All change at the Tour de France 2022. Primož Roglič’s loss of over two minutes to Tadej Pogačar will have a dramatic effect on how the race plays out from now on. And the dislocated shoulder he suffered in the hay bale crash that also took down Caleb Ewan and Jack Haig will surely have future consequences.
Without the injury, the two minutes lost by the Jumbo-Visma leader could have been just a setback. Even with displacement being sorted immediately, Roglič isn’t going to be capable of the same movement and efforts as normal. That leaves Jonas Vingegaard as the surviving GC option for the Dutch team.
Going into the cobbled stage, Ineos Grenadiers were talking of it being an opportunity to place Pogačar under pressure, with Dylan van Baarle and Geraint Thomas having a free role to race if an opportunity presented itself. Their other leaders, Adam Yates and Daniel Martínez, would be looked after by everyone else, with more specific duties for Luke Rowe and Tom Pidcock due to their previous experiences on the pavé.
Pidcock, the winner of both Junior and U-23 versions of Paris-Roubaix, has the skills to survive the beaten-up tracks of northern France, but that wasn’t necessarily going to be of direct help to the team’s climbers, who would be hesitating at the points where the young man from Leeds would be pedalling. It can be more stressful to follow someone that talented than rely on your own judgement, even if it’s slightly deficient.
In the end, it was all irrelevant, because stage 5 turned into a complete nightmare for Wout Van Aert’s squad, and Ineos lost Filippo Ganna and Jonathon Castroviejo after the first few sectors. Then it became a survival exercise, as the GC group was whittled down and Rowe and Van Baarle were lost to punctures. Thomas fell, but unlike other years he wasn’t badly hurt, and he later got back to group chasing Pogačar.
What was most significant for the British team’s hopes of potentially exploiting any UAE weakness was that Pogačar often upped the pace instead of being in a position of defence, both on the cobbles and in between sectors when he heard of the difficulties of those considered his biggest rivals. The stress caused would put Ineos in the opposite situation to what they had imagined happening beforehand.
More worryingly, it showed that whatever the terrain, Tadej Pogačar has the game covered. So what now for Rod Ellingworth’s men?
A tactical coup could be possible, perhaps on a transition stage, but it’s…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…