boring, and I only check the results rather than watch them. It’s not just because of his dominance, but also because I completely detest and distrust Team UAE.
To each his own.
@MediumMig – with you all the way on your feelings towards uae. They should not be there – end of story. Great ride by Pog, just sad it is with that team.
I think it’s disrespectful to call pogis domination “boring” but for me the loss of the suspense element on day6 of 21 robs the watching fan of much of the enjoyment and lessens the usual sense anticipation that comes with a gradually unfolding narrative . The last tour I’ve really enjoyed was jonas last win as it was jeopardy til the end ( think the day they pushed each other so hard on descent to both have to save almost-crashes) . Even in froomes era , contador was always poised ready to TRY a staccato style attack which had the potential some days to actually succeed ( or blow up )but were always exciting (vs froomes approach of constant steady power) There was enjoyment in watching contrasting styles. We don’t have that rider to front up against Pogi . This is the first year in 10 I’m not roadside in France for July, the inevitability of UAE suffocating the race being the main deciding factor, tho I now agree with another post somewhere on here that even with that, the tour is always better roadside. One wonders would there even be any time gap had Pogi been the one to have the horror crash Jonas had in 2024?
Hooray. Someone else posting what I’ve been saying for a long time. People claiming it’s boring aren’t considering that a less flamboyant rider in Jonas is clearly the second best GC rider in the peloton and one of the best of the modern era. If Tadej had chosen a career other than cycling, Jonas would’ve won the last five Tours and now be on target for a sixth win. Would the same people be calling that boring? They definitely should be but I think their rider and team allegiances cloud a lot of people’s opinions.
If Jonas or anyone else were doing what Pog is now, I’d find it just as boring. It’s not about the rider — it’s the lack of a competitive race. Notwithstanding my personal dislike of Team UAE.
I follow cycling because I love the close races, unpredictability, and team dynamics.
@Ryan Felt +1.
Now this is a deep-cutting analysis of what makes those people (who complain about one rider’s all-around superiority making races boring) tick 🙂
Strange to ignore that he has beaten Pogi in 2 grand tours. Surely those are shinier than anything else by your yardstick?
Well they are certainly all to his credit. But Pog had a 2.0 version. And he doesn’t beat that. So far.
And maybe Vinny has the opposite of a 2.0 version (-2.0?) after his horror crash?
Thank you InRng for your usual insightful review of yesterday’s stage but I’m afraid this time you’ve dropped a clanger of epic proportions. It’s not La Gave de Pau, it’s Le Gave.
Cordialement,
Neil V
I guess we had to sacrifice something for Wout winning Roubaix 😉
Only in Cycling is domination seen to be a bad thing. If Tadej was your Oncologist or Cardiologist you would be celebrating your surgery by the best of his era. Would I prefer things to be closer like the Giro of 2025 yes but as others have said if Tadej didn’t exist Jonas would have 6 x TdFs, plus Giro and Vuelta all won with ease. The 2 × best GT riders faced off and broke the record for the climb. Tadej is a worthy successor to the lineage of Merckx or Anquetil and those others.
Yes, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never watched competitive surgery. The point of surgery is to complete the task. The point of sport is for individuals or teams to compete; for those watching competition *is* the point. Without that it might as well be surgery – fascinating, yes, but I see not millions of surgery fans lined-up outside my local municipal.
Now I’m laughing at the concept of ‘competitive surgery’: what would the criteria be? Fastest operation? Judges mark the quality out of 10 (best sutures)? Best patient outcomes (eg 5-year morbidity and survival rates)? The last one would be unsatisfactory as you’d not know the real winner until several years later (though that’s not unlike grand tours from 2000-2011 😉)
There’s lots of competitive surgery in Hollywood.
Chapeau 😂
I must guess you’d be surprised to know that among some of the most watched show there are surgery ones. Admittedly, “reality” or freak shows of sort, but, hey, ain’t pro sport be the same after all? ^____^
According to surveys, round 60 percent of the audience are mostly interested in the countryside and the buildings that the Tours pass, and the race is only incidental to people’s enjoyment of the broadcast. And most casual fans tune in to watch Pogacar race against Vingegaard and are happy to see Pogacar win. We should remember how we enjoy the race is not typical of most of the audience.
