The fastest Tour de France ever was intensely competitive but was it as entertaining as the previous edition?
That’s the question I ask myself as I think back on what happened in between the damp Copenhagen start over three weeks ago and finishing on the Champs Elysees on a beautiful summer evening.
Tactically, UAE Team Emirates where outthought during the crucial stages and physically outgunned in the mountains, allowing Jonas Vingegaard and Jumbo-Visma to execute their winning strategy.
At first, it looked like it was going to be a formality for Tadej Pogačar as he picked up bonus seconds here, there and everywhere in the first week of the Tour de France, with only the show put on by Wout Van Aert distracting from the Slovenian.
When Pogačar took over the race lead on stage 6, I wondered when the Jumbo-Visma armada would seriously challenge UAE Team Emirates, who had fewer star riders and just one mission: guide their number one rider to another success.
When the Dutch squad had announced the goal of winning both yellow and green jerseys it looked very ambitious. After the cobbles ruined the hopes of Primož Roglič, the option of GC seemed to be gone.
As we all now know, it was the day to the Col du Granon that exposed the weakness of UAE Team Emirates and where Jumbo-Visma’s detailed planning and team tactics paid off.
Pogačar was left exposed by the attacks from Roglič and Vingegaard on the Col du Galibier and had no proper support from his team. He then made his own mistakes and suddenly, from a position of strength, he was over two minutes behind.
That left facing a huge challenge and hoping for cracks to somehow appear Jonas Vingegaard’s armour. Ultimately there weren’t any and if anything, the Slovenian seemed never to have recovered properly from the mauling he got on stage 11 to the Col du Granon.
The finishes on L’Alpe d’Huez, Saint-Etienne and Mende gave the impression that UAE Team Emirates might still play the GC game. At Peyragudes Pogačar looked to be ready to pounce again but Jumbo deployed Van Aert on stage 18 to Hautacam and everything was settled. Vingegaard wasn’t going to be beaten and the probing of Pogačar was more about pride than anything else.
The moment Pogačar lost time again on the road to Hautacam was when the preparation for the 2023 Tour de France really began for both Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates.
UAE Team Emirates’ hopes really fell apart when their key domestiques were unable to help…
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