Stages 10&11

One incredibly boring day and one absolutely enthralling battle.

Stage Ten: The peloton noodled along for over four hours with the brief exception of UAE attempting to split the peloton in an exposed section, which was never going to succeed due to low wind speed. Japser Philipsen finally got his sprint win, easily getting the better of Biniam Girmay and slightly tightening the green jersey competition.

Stage Eleven: The second-longest stage of the whole Tour (211k) was destined to be a tough day in the Massif Central as it included over 4,300 meters of climbing. Most commentators were sure the night before the stage that the breakaway would succeed; I wasn’t sold. I thought UAE might control the race with the aim of launching Pogacar for the stage win, bonus seconds, and a potential time gain.

The stage was a tale of two parts: 164k of rollers, which was not going to be simple or easy to control, and then four back-to-back climbs within 47k, the first three of which are all steep, providing potential launch pads for riders looking to attack before the final climb.

The calculation for a GC team aiming to keep the breakaway on a leash and still have riders left in the finale help its leader was that it needed to keep the gap small with two, maximum three riders. I felt UAE could do this if they prevented too dangerous a group from comprising the breakaway of the day.

That’s easier said than done, but these sorts of stages have a way of creating a weaker-than-expected breakaway because basically 21 teams have designs on the move, but they tend to neutralize each other. Because as Patrick Broe of the Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast pointed out, if 12 teams are represented, that still leaves the rest of them to chase it down.

That is essentially the dynamic we got for the better part of two hours to commence the race, with the added feature of Visma | Lease a Bike jumping into moves with riders like Wout van Aert. UAE was visibly more active at the front policing moves from Visma riders than other teams, using the strength of Tim Wellens to neutralize such attacks. But I think UAE, from the time of the meeting in the bus before the stage, to break formation, to pacing the peloton, to the finale, was hell-bent on the stage win and bonus seconds, if not gaining time on the road.

Finally, a breakaway of eight riders, including Richard Carapaz, Ben Healy, Oscar Onley, and Oier Lazkano got away and UAE got on the front immediately. Conveniently for them, the elastic snapped on a climb, which allowed them to pace the peloton at a prudent tempo (letting the gap go out gradually) with a few more hours of work in mind.

Then it was the turn of Nils Politt to do the business. The big German pegged the gap at 2:30 and did a fantastic job pulling the peloton, only swapping off briefly at times with Wellens. This preserved the whole team for when they were going to be needed later.

Politt did a ripping turn as the group approached the first climb in the sequence of four and reduced the gap to 1:45, knowing he was almost done. Then after quick pulls from Wellens and Marc Soler, UAE was down to five riders a little bit earlier than they may have desired.

It was Pavel Sivakov’s turn entering the climb. He kind of slow-paced the second half of it because he knew he needed to stay at the front as long as possible, and he ended up railing the descent right after.

At this point, the breakaway was down to Healy, Lazkano, and Carapaz, all of whom seemed cooked and had no chance of survival with such a small gap.

On the third-to-last climb, the Puy Mary, which was the hardest climb in the stage, Juan Ayuso did a small pull before surprisingly dropping, leaving Adam Yates to go full-gas in leading out Tadej Pogacar, on whose wheel sat Joao Almeida, either not doing his job pulling for his leader, or playing sweeper to keep Jonas Vingegaard from getting Pogi’s draft when he inevitably attacked.

Yates reduced the group to less than a dozen riders and Pogacar launched about 500 meters from the summit. Nobody followed; the only riders remotely able to accelerate were of course Jonas, Remco Evenepoel, and Primoz Roglic. But as Pogacar opened the gap, something strange happened. Jonas launched away from everyone else and did a Pogacar-esque sprint to the summit, closing down almost the entire 10-second gap in a few hundred meters.

But then Pogacar began to chip away at things on the descent, taking big risks that made me cringe. By the bottom, he had over 30 seconds to Jonas and Roglic, who caught him on the descent.

But Pogi wasn’t looking imperious. For the first minute or two of the climb, the gap according to the broadcaster was rock-solid at 32 seconds. But then Jonas rode away from Roglic and soon Pogacar’s lead was coming down alarmingly quickly.