Nobody is disputing whether Pogacar is a ‘worthy successor’ of anyone. The fact is, nothing kills interest in a sport like knowing the outcome before it has happened. And the outcome of this Tour is/was as predictable as a sporting contest between 200 people could ever be. There has been mention of other dominant sports people, but not all – if any – compare well. In tennis there has been Djokovic/Nadal/Federer spells of dominance recently, but even then they always had someone at the other side of the net hitting some balls back at them. Plus, other sports have an aesthetic appeal. The best tennis players, golfers, footballers etc can be graceful and an interesting watch in themselves. Watching a man ride a bike on his own, however nice the scenery is behind him, is fairly boring. There’s nothing anyone can do about it however, just enjoy the Classics where he is pushed harder and occasionally even beaten, enjoy the sprint stages and make the most of the races he isn’t in!
But none of us do know the outcome. None of us can say with absolute certainty who even gets to Paris at this stage. Wiggins was saying on a certain podcast last night that he thinks Jonas might not finish.
A good example here is 2014. Now it turns out the race was won by Nibali. But neither Froome nor Contador even made it half way and both would have pushed him harder than Péraud or Pinot did.
PS Is it really so surprising to people that the best athlete is more likely to win than not?
Well, in the context that none of us are guaranteed to reach the end of each day I suppose you are correct. But Pogacar will win the Tour de France, and Vingegaard will come second, as long as they look both ways when crossing the road each night on their way in to the hotel.
You’re right that the race stays open until the very last meters in Paris.
But barring any stray dogs or cameramen, Pog is set to win by a huge margin. Look at the odds.
For me, the race is pretty much over. I’ll keep an eye on the results to see how the young pretenders battle it out, but I’m not going to waste time watching UAE trash the race.
Yes, I’m surprised how many people are saying Pogacar has definitely won already. He’s still got to survive two thirds of the race. One swerve just in front of him in the last few kms of a sprint or one skid on a bend & he could be like Traeen yesterday, suddenly going from yellow to having to withdraw.
Interesting comparing this to the world of football. Man City have been the petro-backed team ruling the roost in the PL for the last decade, with over 115 pending charges against them. Arsenal overhauled them this year (Liverpool did last year as well), for their first title in 22 years, and yet the general public seemed to want City to win!
Would suggest not everyone minds knowing the outcome before it has happened.
I’m not sure who this “general public” is supposed to be. I’m a quarter English on my mum’s side, and I’ve never met a single City fan. Not one. 🙂
+1
Think he’s referring to non-City fans – for many years wanted City to lose, but this year was definitely more mixed. But that was a function of Arsenal being dull to watch/a bit niggly.
It helped that there was a genuine tension at the end; I think the parallel in cycling would be if Pog was below his best, and it was him vs a very conservative rider – in that situation I imagine a greater percentage would be happy to see him prevail. But the competitiveness/tension aspect is crucial.
Well I’m half manc on me mam’s side and they are all blues.
Except your own comment shows they didn’t know the outcome before it happened in the last two seasons.
They’ve won 6 of the last 9 league titles. The only other major European leagues that are close to that level of domination are PSG in France and Bayern in Germany.
@Will
I’m not sure how Man City is viewed in England, but here in Spain it’s generally seen as a shady petro-scam that used to be run by a competent Spanish coach. 🙂
I think people have become numb to it in the UK. With that in mind, I think part of the reason so many prefered City to win over Arsenal was that you can make excuses when losing to a state funded football team. It’s harder to make excuses when losing to a team of similar means to yourself.
(Obviously the style of play also played into this, but I do find it curious how quick people are / were to jump on “Arsenal would be bad winners, they always score from corners” rather than “City would be bad winners, they’ve got over 115 charges pending serious financial doping.”)
