A dream I don’t want to wake from. At the same time, I’m still in shock.
Today is the second rest day of the 2024 Tour de France, and I feel like I need it just as much as the riders do, except the guy who didn’t seem tired after yesterday’s race (he won it). But we’ll get to that.
Stage Fourteen: UAE came out to play and play hard, policing break formation with ingenuity on the false-flat drag (70km) leading into the Tourmalet. Eventually, eight riders escaped. The strongest climber of the break was probably Ben Healy. But in reality, even he never had a chance.
Nils Politt was flying and smashed the false-flat AND the Tourmalet, never giving the break much leash at all by keeping the gap under 4 minutes. Marc Soler got on the front on the penultimate and took 90 seconds (about half at that point) of the break’s lead in just a few kilometers.
The peloton hit Pla d’Adet with the leaders in sight, and Joao Almeida went to work. With about seven kilometers remaining, Tadej Pogacar could be seen discussing something with Adam Yates in the group, and the next thing we saw was Yates attacking. Matteo Jorgenson went to the front and began to control things.
But then Pogacar attacked up to Yates’ wheel, and nobody, not even Jonas Vingegaard, could react. Pog and Yates swept up Healy from the break and began trying to pry open the lead on Jonas, but Yates was not riding quickly enough for the Slovenian, who went over the top and never looked back, winning the stage by 39 seconds over Jonas with Remco Evenepoel in third on 1:10. Most of the GC contenders finished more or less in their respective order based on the standings.
Pog took a 1:57 lead over Jonas into another mountain stage. It was still all to play for.
Stage Fifteen: Day two in the Pyrenees was always going to be a brutal one. With about 200 kilometers, 5,000 meters of climbing and warm conditions, no matter what the pace was, everybody on a bike was going to suffer.
I was pretty sure after the day before that UAE would not control the race, and the only other team that might have was Visma. My question was not whether they would want to do it, but whether they had the team necessary to pull it off.
The answer was a pretty resounding yes. After a mad scramble for the breakaway on uphill start (the Peyresourde), finally a group escaped in the valley before the next climb. A very strong group of climbers with “tug buddies” (Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast term for rouleurs who pull climbers on the flat to launch them into the breakaway or build the break’s advantage) including Jai Hindley, Richard Carapaz, Enric Mas, Laurens de Plus, Simon Yates, Ben Healy, and more all-stars comprised the move.
But Visma LAB got on the front of the peloton almost immediately to keep the leaders on a tight leash. With over four hours of racing remaining, I was not sure they could do this alone especially with the aforementioned tug buddies up the road. But it turns out (shockingly, I know) that Visma’s domestiques are basically stronger than Bora’s, and even the leaders of EF and Movistar.
Despite the break going full-gas for about four hours, Visma, in part due to an absolutely heroic pull from Wilco Kelderman on the penultimate climb and final valley, reeled them in to about a minute as the peloton hit the final climb, Plateau de Beille. I thought this was about a 45-minute climb, but boy was I wrong.
Anyways, Jorgenson got on the front and immediately started doing a huge pace for Jonas. The “peloton” was down to about five riders quickly, including Pogacar, Jonas and Remco.
With 10 kilometers remaining, our American hero swung off, leaving Jonas to attack. It wasn’t a huge acceleration, and Pogacar (and only him) got onto his wheel immediately. Jonas would pull at what I assumed was a brutal pace for five full kilometers with the Slovenian sitting in his wheel.
Jonas got out of the saddle for a bit, clearly trying to up the pace even more and shred Pogi off of his wheel, but then he sat back down, looked over his shoulder, and the writing was on the wall. Pogacar did a mini-attack (by his standards) and the gap never stopped expanding from there.
My boi won the stage by 1:08 over Jonas and 2:51 over Remco Evenepoel.
He now has a 3:09 lead on Jonas and Remco looks safe for the podium with a 5:19 deficit, but a 5:35 lead on fourth place Almeida). Mikel Landa, with the performance of a lifetime, finished fourth on the stage to move up to fifth overall.
By most accounts, mine included, the Tour de France is essentially over. Pogacar will only lose if he gets sick or crashes. The rest of the podium is also set, assuming normal circumstances in the final week.
I will reflect on the legendary season our hero is having after he completes it, but for now it’s certainly mentioning that the past two days have been the greatest two days a cyclist has ever had.
How is that possible? And do we know?
Well, simply put, we have have climbing times from Pla d’Adet and Plateau de Beille, from which we can estimate watts per kilogram. Pogacar smashed both records with such authority that Pla d’Adet was considered the greatest climbing perfomance of the 21st century, while Plateau de Beille, is indisputably the greatest cycling performance of all time.
According to Karlis Ozols of Lanterne Rouge Pog rode up Pla d’Adet in 27:50 (beating Lance Armstrong’s time by about two minutes) with an estimated power-to-weight ratio of 6.85 watts per kilogram. I can’t really explain how unfathomably good that is in layman’s terms, but I would advise any normal human, or decent-to-advanced cyclist to attempt to weigh themselves before seeing how long they can hold 6.85 w/kg on a bike. It wouldn’t be for very long.
But we’re not interested in comparing elite athletes to amateurs. Let’s think about in the context of the greatest cycling performances ever. Without question, it ranks inside the top 30. Here is what Ozols wrote about Pla d’Adet:
But what Pogacar did the next day makes Pla d’Adet look like a Saturday group ride. On Plateau de Beille, the Slovenian pushed 6.98 w/kg for 39:50 (to break Marco Pantani’s record by nearly four minutes) after a long, hard day in the saddle. Even without accounting for the day before, the crazy fatigue induced during the stage before Plateau de Beille, 6.98 for 40 minutes is a top-three performance of all time. It’s possibly number one. But if you do account for the difficulty of the stage, it is the best by a lot. Jonas did the second-best climb in history and lost over a minute. Remco did the third-best performance of the century (only behind the two guys who beat him) and lost almost three minutes. It’s quite difficult to wrap one’s head around.
I urge anyone with a modicum of interest in cycling and/or data to read at least the Plateau de Beille article to really get a sense of how shocking this performance is. We are truly witnessing the greatest cyclist of all time in his prime now. There has never been anybody like this before, and one to assume there won’t be another rider like Pogi for decades, or more likely, centuries to come.
I’m a happy boy with how this Tour is going, of course. Pog has it safely under control, and I would possibly prefer he save some matches at this point for the Olympics and World Championships. But I’d surprised if he doesn’t win at least one more stage because Jonas has said that he will not give up, which implies that Visma will chase breakaways in the Alps and incidentally tee up Pogacar for more victories. Let’s see.
And yes, the doping talk has gone mad already. I don’t feel a need to address it at the moment, I just don’t see how one could get away with blatant doping this day and age, and of course I hope he’s clean. For now, all we can do is sit back and enjoy the spectacle. That’s what I’m doing, besides writing and tweeting about it all.
It’s beautiful to watch somebody ride their bike up a mountain faster than anybody ever has. I think we can all expect more of this in the coming years too. The Pogacar Era is not about to end anytime soon. And I’m happy for that.
I hope everybody remaining in the race finishes the Tour de France safely and in good health.
Until next time,
Jamie
Puncheur 
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