The Moment The Tour de France Was Won

Tadej Pogačar attacked on the Tourmalet with 5km to go before summit and 43km left in Stage 6. In the picture above Jonas Vingegaard is out of the picture but only just, some 30 seconds behind at the top of the pass. But on the descent and then the valley road up to Gavarnie he multiplies this advantage by five to take back the yellow jersey and leave his rivals in no doubt they can’t dent him or his team.

The race started in Barcelona with a 19km team time trial, which with foresight was a selection trap for several teams who picked riders for the opening day but with less thought for what was to come. The “Paris-Nice rules” format probably needs a new label but saw Visma-LAB win with Jonas Vingegaard coming home first to take yellow, as good as their and his Tour would get.

Sunday’s stage told us plenty with Tadej Pogačar helping set up Isaac del Toro for the win and seeming more delighted with this than if he’d just won himself. He’d win the next day, for all the talk of riders not wanting the weight of the yellow jersey, Pogačar seemed privately determined to defrock Jonas Vingegaard, there’s a hint of spice to their rivalry that goes unsaid.

After a stage to Foix that saw Mads Pedersen score beaucoup points and put Torstein Træen in yellow we got a classic day in the Pyrenees. UAE set the pace all day and did another team time trial up the Tourmalet with a tailwind to launch Pogačar who set a record time on the climb, with chasers like Vinegaard at 30 seconds over the top and then Paul Seixas leading the others at 1m22s, still beating the old record too. Half a minute’s gain in 15 minutes of climbing was strong but it was the remaining 44 minutes of the stage that saw Pogačar extend his lead by over two minutes to finish 2m38 clear of Vingegaard and nearly three minutes on the next eight with the rest of the field scattered to the winds. If Pogačar won here, the selection made among the others was as crucial for the following three weeks.

The Tour had to use the Pyrenees given the start in Barcelona but what if the stage had been softened? Then Pogačar would have used the stage to Le Lioran instead, maybe the suspense lasted longer and gap would have been smaller but the psychological blow to rivals would have been as big. If Le Lioran was the next GC appointment when Pogačar attacked nobody even bothered to get out of the saddle and respond. When Pogačar attacked on the Col du Haag the others just chased and like the Tourmalet it was after the climb that Pogačar gained most time.

Fast forward the GC race to Paris and here are the GC standings of the top-7 overall plus the broken lines of Vingegaard and Lipowitz, loyal readers should know how the chart works by now and it’s pleasing to see many other outlets using the same format. Stage 6 sees everyone fall away from Pogačar after his Tourmalet coup. Stage 10 sees the black line of Del Toro dip after he was distanced on the road to Le Lioran, likewise Lenny Martinez lost time and was 9th overall but if not seen as a GC contender, still among the few who’d reached Gavarnie just behind Vingegaard.

A good Tour ought to see lines rising and falling but here the story is how they all fall away in unison, the order of the weekend in Barcelona is sustained for a long time. Evenepoel’s storming time trial performance barely registers on the y-axis. Those calling for more time trial kilometres should be satisfied next year – you read it here first – but you could double the distance on the day, and have three of these TT stages and it might take Evenepoel closer to Pogačar. But only so much and then the Slovenian could respond in the mountains rather than play chaperone to Del Toro.

Vingegaard’s Tour can be seen ending on Stage 15 after his crash on a roundabout. The team’s tactics were one contributing factor to their downfall, racing hard on the roads to the foot of the final climb which just suited Pogačar and let his UAE colleagues sit back. Mineralogists use Moh’s scale, an index to compare and sort rocks found in the field. Quartz will always scratch gypsum and never the reverse, a diamond will scratch quartz, and so on. In the Tour Pogačar seemed unbeatable and the tactic of trying to wear him down seemed to be like using up a lot of softer rocks hoping to eventually wear down a diamond. Perhaps pushing in the hope of finding a fault was the only tactic left, Visma don’t have a co-leader; but Red Bull did and couldn’t deploy this tactic either. The chart shows Florian Lipowitz’s exit, the stage after he’d lost time at the Plateau de Solaison and where two leaders had proved a difficult strategy to execute.

Vingegaard’s exit probably changed the race. We saw this on the stage to Le Lioran where he did not try to match Pogačar’s winning move but did shape what happened behind, leading the chase. He’d have likely done more in the Alps including the day he left where his pacing probably wouldn’t have allowed Pogačar do go at Del Toro’s rate and this could have affected the GC, some stage results, and possibly the mountains competition if Visma kept trying to wear down UAE.

The biggest GC move on the chart is Lenny Martinez who got in the breakaway on Stage 19 and if he cratered his chances of winning the stage by playing (too much) poker he got up on GC and held on the following day to finish 5th overall. This year he was supposed to go for GC in one week races and hone these skills, all while having free reign for stage-hunting and the mountains competition but because he never sat up to lose time and so stayed in the GC race, and benefitted from Ayuso and Skjelmose falling away. One thing he didn’t benefit from much was his team, often invisible.

Other competitions were more lively. The points competition came alive later in the race. Tim Merlier avoided intermediate sprints to save himself for the stage finishes and with three wins this paid off. Jasper Philipsen’s quest for a stage win looked difficult on the outside and apparently unbearable on the inside with talk of long silences at the dinner table but he delivered a win in Voiron and was within a handful of points of taking the green jersey with plenty on offer in Paris. Only for Mads Pedersen to go on the rampage and win the competition in the Alps.