Surely everyone likes a bit of tension in their survey? Will they, won’t they make it? Has the doctor amounted the correct leg? That type of stuff.
*surgery
*amputated.
I can’t get anything right today.
Sports – including cycling – are interesting because (when) they are competitive. As opposed to oncology and cardiology.
I think the point is that people can watch for different reasons. Some want to watch brilliance (just as you’d want the best surgeon but maybe a better comparison would be concert pianist?), others want competition and drama (like a thriller film).
My point would be its not the fault of the best rider – in any era – that the others are not as good as him. All these anti-Pog arguments are so reminiscent of ones I heard about Froome or Indurain back in the day even though neither were remotely as good as Pog.
In no sport is it constantly competitive with a different winner every time. The cream rises to the top.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer my cardiologist to be anything but competitive. As opposed to the riders I follow in the Tour. 🙂
I’m reading this from a patio in La Mongie, where, if I choose to look over the campers and between the buildings, I can watch cows and sheep moving between rain-freshened mountainside pastures, their mingled calls and bells ringing in pentatonic harmony. Yesterday was my first in-person mountain stage. We spent all day at the roadside, getting to know our neighbors, eating
sandwiches, rubbing in sunscreen, and watching amateurs test themselves against the col. Then the distribution of polka-dot t-shirts, the glad grabbing at trinkets tossed from the caravan. A tense hush as the race neared. And then it was here, Tadej and Jonas in the flesh, an arm’s reach away and seconds apart! Calling to favorite riders as they passed in ones and bunches, some suffering, others conducting the crowd to shout louder! It was everything I could have hoped. I guess I can see how it might seem dull and foregone on TV, but to be here was a whole other experience, one I’ll savor for a long time to come. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective, of where and how you choose to look.
Back home tomorrow, heigh ho. Thank you, INRNG for your guidance along the way.
This is the best description of roadside participation I have read!
“maybe it’s a matter of perspective of where and how you choose to look”
Exactly!!!
Great description and sums up how I feel. We’re in Bordeaux today, I’ll see seconds of actual racing but just to be close and get a glimpse of the likes of Pogi will be worth it. I’ve wished I could have seen Merckx when he was in his pomp, maybe this will be looked back as even better.
Brilliant Fausto! 🙂
A flashback to my first roadside 15 years ago.
Beautiful! I’ll have that in mind when I return roadside after the Pog era. <3
Have there been any scientific investigation of what makes Pog so special? What makes him so much better than all his rivals? Many of whom must surely train as well as him one must assume? It must be “talent”, but that should translate to genetics and epigenetics. Maybe some psychological attributes as well.
His team don’t want to give away much and even Pogačar hasn’t said what his VO2 max is, you get “it was a long time ago”. But other teams don’t give away much either. Vingegaard looks like his advantage is a giant thorax inside which hang giant lungs but that’s just just an observation and not a measurement; the same for Evenepoel looking aero and the stories of being on his wheel at not getting the expected benefit, observation and anecdote over explanation.
It’s a very good question.
And when you look across the peloton today, there are so many different paths to the levels they have acheieved.
Zooming in on the top GC riders, it’s remarkable to see the differences. Some, like Remco and Seixas, had stellar junior careers, while others, like Pog, Vingo, and Del Toro, had few or no notable junior results. I was in Doha in 2016 for the Worlds, and I’ve noticed that the junior podium then has a combined total of 0 – zero – professional victories in their later senior careers. Whereas a certain Pog at #50 was only 4th best Slovenian.
For some riders, the physiology, psychology, and tactical understanding needed to become a top GC rider develop more slowly or follow more complex paths than for others.
True, but of all the Worlds… Doha as a predictor of anything on this kind of riders? ^___^
Generally speaking, junior *results* rarely meant anything before the speculative market competition between teams and agents got there. Some exceptions existed in contexts where early professionalisation could be a trend (Tuscany etc.). That said, the juvenile career as a whole, i.e., what you do before becoming a pro, while racing in a separate category, is also a modest predictor, but it could at least provide qualitative rather than quantitative glimpses on an athlete’s potential.
