Once more, a hybrid time trial at the Tour de France threw up a surprisingly large gap between the top two in the overall standings. UAE Team Emirates have been here before with Tadej Pogačar, but this time around it was more of a sombre
experience.
Three years ago, Pogačar turned a tight Tour de France on its head by bounding up La Planche des Belles Filles to snatch yellow from Primoz Roglič at the last. On Tuesday, Jumbo-Visma returned the favour as Jonas Vingegaard delivered a time trial of shocking intensity to gain a decisive advantage in what had been a Tour of such fine margins to this point.
Vingegaard was in a class entirely of his own on the rolling 22.4km course from Passy to Combloux, and it was clear almost from his opening pedal strokes that this afternoon would be an exercise in damage limitation for Pogačar.
At the first check after 7km, Vingegaard was already 16 seconds ahead and he pressed his advantage home on the valley road through Sallanches, almost doubling his lead to 31 seconds by the 16km mark.
Vingegaard proceeded to make inexorably light work of the Côte de Domancy, tacking another 34 seconds onto his buffer on that climb alone, before stopping the clock in Combloux some 1:38 quicker than Pogačar. Nobody else finished within 2:51 of the Dane, who produced a performance from a different stratosphere.
Andrej Hauptman was the man guiding Pogačar around the course, and when he emerged from the UAE Team Emirates car afterwards, he reckoned that his rider could have done nothing more on this course. Pogačar was, after all, over a minute better than everybody else, but he still covered the ground almost 2kph slower than Vingegaard.
“Tadej did a really great time trial, but Jonas today was amazing. I think we have to say congrats to Jonas,” said Hauptman, who insisted that Pogačar’s performance was entirely in line with UAE’s expectations beforehand. “Tadej did close to our calculations. We know that Jonas is really strong, but our plan was to be closer with him.”
Outside the UAE Team Emirates bus, general manager Mauro Gianetti confessed that he had a sinking feeling once he saw Vingegaard eke out an early advantage on Pogačar, and those concerns were borne out over the remainder of the course. Like Hauptman, he believed Pogačar had performed at something close to his best. Vingegaard, it seems, had simply exceeded all of their calculations.
“We were not expecting so big a gap today,” Gianetti said. “I think Tadej did a very…
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