Defending Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates have played down the chances of the Slovenian using the Mende summit finish on Saturday to try to regain time on race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma).
The brutally-steep three-kilometre ascent to Mende airfield has seen sparks fly in the past on GC, but barring its debut in 1995 when Laurent Jalabert and his ONCE squad staged a spectacular long-range attack on yellow Miguel indurain, the sparks have rarely been part of an overall conflagration.
In 2018, the previous ascent, Primož Roglič regained a handful of seconds on Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome, first and second overall. And in 2015, Nairo Quintana pushed his way into second ahead of Tejay van Garderen with an attack that netted the Colombian some 40 seconds on the American, but he still lost barely a second on Chris Froome.
The skirmishing, though, could well be fierce, particularly as for Pogačar, 2:22 down on Vingegaard going into stage 14, it’s going to be too early to try to pull back time on the Dane.
“Tomorrow [Saturday] is a nice stage, the final is very interesting and I think it will be explosive tomorrow, but probably not as big [important] as Thursday,” Pogačar told reporters after claiming his latest white jersey as leader of the best young rider ranking.
“I haven’t seen it in person but I have seen it in video and I must say it’s a nice climb.”
Pogačar would not be drawn, beyond a polite smile, on whether he felt inspired by the climb. But his neutrality is perhaps explained in that he has certainly shown some strong results on relentlessly-steep ascents in races like Tirreno-Adriatico this spring, for example. He also ran into some memorably-difficult moments as recently as Wednesday on another dauntingly-unforgiving climb, the Col de Granon.
UAE Team Emirates themselves were notably neutral about Pogačar’s chances on Mende, preferring to kick the can down the road towards the mountains of the third week rather than risk a major energy spend for what would likely prove to be minimal gains.
“It’s one ascent, and with the Pyrenees coming up fast, we’ve got a lot of ground to try something,” team manager Mauro Gianetti told Cyclingnews after stage 13.
“It’s difficult to gain much time compared to how much energy you put out and particularly with everything that’s still ahead of us.
“Even a stage like today [stage 13] will wear the riders out. When you choose to make a move, you have to choose well.”
Gianetti…
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