It also depends on the path. A rider like Seixas could be selected for a lot of junior races in France, Italy etc (although he often found it hard as despite his form, his parents were from outside the sport and could not lobby while others had parents who knew their way around the system, ex-pros etc) while Del Toro hardly had the same opportunities on their doorstep.
And Vinny raced mainly in flat, windy Denmark as a young rider – not exactly his terrain!
I think you get my point. 🙂
No, isolated Doha was not an extensive test of talent and capacity, but it indicates that junior performances are not always a good gauge of future results. You can extend Doha to Pog’s entire ’15-’16 junior career, and yes, there were some decent results, but not at a level where you would guess where he would end up 10 years later. Years later, I happened to meet talk with his compatriot Jaka Primožič (also from ’98 and also in Doha), who had an extensive junior career with equally impressive results but never broke through—though he’s still riding.
@MediumMig
I mostly agree, but at the junior level there are also many other factors. Some countries run extensive junior programs and send national teams to a wide range of races, which naturally helps them achieve impressive results, while others simply lack the funds, organization, or tradition to do so. Case in point: Isaac D T.
Easy to say this now, but Pogi was on my radar before winning the Avenir, at 18 he already impressed uphill amidst serious pros. At that same age it was already clear that Primožič wasn’t going anywhere near Tadej. There was a chance of comparison in their 1st years as juniores, at 16-17 (both are born in the last third of the year), but during their 2nd year Tadej was already hitting higher targets in terms of international competitivity plus ability to match older athletes. The sensation was that Primožič had shone among young teenagers maybe because of individual development, and especially when the context was local. Internationally, as a junior he looked good but with little option to hit the top, whereas Pogi looked to have an instinct for victory and the ability to raise to the occasion.
These are sensations, but I distinctly remember that Pogi generated expectations in 2017 to a level which Primožič didn’t even come close.
As a side note, there are subtle aspects which you perceive when you watch a young athlete racing, no matter the victories or the watts.
The scenario today has changed totally, but IMHO not in a good way. I’m still very skeptical on the current trends of preparing teenagers as true pros, plus having a cut of sort for the career track as low as 20 or so.
In Italy it’s quite usual to recall among friends the collection of “huge juvenile hopes” which didn’t get anywhere. What’s more strange, of course, is if a future champion didn’t show a mere glimpse of class when a juvenile, but that’s not Pogi’s case, not even by far.
@gabriele
I’m sorry, but I just don’t see the results you’re talking about. Where exactly are they? What made you think back in 2016 and 2017 that Pog was something special?
I followed cycling almost religiously back then, and there was very little about Pog anywhere in the media before 2018. In fact, he was first mentioned on inrng.com in 2019.
I believe the benefit of hindsight and your soft spot for pog might be clouding your memory.
@MediumMig
Are you joking? You followed “religiously” cycling (junior one, I mean, which we’re speaking about) and you didn’t notice Pogi won Lunigiana in 2016? And you compare his results with Primozic… come on! Sorry, but you look like you’re copy-pasting someone else opinions without first-hand knowledge or you couldn’t ever miss that if you followed junior cycling. Lunigiana is one of the extremely few rather strong predictors in juniors, not every winner is going to be a champion but it’s always worth following them because some 30% of them will become able to win something very big among the pros (and, in case you have no idea, that’s a shockingly high percentage for a junior race).
In 2017 Pogi wasn’t a junior anymore as he’d be 19 in September, but when still 18 he impressed in the Slovenia Tour against “real pros”, something Primozic never came close to.
Nothing as amazing as Seixas, but of course Seixas is being prepared now as Pogi probably wasn’t even in 2020 or 2021…
Anyway, several cycling accounts reported that Slovenia results,so it became mainstream (in the specialised world of people following juvenile cycling). You might have known Mihai Simion, I think he insisted much on Tadej back then.
@gabriele
LOL
This is getting ridiculous. We both know why it is important for you to pretend Pog was a super junior, as opposed to Vingo.
