The presence of Tadej Pogačar places a glass ceiling of sorts on the rest of the Tour de France peloton. Not even past winners are immune. Geraint Thomas, fresh from victory at the Tour de Suisse, has ambitions beyond the podium place he currently occupies, but he knows, too, that Pogačar represents a unique obstacle.
“I think he’s just a level above,” Thomas told reporters on Monday’s rest day when he was asked to compare Pogačar with the other Tour winners he has encountered in his career.
“I think Nibali and Contador were great climbers, and Froome could climb and time trial really well. But Pogačar has got everything. He’s got the sprint, he can ride the cobbles, he can do everything, really. Phenomenal. I just can’t see how he won’t continue to be the biggest favourite for the next five or six years.”
The future is unwritten, of course, but in the here and now, Pogačar is the man most likely to carry the yellow jersey to Paris for the third successive year. As the race heads towards the high Alps, he leads Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) by 39 seconds, while Thomas lies third at 1:17, just ahead of his Ineos Grenadiers teammate Adam Yates.
The British squad left Copenhagen with a multi-pronged approach to the Pogačar conundrum, and while Daniel Martínez’s challenge floundered on Sunday, Thomas, Yates and debutant Tom Pidcock (7th at 1:46) have charted a steady course to this point. The problem, of course, is that Pogačar has been travelling at a rate of knots that nobody seems able to match for long.
A headline in Monday morning’s L’Équipe provocatively asked why nobody had deigned to attack Pogačar on the road to Châtel on Sunday. The answer, Yates explained simply, had a lot to do with the mildness of the terrain and the strength of Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates guard.
“We asked the same question about everyone else, because it’s not just us,” Yates said. “At the moment, we didn’t feel the need to do anything. The climb wasn’t super steep, and UAE were setting a good pace. In a situation like that, it’s not wise to attack.”
Risk
Thomas echoed Yates’ point when he stressed that Ineos’ strength in numbers atop the general classification does not necessarily translate into superiority out on the road. And even if Ineos do manage to engineer problems along the way for Pogačar, the Slovenian would probably back himself to resolve them.
“It’s one thing having the numbers and another thing having the…
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