The mountains competition was competitive throughout the race. It gave Caja Rural something on home soil on the opening weekend (and more than several other teams would get out of July) and while Tadej Pogačar took the polka-dots thanks to crossing the Tourmalet, Richard Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre set about scoring points and duelling for the jersey and Carapaz came out on top thanks to a relentless three days in the Alps.

The white jersey and podium went down to the last mountain pass too with Decathlon-CMA CGM trying an all or nothing gamble to dislodge Isaac del Toro. The fact that Paul Seixas was fourth overall and within touching distance of the podium at the foot of the Col de Sarenne felt ordinary in the moment but go back to, say, February and it would have felt like a fever dream of a French fan. Two years ago in July he was doing the junior Ain Bugey Valromey Tour where four out of five stages were under 100km long. If you note the progress he’s made in the last year and then think he can find a fraction more then, well you can see why Netcompany-Ineos are flirting with him and his agent and his current team are in the market for Ben O’Connor, Laurens De Plus, Pavel Sivakov and others to build a project around him.

Speed was a theme for an edition that set the record average speed of 43.227km/h. Søren Wærenskjold’s sprint win in Nevers set a new stage record of 50.910km/h, breaking the record from 1999 which had enjoyed a tailwind, and more, while this time the wind barely below. The next day was almost as fast at 49km/h and the day after was ridden at 50km/h despite the Ballon d’Alsace in the way; stage-winner Mauro Schmid fitted a 58T chainring, a set of wisdom teeth for the pace. Many times if the peloton was on flat road it was doing over 50km/h. But unlike previous editions there were few crashes and speed as a safety topic was not a big deal.

One factor in the speed is having most of the top names in the action. Breakaway days don’t see some wildcard riders go clear but you have Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, Tom Pidcock and others making the moves. Some of the most entertaining stages were the mid-mountain days, like the stages to Ussel, Belfort and Voiron.

The flipside to this exclusivity is the exclusion, the lack of opportunity. Wærenskjold’s win was almost the revelation as, excepting Olav Kooij who has hardly raced this season, he was the lowest-ranked rider on the UCI rankings to win a stage; the average number of pro wins for a stage winner in the race was 69; boosted by Pogačar but without him the number is 50. This is a trend and so makes it hard for riders, and whole teams, to hope of a breakthrough win. The romance of sport needs to allow for this.

Talking of droughts, this was a dry Tour, taking place across parched landscapes and not just the habitual southern transition stages. Luke Durbridge mentioned that many riders were complaining their shoes smelled from of pouring water over themselves all day but that was a small problem compared the public safety issue of crowds waiting hours in the heat and the outbreak of wildfires which required emergency services to be diverted from Tour duties. Environmental issues came closer to the Tour and the race will have to respond. Despite some polemical headlines, the organisers are conscious of this, current broadcast contracts stipulate timings so any move to a morning slot is off the question now but up for review later on.

Another polemic saw anti-doping became a story but this time it was the testers who faced questions instead of the riders, in part because those tested shrugged balefully and got on with the racing even if sections of the media did not. Normally tests that return negative are never reported on but we have had press releases in the past on how the anti-doping procedures including a line that all tests came back negative.

The final stage in Paris was a thriller, the Rue Lepic performing alchemy as the peloton went in together and out at the top came a golden selection each time with the last distillation giving us just Pogačar and Van der Poel. The longer approach to the finish heightened the drama with Pogačar grimacing, seemingly prepared to lose to Van der Poel as long as they could stay away. Freezing the times overall before the finish line feels wrong on sporting terms and if it did rain at lunchtime, most of the circuit had dried in time. For all its thrills even in the dry the circuit does have a frantic aspect coming off Montmartre.

The Verdict
Standing on the top step of the podium put Pogačar alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain more than the two men flanking him on Sunday evening. He was unrivalled this year and if he took five stages he could easily have had more, possibly eight if his team had avoided illness.

Evenepoel rode a measured race, his only temperamental expression was reserved for team mate Lipowitz. But how to win, or is a podium sufficient? Still 26 years old the answer might be “wait” but he saw a 22 year old Del Toro on the other step.

Any suspense from the overall classification melted like an ice cream in July’s enduring heatwave but there was plenty left to enjoy, if Pogačar gobbled up riders like Pacman at times, the stage in the Vosges lively, the same for the Alpe d’Huez finish. There was plenty going on among the other GC contenders, the race-without-Pogačar was lively.

In 1930 the Giro organisers paid Alfredo Binda not to take part and as tempting as it be for fans to crowdfund a start fee for Pogačar to add next July’s Tour of Austria to his palmarès, it would quickly leave many frustrated that the best rider was not there. Pogačar included who seems to crave the contest more than cash.

On many other days the quality of the racing high and often action that began and the start and lasted to the finish line and there was satisfaction in seeing the subsidiary jersey contests all battling until the last weekend. And then there was Paris.

Quand finit le Tour de France, j’ai une espèce de dépression qui ne nécessite pas que j’aille dans une zone de repos, mais je sens qu’il manque quelque chose : une grande partie de l’enchantement paradisiaque de mon été vient de se terminer
– Salvador Dali

That’s Dali lamenting on the post-Tour blues. But he didn’t have the Tour Femmes starting this weekend.