Lets leave it at that. 🙂
@MediumMig
Poor to pathetic answer. Just admit you hadn’t any idea or try to explain why winning Lunigiana doesn’t matter for juniores. «I just don’t see the results you’re talking about» ROTFL.
@gabriele
Whatever, pog-boy. 🙂
@MediumMig
Come on, you can do better, for example ranting about some Slovenian rider getting the Tourmalet record this TDF without having had any previous result you know about… Or maybe you can try to meet Skjelmose to have him telling you how better he’s always been than that unknown Slovenian, he even beat him once!
But, ok, this only makes sense because we fundamentally agree on something,i.e. this TDF being a bit too boring.
But I still believe we’ll have some surprise before it’s over.
Not so sure, check this scientific study on the topic.. Its old but tells the story from back then..
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17175613/
There are also other, similar studies. looking at the issue from a scientific perspective…
“Whereas a certain Pog at #50 was only 4th best Slovenian.”
His palmares in flat sprint stages in desert petrotours on the Arabian Peninsula didn’t get much better since. I guess they only brought him to Doha cause there weren’t that my Slovenia talents to bring with at all
There is a long interview with that Canadian science blokey on YouTube where he says some stuff.
I think it’s worth noting his durability/recovery seems pretty otherworldly, so despite having an ftp just higher than his competitors, he’s also got powers of recovery that’s enhance his attributes, magnifying his advantage – I can’t say what accounts for this, but heart? something to do with lactate?
We saw it in his first Vuelta when he was winning stages late into the race, then most obviously on the last stage of his first Tour win and even that final TT in Nice where he far outshone Remco despite losing many TT’s to Evenepoel elsewhere even taking into account the few hills there.
There was a theory early in his career that he didn’t like heat and faltered in the third week – but I think we now know he was racing poorly and/or ill plus not at his peak during those years and neither of these were true weaknesses.
He really is remarkable and it would be so great after this tour is he opened the kimono to reveal all, maybe at the Santiama crit at the end of the year?
I think when it comes to scientific research, that’s not an easy question to answer. And then the difference between Pogacar and say, Evenepoel seems like a lot to us viewers, but in terms of relative time difference it is currently 3:30 on 25 hours of racing, so only 0.2 percent. That’s well inside the error margins of a typical sports science experiment.
Furthermore, the relation between genes and something as complex as performance in sports is hardly ever straightforward. Sure, there are some simple known genetic alterations that lead to e.g. enhanced muscle growth, but there are many more complex mechanisms at work that involve many different genes and epigenetics. Those kind of mechanisms are usually only found by screening large databases of tens of thousands of people and deriving relationships which are true on a statistical level (if you have this and this and this combination of genes you have 80% chance of having green eyes, that sort of thing).
You must not forget that everyone in the Tour peleton is already an exceptionally gifted athlete, an absolute outlier within the general population. So comparing Pogacar to them is even more difficult. Sure, you could deep sequence all professional cyclists and start digging into the data and compare them with general population and with Pogacar and see if there’s an obvious pattern. If you get their cooperation and you give a few million budget to a scientific research group they just might get you an answer in five years or so.
Michael Jordan 400 Metres?
Probably meant Michael Johnson?
For someone as measured and well versed in dealing with the media, Remco must be really, really, *really* angry with Lipowitz to be so unguarded. Sounds like this incident was a final straw, rather than a one-off.
Exactly. The line today is they laughed and ate together yesterday evening but we’ll see. There’s no need to magnify every difference and search for opposition for the sake of buzz, if they are fine with things and patched things up that’s good but as you say the strength of the words last night was so strong and the stakes so high that it feels hard to believe, we’ll see more soon. Can imagine a lot of German fans on the stage to Le Markstein, but it’s also driving distance from Belgium too.
Of course there’s no need to magnify every difference and search for opposition for the sake of buzz. But no one searched for ist, it was Remco who ranted about his teammate to the media, instead of at the bus or dinner table, like a true and smart professional would do.
