The Tour de France again produced a duel between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, though few could have anticipated the gap that would ultimately form between the two outstanding favourites in the final week.
Then again, perhaps a race as attritional as this one was always likely to take a toll. Peter Sagan was riding his final Tour de France and he suggested he had never competed in one as intense as this, with only two days where the racing wasn’t full-throated from the very outset.
Indeed, Vingegaard and Pogačar’s running duel was such that they even found themselves on the attack in the opening kilometres of stage 10, which had been ostensibly billed as a transition stage, a day for an early break to sally clear. The Tour of 2023, however, rarely afforded such respite.
It was still, of course, a race of a thousand stories. Thibaut Pinot’s farewell in the Vosges will endure in the memory. Pello Bilbao and Matej Mohorič scored fine breakaway wins and spoke poignantly of the loss of Gino Mäder and the realities of their lives as bike riders. Jasper Philipsen dominated the sprints, while Mark Cavendish came close to adding to his own history in the race.
The dominant thread, however, was the remarkable contest between Vingegaard and Pogačar. Cyclingnews looks back at some of the moments that defined the race.
Fast start sets the tone
Just days before the Grand Départ, when UAE named Adam Yates as Tour de France co-leader for their team, it was widely regarded as a way of easing pressure on Tadej Pogačar given his uneven build-up.
The real limits on Yates’ role remained blurry until deep into the third week when UAE made a concerted effort to keep on the podium. However, that was just one rider in a bigger picture: back in Bilbao on the opening stage, right from the gun UAE’s collective gung-ho attitude to the Tour made itself very clear.
If any confirmation had been needed that it was the UAE squad who’d give Jumbo-Visma the biggest run for their money, in the three weeks to come, on the gritty, technical ascents in the Bilbao industrial hinterland, Mikkel Bjerg, Adam Yates and Pogačar provided that evidence in abundance.
When the UAE push came to shove towards the summit of the Pike, the last and most hotly disputed climb of all, defending champion Jonas Vingegaard was almost duty-bound to be up there in person. But in fact only he and stage 2 winner Victor Lafay (Cofidis) could follow UAE’s…
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