“Every Tour has a day like this,” Wout van Aert said after he had finished cooling down outside the Jumbo-Visma team bus in Issoire after stage 10. Maybe, but it’s hard to shake off the impression that they happen on the Tour de France with rather more regularity in the supersonic era of Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar.
There was a time when the Tour’s forays through the Massif Central almost inevitably played out dutifully as transition stages. ONCE’s all-out offensive against Miguel Indurain on the road to Mende in 1995 was so dramatic because of its rarity. For most of his five-year reign as Tour champion, Indurain could navigate days such as these in relative tranquillity. Men like Tony Rominger were never so crass as to try to get in the early break.
In the Tour like in Ashes cricket, the old, unwritten rules no longer apply in the 21st century. The sight of riders furiously warming up outside their team buses in Vulcania on Tuesday morning, despite temperatures of more than 30° Celsius, said as much.
After the Tour de France‘s first rest day, there would be no gentle return to duty here, particularly with the race going up the short, sharp Col de Moréno in the opening kilometres.
The warp factor of the opening exchanges increased exponentially, however, when Pogačar took it upon himself to join the early attacking and the yellow jersey Vingegaard immediately followed.
Whenever the pair attack in the mountains, the inexorable logic of their power-to-weight ratios carries them clear of everybody else instantaneously, and nobody else even thinks of lifting the velvet rope to follow them into the VIP area.
When a rider like Pogačar accelerates in the opening kilometres on a day like Tuesday, however, it’s more like cycling’s equivalent of shouting ‘fire!’ in a cinema. Suddenly everybody is scrambling to follow them out the door.
It was full gas racing: who is there, is there. At that point, I didn’t care who was there anymore
Tadej Pogačar
Pogačar and Vingegaard’s high-octane marking was one of the key drivers of the early move of 22 riders that formed after the Moréno, and the tension infused by that initial skirmish percolated for most of the day. Everybody, it seemed, wanted in on the action or was at least afraid of getting left behind.
“It was a very intense start. A lot of jumping from basically everyone I would say,” was Vingegaard’s understated assessment. “There were a lot of different scenarios, different breakaways that went and…
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