He should be lucky he didn’t become a huge football star, he would make not much friends amongst players fabs and coaches if he threw teammates under the bus in post-game interviews.
I think it’s just as much frustration as anger. This was likely the stage that shattered all of Remco’s dreams about the Tour. He knows he’s never going to win it.
Yes, this is the stage that confirmed to Remco that he’s got the slimmest of slim chances of winning the Tour so no doubt there were a lot of emotions for him. But even so, he’s a hugely skilled and experience media operator.
Remco was completely exhausted at the end of a hard stage, and is already prone to emotional outbursts. What is said wasn’t particularly wise, but he may feel differently an hour-or-two later. By all accounts Lipo was pretty cooked at the end of the stage and couldn’t do much anyway, something that Remco may have under-estimated.
Exactly what I was thinking while out for a ride this morning. Remco must now know he’ll never win the tour based on his own ability alone (it would depend on misfortune to several others). I’m very interested to see how he fares against del Toro and Seixas this year
I guess he might have disliked Lipo saying right after the race that “he wasn’t pulling” up and down the Tourmalet “because we had Remco behind”. Not the most opportune declaration, nor anything that made much sense anyway. Wrong focus, unnecessary excuse hinting at that he supposedly had more energies he didn’t use, lack of consistence with his further lack of commitment.
Remco always loses his rag.
He’s well versed with media but his emotions are so close to the surface that he can’t control them, aside from having issues with climbing alongside the best, it’s his biggest weakness and is the reason he’s struggled so badly when things go against him.
We saw it so early at the Giro years ago when he flipped and dragging a superior Almeida back from a front group to help before then dropping the race soon after.
It’s sad but this Lipowitz spat is laughable, he’s talking about a sprint for third after he’s been comprehensively dropped? Lipowitz is absolutely right to tell him to get stuffed no matter what happened in Catalonia. If the race continues with this pattern we’re likely to see Lipowitz ride off with Del Toro and Seixas on any uphill finish that is properly raced, leaving Remco to fight with Ayuso and others over 6th when Lipowitz is hoping for 3rd.
Remco is delusional to think he was owed a lead out here despite being 30secs up and his TT prowess being his XFactor. Maybe he’ll produce a great two final weeks to nab 3rd himself, but the entire peloton has seen for years now that it’s very rare he can climb with the best so no team or teammate should bet on it if they think they are a superior climber – as Lipowitz appears to be.
Man, not so sure. I’ve always seen Remco as a bit of a whiner, but he’s not wrong. Lipowitz never hit the front; it was like they were on two different teams, and I can’t see any reason Lipowitz shouldn’t take a turn.
I think Remco wears his heart on his sleeve, as you say, and lots of guys at this level have. But I don’t see Lipowitz as a good teammate after that performance. Could well be due to team management trying to preserve two options, of course.
If nothing else, should be a most interesting rest of the TdF watching this team.
Maybe I have a slight anti-Remco bias?
I was trying to be fair but you could be right, I’ll let others decide.
I guess I would just say Remco has been a terrible teammate to others in the past, Almeida at that Giro above all, and even if he’s improved, he’s really only getting a taste of his own medicine.
@oldDAVE
Maybe not that slight… 😛
It’s a bit unfair to compare a 21 yo guy at his first ever GT with a nearly 26 yo athlete riding his 4th.
Besides, in this specific case Lipo “stroke first” with his passive aggression equally public declaration, on top of his attitude during the race.
Anyway, the bullying argument justifying wrong behaviours because the victim did something wrong themselves – 6 years ago, in your example – doesn’t much hold.
That said, let me add that I’m agreeing with a huge lot of your comments under this post today, so many I can’t applaude to each of them, hence I’ll hereby stick with my usual criticizing mood (in good spirits) ^___^
@oldDAVE – Agreed that Remco always loses his rag. But that’s why I like him more and more. He is the relatable everyman struggling against (and only rarely surmounting) inevitable forces. His frustrations make him the most human rider in the peloton.
Interesting take. I sort of get it but then I also think, “Shut up Remco and do the job on the road. Because that will speak for you more.”