Jonas did another insane sprint at the top of the climb to catch Pogacar and attempt to overtake him for the 8 bonus seconds available at the summit, but Pogacar just managed to hold him off. Jonas settled for five bonis (three second delta in favor of the Slovenian) and the two began working together on the descent and then final climb, which was not steep.

Remco caught Roglic and outsprinted him for the final two bonus seconds. The two would work together on the descent and final climb, but they made no indent on the lead held by Pogi and Jonas, which at that point was about 40 seconds.

Pogacar and Jonas relayed all the way to the top of the climb and on the descent (the stage finished with about a 600-meter 6-7 percent ramp) before playing a bit of cat-and-mouse on the ramp. Jonas led out the sprint, and of course the whole world expected Pogacar to come around him, but he just didn’t have it today. Jonas won by half a wheel length, his fourth career TDF stage win. That completed a remarkable comeback from his horrific injury in the Basque Country just three months.

He gained four seconds on Pogacar with bonus seconds, which put the net of the whole stage, in which UAE invested the whole team and obviously put Pogacar himself under a lot of pressure of their own making, a one-second gain for Jonas Vingegaard.

Roglic crashed on the last descent and lost about 40 seconds to Remco, who recovered spectacularly after dropping a few time in the finale to only finish 25 seconds behind the two winners of the past four Tours. But because Roglic’s crash was within the final three kilometers, the jury ruled that he would be given the same time as Remco, which is an objectively awful and unfair decision. It just incentivizes people to fake mechanicals or crashes in the last 3k if they know they don’t have legs anymore to prevent time losses. Anyway. I don’t think that decision will have an impact on the final GC standings. At least I hope not.

Further down the list, Giulio Ciccone did tremendous ride to finish fifth, Almeida and Yates got sixth and seventh, Mikel Landa was eighth on the same time, Carlos Rodriguez defended well to only lose a few seconds to those guys, and Felix Gall was 2:38 behind Jonas in 10th, but seemingly gaining form and confidence heading towards the Pyrenees.

That brings me to the point: with two mountain ranges and a time trial still remaining, there is plenty of room for shakeups for every position in the top ten

Ayuso lost 4:39 to fall way down the GC standings. Matteo Jorgenson also lost a chunk of time to fade to 12th on GC. It has to be assumed that those two guys will fall into a domestique role as their leaders are competing for the yellow jersey.

It was an epic stage, and I’m going to write a separate post analyzing some data relevant to the race.

But for now, it’s time to think about the GC battle going forward.

Most people, even Pogacar fans (who are defeatist by nature, at least when it comes to the Tour) seem to think Jonas is the favorite, if not heavy favorite, to win the race now. The betting odds reflect that. Why is that?

Well, to play devils advocate, there are a few explanations for this: This stage was, on paper, better suited to Pogacar, and Jonas still beat him, in a two-up sprint no less. Jonas is projected to improve in the third week as he builds form back from injury, while Pogacar is projected to tail off as he fades from his Giro peak. And finally, on paper, the third week simply suits Jonas better than Pogacar, and on those stages, multiple-minute gains are possible, rather than just bonus seconds.

Those are all logical opinions, but the fact remains, as Pogacar said, that legs decide the Tour. These guys don’t necessarily think in terms of what climb length or precise gradient suits them; they think in terms of bring their best form to the table for the important days and trying to beat the other guys on the terrain available.

That’s not to say that there are not certain characteristics on stage profiles that suit riders better than others, and the mountain stages to come certainly favor Jonas on paper, if we consider his and Pogacar’s performances in the past four Tours.

My take is that we just do not know what will happen. The only thing we know currently is that Pogacar has the yellow jersey and a 1:14 lead on Jonas and there are ten stages remaining. And that’s not to gloss over the fact that Remco still sits in second place on 1:06. Roglic… I have to count him out for the victory at this point.

We’ve certainly got a war on our hands, and even though it did not work out for UAE today, kudos to them and Pogacar for animating the race.

With a couple sleepy sprint stages to come, the peloton should have a mostly-relaxing few days in the near future.

Jamie