If fact is that if Remco was a genuine contender for the win (and to be absolutely clear: he’s not) then the team would be ORDERING the rest to work for him. But they aren’t and we all know why.
100%. I share your bias against Remco. But yesterday was a solid example (it appears) that he’s getting short shrift from his teammate.
Imagine a nice guy that turns crazy when competing and says some things that a more experienced or less competititive professional would avoid. That could well be the explanation for what we see/hear about Remco.
I have the impression that he’s a guy you’d like to have a beer with, for whatever that’s worth.
@oldDave, agree, 100%
Am I doing Uno-X a disservice here or did it look like Vermeersch was helping them out with what to do on the front?
The combine harvester analogy is brutally accurate *shakes head in disbelief*
Some trivia on today’s final 5km: the above-mentioned new bridge used is the Pont Simone Veil, designed by OMA, which opened in 2024. It’s basically a 44-meter-wide platform stretched across the river (the widest in Europe) without the structural acrobatics on display as is common on contemporary structures. It allows separate lanes and spaces for all modes of transport side by side, like a suspended grand boulevard (it could accommodate the finish line). Any precedents of stage finish lines on bridges? Looking forward to the heli shot of it!
Worth looking out for.
Can’t think of a finish on a bridge before but they’ve been strategic and even climbs before, like Tancarville, Normandie and the Storebæltsbroen in Denmark which had everyone worried about crosswinds but it was a calm day.
Sudouest, the local newspaper for the region, interviewed the current holder of the Strava KoM for the pont Simone Veil segment. As a local club rider he said he was reconciled with the fact that he would probably drop out if the first 150 places after today.
Lest we forget the whopping 5km 5.5% grade climb up the mountain named after Monsieur Cadillac.
The only way to make the Tour exciting is going back to 2000s style parcours. One short prolog, then 7 flat stages for sprinters, maybe adding some classic style Roubaix stage to it and a massive 55 km ITT and a 60 km TTT. This is the only way forward, otherwise it is a snooze fest from the 1st mountain stage till the end. Only the unpredictability of flat nervous stages in the first week, with crashes and maybe crosswinds can help.
Still the same outcome 🙂
but at least 1,5 weeks of suspense at the beginning and with a crash-marred first week you never know what might happen
I guess I do not get this snoozefest accusation? It feels like we all collectively forget what the Tour De France is every year? Looking back I see this in almost every year in these comments:
2025 Stage 12 – Pog win on Hautacam – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
2024 Stage 15 – Pog win on PdBeille – ‘it’s over why keep watching’
2023 Stage 16 – Jonas win TT – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
2022 Stage 11 – Jonas on Granon – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?
2021 Stage 8 – Pog wins in rain – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?
2020 – anomaly
2019 – anomaly
2018 – very likely over by Stage 12 but we weren’t sure if G would falter.
2017 – close but we all suspected Froome had it from around stage 15
2016 – Stage 12 – Froome secure – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
2015 – Stage 10 – Froome PStMartin – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
2014 – Stage 13 – Nibali shows hand – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
2013 – Stage 8/15 – Froome A3D/Ventoux – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
2012 – very likely over by Stage 9 but we weren’t sure if BW would falter.
2011 – anomaly
2010 – anomaly
2009 – Stage 15 – Contador Verbier – ‘it’s over, why keep watching?’
Yes, stage 6 this year is early that’s fair, but competitive Tour De Frances are vanishingly rare in every era. That’s cycling? This is how the tour works, you generally only get nail biting tour between the eras of great champions
+10 for this. Even from the well-informed commenters here, every TdF you can guarantee cries of “it’s over/boring!!” As soon as the killer blow is dealt (as it almost always is by half way through the race). This is why the GT exceptions stand out so starkly (eg 2025 Giro, 2020 TdF among the few others).
I agree with most of the posts here: I love cycling because of the suspense, complexity and uncertainty. Pog’s astounding (and impressive) feats deprive us of that, which is (to me) disappointing. To have such a GC lead this early on only magnifies this. But there are still many aspects of the race to savour (the podium battle should be great, and who knows if some unexpected setback – hopefully a mechanical, rather than a crash – should disrupt the Pogi coronation??).
Great perspective to counterbalance our collective recency bias – thank you.
1992 Tour stage 9 (65kms ITT) won by Miguel Indurain by three minutes. “Its over, why keep watching?”
I can’t quite remember the order of things, but fairly early in 1997 there was a stage in the Massif Central, I think, or maybe the Pyrenees, which Ullrich won and then he won a time trial a stage or two later by 3 minutes. He had never won before, so nobody was sure, but it was over!
Thanks oldDAVE, I think this comment adds a lot to the discussion.
The Tour of Austria has been a better race to watch.
Has anyone else been looking ahead and wondering what the next blockbuster stage will be? As I see it we’re unlikely to have much gc action before the Markstein stage. Before the race I would have expected Stage 10 to be a good one, but now it looks certain to be one where UAE dominates the stage and Pog inevitably wins. The rest of the intervening stages are either pure sprints or breakaway specials. I know that’s not uncommon in grand tours, but I don’t recall such a long spell, especially over the weekend, when not much is expected to change in the overall race. Or am I just being too pessimistic?
Pogačar probably won’t win Stage 10. Yes the race is going to Le Lioran where he and Vingegaard needed the photofinish camera the last time. But not via the steep side of the Pas de Peyrol. It’s a good day for the breakaway. Stage 9 too will be good too, Pogačar is so far ahead UAE don’t need/want to control the race so it’s open bar for everyone else.
I hope you’re right and UAE don’t strangle the race, because they certainly can. One thing is for sure, Visma won’t replay their unsuccessful tactics from last year and drag Pog to the win. I don’t think they have the ability even if they tried!
I was wondering something similar, but beyond stage 10: how many of the stages between the Bastille Day stage to le Markstein and Paris will Pogacar take? I guess that could be rephrased as “how many will be blockbuster stages”… Stages 16 and 17 seem like the only ones he realistically might not be able to win. But there’s always del Toro to take them…or be gifted them.
Supposedly Pogacar beat his own record set in 2024 up the Tourmalet by over 2 minutes. Of course, you can’t make direct comparisons. This year’s climb was on Stage 6, not 14, and perhaps there was a tailwind or something. OTOH, this year the Tourmalet was the second major climb of the day and it was hot — 12C hotter than in 2024. Not optimal conditions to be setting records. So, an astonishing result, but not the most astonishing result of the day.
Vingegaard came in cautiously optimistic, after a commanding Giro win where he never got out of second dear, saying he was making better numbers than ever. He was right: he shattered the old record by nearly 2 minutes (numbers are estimates, using PCS timegaps).
Evenepoel came in leaner than ever after an extended training block dedicated to improving his climbing in this race. It paid off: he broke the old record by half a minute and would have dropped the ’24 Pog and left him well in arrears.
A 19-year old(!!) broke the old record set by a 25-year old potential GOAT by half a minute.
In fact, at least 11 people beat or ~matched the previous record, set just 2 years earlier, including people you might not expect, like Skjelmose and Johannessen. Again, you can’t make direct year to year comparisons, and better numbers (the actual climbing times) would help. But it does seem like incredible improvement over not a lot of time.
There was a tailwind which helps, and the top was effectively the summit finish of the day with everyone racing for this point; last time there was another climb to go.
This is true and TDK did point out that there are many variables that make comparison difficult but nevertheless the huge reductions in climbing times are something to behold.
You always have to take into account that it’s a race, not a time trial. The pace set on the lower slopes by UAE was brutal, and then everyone went full out after the attack because they had to stick as close as possible to their rivals or drop them.
yes, this historic climbing times are a bit silly overall, but most of fandom is silly I guess! The only ones I’ve really paid attention to are the 90s times vs today and how long it’s taken for many of that eras records to be broken for obvious reasons. Along with Contador’s famous Verbier record.